El rincon de Mamá

The members of the Indian population of Guatemala have clung to their customs and costumes. Even today, the brightly coloured clothes, hand woven, and proudly worn are an eyeful in more than one way. They are first of all, a statement of their philosophy, of their beliefs. The proof that they were surviving despite the cultural pressure of living in a different world.

These colourful costumes vary from region to region, from town to town. Apart from the general colour and fashion of the region, each town has specific patterns. Like the knitting patterns of the Irish fishermen’s sweaters, or the pattern and colours of the Scottish tartans; the patterns, designs and drawings of the textiles in Guatemala clearly identified the family, clan and neighbourhood of the wearer.

The women, especially, have clung to their clothes. Personally woven within the tradition of their town, the textiles included their family history.

This endeavour of registering the private history, the personal story, of the weaver-wearer seems to match what we know of other textiles throughout the world. Even the patchwork quilts, the perfect example of recycling using fabrics no longer adequate for their original purpose, to piece together a quilt… and in so doing, include in it the history of the fabrics used: this was a dress I wore when I was 15; this is part of a shirt I made for my first child; this was a skirt I bought on my first trip to Chicago… and so on.

The textiles in Guatemala, according to the textile museum Ixchel, tell of times of plenty and of want, happiness and sorrow, births and deaths. The personal story of the owner (the wearer), told by the weaver (the owner).

True to form, Guatemalans took this display of art and handicrafts quite for granted. It is so difficult to appreciate the extraordinary in what is “normal and commonplace”. Foreigners were the first to declare their astonishment at the beauty of these textiles parading the streets on the way to the market places under laden baskets of fruits and vegetables.

One of the first to take Guatemalan textiles seriously, some 60 years ago, was an American who built up a collection of these hand-woven costumes. In an interview, when asked how he had achieved such a great collection, he explained quite simply that it had been easy once understood that:
1)he had to speak at least a spattering of some of the most widespread Indian languages, if he was to convey the interest he felt for the textiles.
2)opportunities came at their own time and one had to be prepared to take advantage of them;
3)he could literally buy the clothes off the back of the wearer by offering a good price, and alteranative clothing so the seller could continue with his life, in other clothes.

His sincere interest and admiration for the textiles, his willingness to pay the price asked and not indulge in bargaining, and his respect for the people of Guatemala, quickly earned him a reputation for dealing fairly.

In an interview he once explained how it was difficult to persuade a woman to part with her dress, because she could not understand why, when the family history woven into it meant nothing to him, the textile could interest him.

This seemingly universal interest in recording family or personal history in what we wear and use is patent in our collections that are the chronicles of our life. That is why it is so astounding that today we buy ready-made collections, defeating the feature of chronicle of our life. Are we so orphaned of history, of self confidence and identity, that we rush out to buy our history and memory?

Breathless would probably be a good description of our way of life. We seem to be forever chasing after…. what? Might we be chasing after the roots we have fought to leave behind? Do we really know where we are going, or, ignoring it we are trying to go everywhere at once? But can we go everywhere? Can we get anywhere going everywhere?

In an effort to save time (to be invested elsewhere), today we have ready-made everything. Even ready-made collections of thimbles (silver and ceramic), ladies’ hand painted fans, fountain pens, dolls (toys and fashion manikins), watches, cigarette lighters, teddy bears…

What impresses me is the impatience that makes us buy ready-made collections. The showcase to be placed on the living room coffee-table book as a conversation piece. Fine, but that defeats the spirit of a collection.

I admire the people who are collectors, who make collections. I just hoard things I like or that are significant for me. Sadly, I lack the orderly and systematic mind needed to classify and order all my bits and pieces into a collection. My bits and pieces are not even for scrapbooking, they are shreds of memories attached to sea shells, river stones or theatre programs.

Are you a collector at heart?Would you like to have a collection of watches? You can buy the watches, one a week, and finish the project with the “collector’s box”; or you can buy it all pay for it on the installment plan. Everything ready to be displayed… but certainly not a collection.

Now, why should anyone want a collection of watches? Because he likes watches, because he has bought them, one by one, or received them as gifts. Each one would be meaningful in its own way. Each one unique. One given when he graduated from college, one a wedding gift, another bought on a trip, a fourth bought to commemorate the birth of a child… and so on.

