Nagualli: Letter from Walter Lowenfels to Margaret Randall on Hotel Versalles stationery, Mexico 6, D.F; CABLE ADDRESS: "VERSAMEX"

Friday, January 27, 2012

Letter from Walter Lowenfels to Margaret Randall on Hotel Versalles stationery, Mexico 6, D.F; CABLE ADDRESS: "VERSAMEX"

5/30/64

Dear Margaret

The Raingod Tlaloc was moved from his thousand year home in the mountains to Mexico City the other day. A crowd of thousands was on hand to welcome him to Chapultepec—in the rain, of course. That was the only way Tlaloc could say how he felt, being moved, suddenly, from his temple in the past to the city one thousand years ahead. He rained.

What will you rain on your typewriter—A young modern moved suddenly a thousand years backward, as you told us you were when you walked with your children over the mountains from the last road where you had to leave your car—into the past. That four hour walk, with your maid to her tribal home, saying, "it's just over the next mountain" took you to a time scheme & primitive life unknown in Mexico City, or to anyone except Tlaloc. For the people who live in the cottage you finally reached—they don't know the experience you had—moving in four hours from Chapultepec to Tlaloc.

While Tlaloc weeps his tears of Rain for the past, you serve him by singing elegies for the future, which otherwise will not know how our generation was dying with Tlaloc and living with your children in two different centuries at once.

Best,

WALTER

1 comment:

Edgar GarciaApril 29, 2012 at 8:25 AM
DH Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent: "down came the rain with a smash, as if some great vessel had broken."
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about | co-curators

Here uncoils a collective psychogeography of the Americas—a personal exploration of indigenous poetics and epistemes. With a specific focus on Nagualism, the native American practice of self-splitting and metamorphosis, this collective project (executed as a continuous exchange between its collaborators) confirms that metamorphosis is a rapid, ongoing process without beginning or end, an antinomous exchange of excess in limitless operation. So while we post here, a chattering seed grows suddenly to a green stalk while a stone or mountain teems with personhood and animacy; and we match that overflow with overflow. Thus do we redistribute cosmic energy. Its first transfer long preceded our arrival; but we continue the exchange, the extension which is likewise our rootedness. To a great extent, this is simply a record of the personal reading habits of its co-curators, Jose-Luis Moctezuma and Edgar Garcia.

Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a californiano and a current doctoral student at the University of Chicago. His studies focus on technologies of the image in poetry, cinema, and literature. His work has been/will be published by Berkeley Poetry Review, PALABRA, Cerise Press, and MAKE Magazine. He is an editor and writer at Hydra Magazine.

Edgar Garcia's poetry, translations, and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including Antioch Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Big Bridge, Damn the Caesars, Exit 9, Jacket2, Los Angeles Review of Books, MAKE Magazine, Mandorla, Sous les Pavés, and Those That This: Arts Journal. Author of Mayan Texts: A Galactic Birth Canal (Burnt Water Booklets, 2010) and Boundary Loot (Punch Press, 2012), he was also formerly a writer and editor at Hydra Magazine. An anthology that he has co-edited titled American Literature in the World is forthcoming from Columbia UP. In 2015 he completed a Ph.D. in American Literature at Yale University and began as Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.