by Natalia Treviño
I wake up each day and begin assessing. Did I get enough sleep? I do math, guessing at total hours without waking up fully. It is the first thing that comes to mind. I want to live. Sleep, I have learned, will help me do that. I tell myself a lot of things in order to calm down the monsters that are always at me, always wanting me to give up, stop trying hard, and hide under a rock for the rest of my life. I reason away the monsters as best I can by way of dreams, concoctions, stories, alternate realities, television, statistics, oppositional thinking, lectures, readings, creativity. Community. Comunidad is the one brain, heart, and soul medicine that sticks, that works, that helps create something out of all the muck and beauty that I see. I grew up with a lot of fear, as a Mexican girl told by her father not to make waves, to always stay under the radar, and eke out a living if possible. He also trained me to understand that death was around every corner, that predators surround every public space, and the goal is not to get fired or divorced again. I had to make this work for me, make my fear be the catalyst for living despite it. Writing is my act of hope against fear, and hope is what my writing mentors have given me over the years, but the unstoppable hope I have now I can only attribute to Macondo Magic. Continue reading “Spilling the Beans on Macondo Magic”