We could say the same of any other collection – ashtrays with the names of the places visited during holidays, teaspoons absconded from restaurants or airplanes, dolls dressed in the typical costumes of the place. In any case, each piece of a collection is meaningful. Each is part of a cherished story that can be told following the pieces of the collection, one by one.

I really doubt anyone sets out to own a “collection” of watches, pens, teddy-bears. It is more probable that one finds he has gathered a number of the things he likes and then, decides to “fill in the blanks” and make it into a collection.

Yesterday I saw a young woman buying herself a charm bracelet. She was choosing the charms all at once, a ready-made collection that looked well but was meaningless. It made me think of the charm bracelets we built up, charm by charm, when I was young. Each charm had a meaning, each had a reason to be on the bracelet, and the bracelet itself told the story of our lives. Today the bracelet may be more beautiful, better designed and make a better ensemble, but it is just for show. It means nothing. What is even sadder is that the woman buying the charm bracelet had no idea of what it was… she was merely buying something now in fashion, orphaned of all meaning and feeling.

Seeking to fill in our lives and to “live” all our roles, we don masks and pretend our ready-made collections are “ours”, and meaningful in our lives. But we know that meaning comes from inside and can be attached o something, but not the other way around.

Hope has fallen into disrepute, unless it is used in an banal, off-hand manner: I hope it will be sunny. Hope, with a capital “H” has become politically incorrect due to its affinity with religious concepts which are now definitely frowned upon by progressists and the like.

Yet, hope is the driving force of life. Even in the lay world of today, there is no life without hope. Hope is expectation. Hope is confidence in the future; the reason to begin a project, trusting the possibility of achievement. It is, so to speak, that which makes life livable. The spring that makes our life-clock tick.

Recently statistics of suicides in Spain have been published. It happens that suicide is actually the first cause of non-natural death. More people die because they commit suicide than from traffic accidents. What is really especially disquieting is that this happens in Spain, where there supposedly is one of the lowest suicide rates in Europe.

We have known for many years that northern European countries have high suicide rates, and high rates of alcoholism and drug addiction, which are slower and more socially acceptable manners of suicide. The ex-Soviet Union countries also show the same high rates of self-destructive tendencies. There are much lower suicide rates in poorer countries such as India, Philippines o Columbia.

Is it a coincidence that these high suicide rates are found in countries that have the “cradle to grave” social protection? Is it a coincidence that where people need not strive to make eat every day, or to have a house, or health care, is where people decide more often to commit suicide?

Is it that when people find themselves without the need to exert themselves, to strive, to plan, to work, they find themselves orphaned? When people do not need to hope or project their expectations, when their present and future do not depend on their actions; when there is no need for hope, they are hopeless, and that is not compatible with life.

We humans adapt poorly to comfort and plenty. Take away the need of hope, the need of looking forward to the future, the need of striving, people die inside. Their souls shrivel and their lives lose shape, form and finality. That is why they give up and commit suicide.

People want to be free. They want to be free of constraints, of beliefs, of traditions. People want to be independent and not have to rely on anyone, or to be answerable to anyone. Ask around: you will find independence, self-reliance and freedom as the top aspirations among young people … young nowadays goes right up to age 50!

And yet, these same people sign up in droves for mass events, be them week-end concert at the beach or in the city or sports events. People do not want to rely on anyone, yet they complain loudly when the train does not arrive on time and declare themselves deceived by airline schedules. People chafe at the restraints imposed by local festivities (crowds, noise) and fly off to participate as spectators of a feast in some far-away place.

I have heard the same people complain of how sidewalks dwindle with the terrace tables catering to tourists and passers-by in their city and speak glowingly of sidewalk cafés climbing up Paris streets or lining Roman ones. Of course, the difference is that in the first case, they were walking down the street on errands, and in the second, patrons of the sidewalk cafés enjoying a leisurely afternoon. They are not truly for or against sidewalk cafes. They just want them when they are convenient.

We want laws to protect us, to guarantee that our food is grown, handled and packaged correctly, that the weight is what the package reads, that the soft-drink contains what it says it. We want rules to live by, and when something, anything, does not turn out as we thought it would, our first thought seems to be: “there ought to be a law!”. And then, practically in the same sentence say they consider rules and regulations repressive, coercive and in general damaging to self esteem and self confidence.

Maybe there ought to be a law against voluntarily not thinking and voluntary amnesias. Maybe there ought to be a law against being forever an adolescent, unwilling to grow up into the world of responsibility and freedom, complaining about what “father state” doles out, without even thinking it is a dole, and not a “right”… and one paid for by other fellow citizens to boot.

My pet grievance with the welfare state (however much I do appreciate the social benefits of health care, unemployment insurance and retirement – all of which come out of our pay before the paycheck ever reaches our hands) is that it keeps the citizens perpetually under age. Protected, yes, but controlled because there is no protection possible without control. Protection from cradle to grave keeps people from flexing their muscles, from exerting their minds, from stretching their will and with it their possibilities of being useful to themselves and to society.

People adapt better to need than to plenty. Authors seem to agree that living in the lap of comfort, with food to spare and time to burn does little for our physical health. Our body needs more exercise, less food and less comfort. I think our minds work along the same way. Think of how well honed minds worked their way around difficulties, censorships, red tapes and financial need. And now, it seems all we can think of doing is asking form juicier subsidies.

We want freedom, but not responsibility. We want safety, but not control. We want contradictory things that are impossible to have at the same time. We want to have our cake and eat it too… just as children often do.

Isn’t it time we started growing up?

Our XXI Century refutes anything that cannot be proved, or touched or measured… yet in the midst of this “I do not believe anything that can’t be seen or measured” we live with mobile phones, television, microwave ovens.. things that work with the invisible energy of waves that were only discovered and harnessed because people in the last century BELIEVED in them.

Just think… what triggered the Curie’s work in radioactivity?. What led to the radio? How can an unseen planet be discovered just because the orbit of the known one is not the expected one? What are expectations if not the tendrils of faith? Who imagined bouncing TV signals off satellites orbiting the earth? Who imagined man-made satellites circling the earth in the first place?

All of the new inventions and discoveries are the product of someone’s dream, intuition, or endeavor. The product of mathematical calculations, you might say, and you would be right. Yet, how can we strike off the initial spark, the conviction that led their work?

That initial spark is faith. Faith in its secular sense which is, of course, trust, confidence and hope. We live in a lay world. We have tried to erase all that seemed tinged by religion, belief; all that is meaningful in values, especially because this modern world of ours panics at the thought of being tainted by sects, religions and other groups that are not “progressive”.

However, no matter how progressive we are, the covenant of society is still trust, confidence: faith. We cannot function as a society without trust. We need to trust the bank, the utilities company, the baker, the butcher… and trust is faith.

We speak constantly of confidence, even of self-confidence. We speak of reliability, we speak of support… and all of these are facets of the same diamond: faith.

Like it or not, our civilization is based on faith. Faith and law, which is, in effect, the “hard copy” of faith. It is the written version of what keeps our world ticking and running. The rules by which we rule ourselves and the agreements which we reach and accept.

The law, my father said, was man’s greatest accomplishment. Law was what made the difference between a pack and a society. Law, equal for all, the same for everyone, and the same in every occasion. My father was a lawyer, but more than that, he believed in law and in the people who trusted the law, who had faith in the workings of society as set down in the laws.

How does this affect our lay society…the one that refuses to even mention faith? It makes us orphans, bereft of the guidance law, convention and tradition might contribute. How are we to function without faith, without trust, without confidence? Is this the crisis of our time… that of seeking what faith contributes while denying faith itself? We are wishing, willing to abhor customs and traditions, beliefs and conventions, but we have nothing with which to replace them. What will fill that void?

It was Napoleon who said “for every priest I cast out, I need to employ ten policemen”. Is this why we are living in a world that seeks to rule and regulate everything, from the contents of a jar of sandwich spread to the use of the Internet? Are we seeking to substitute faith and trust by rules and regulations – which are another facet of the same faith?

Our society of creature comforts earned in hours of work, has not brought solace to the worst blight: loneliness. In this day of collective work (“team” is a more politically correct term), why do we feel alone? What kinks our minds make “social networks”, dating organizations, and chats necessary to seek company? Why can’t we relate to the people next door? Often, we don’t even know the people next door although we chat amicably with someone living in Japan.

Our work is often sedentary and solitary although performed in rooms full of people. When the workday is over should we not be presumably tired and in need of rest and solitude? What makes us dash out to the gym or ikebana class? Why do we take up ceramics or basket weaving? And why are we seeking new activities, and nearly always collective ones?

Today most of us work doing just a fraction almost anything, be it an assembly line, engineering drawings, or even booking flights or hotel accommodations. We work in teams, these are not “company”. They merely define the group involved on a single finished product. The members of the team are easily replaceable in their functions, which accentuates the bereft feeling of the human component, no matter how well worded the company policy might be.

These teams might be physically separated, and the work carried on in different locations, even in different cities or countries, and I think this only makes us feel lonelier since we lack the sense of accomplishment, the pride of seeing our finished work.

There is a clear difference between a friend and the person next to you in the trenches. Workmates, war buddies or fellow girl scouts need not be kindred spirits. When people are thrown together, either because the company seated them next to each other, or a flash flood caught them in the same ravine, find a manner to work together. Some even end up being best friends, others will be forever someone they shared an experience with, and nothing more.

Perhaps we seek other activities because we need a time to be with the people we choose. Unless we are of the lucky few working on what would otherwise be a hobby, we might just want to talk about something that is not work with someone we, and not the company, choose. Still, for this, we join groups and become part of another cell.

What is missing in our lives, in our society, when we do not listen to who is sitting next to us because we are calling someone in another town? What is missing, or what are we losing, in our lives when we are trying to race time arranging the future by phone while awaiting the train? Where are we when we walk down the street with our mind and attention on whatever is coming out of the phone? What compels us to take pictures practically of places we will not even see until we down-load them into our computer.

Have we lost the here and now? Is that what makes us forever walk the edge between the individual “I” and collective “we”? Is it all because we cannot decide, or have not the courage to make a stance and choose willingly and face the consequences of our choice? Is it because we don’t want to lose other opportunities and never seem to be able to let go of whatever we have in hand? Is it that we refuse to take the responsibility for our choices and our lives? Is this why we choose to live collectively while developing such concepts as “personal space”in order to insure we remain utterly alone?

We have walked into a trap of our own making. We live in a contradiction: a society of loners, and of unwilling and unhappy ones at that.

I read once, and since then have heard it said on radio and television, that people (including a study on gorilas, which are not people but close kin), from the stone-age tribes onward through Egyptians, and medieval Europeans spent an average 6 hours a day looking for and obtaining food and shelter and “clothes” (included under shelter). That includes travelling to and from food gathering or hunting areas and erecting and repairing shelters.

That means 25% of a 24-hour day and something like 75% of the useful, daylight (sunlight) time. The remainder they spent socializing and resting. Lately I have heard that that figure continues to be true. That modern man spends 75% of his income (corresponding to the time available for work – ruled now by working hour regulations rather than daylight) on food, shelter (mortgage or rent) and clothing. That, at first sight would mean that we are not much better off now than the gorilas or the stone-age tribes were.

The figures stack up well, the statement seems to hold, but we all know that it’s not true, at least, not wholly correct. To extrapolate those figures to our day, we would have to throw in two-day weekends, bank holidays and paid vacations – which probably would wake us up with a start with the realization that we are much better off. But our feeling is that people might have lived harder lives physically, but were living in less hostile environments psychologically speaking.

How we love to gripe! Little thought is given to psychology or hostile environments when hunger looms, or when physical exhaustion dispels qualms only available to us living in comfort, if not affluence. My father used to say that there was a minimum of material wealth or comfort – roughly translating into food and shelter – under which people did not function as beings capable of creative thought, under which the only consideration was to obtain food and shelter. In my father’s view, only once this was assured could man take time to consider good and bad, the convenience or not, what could be rash or suitable, and to braid sense and sensibility into the fabric of his life.

Still, this “packing life full” sometimes brings us to such things as this: A good friend who gave up smoking once confided: “Before giving up smoking I was a reasonably bright man who, when asked a difficult question, lit a cigarette and produced a more or less intelligent answer. Now I am a poor devil who, when asked a difficult question, stands there with his mouth hanging open for thirty seconds while frantically trying to gather his thoughts into an acceptable reply.” Nobody questioned the thirty seconds spent lighting a cigarette, but now, when he has “nothing to do” (lighting the cigarette) those thirty seconds seem symptomatic of lack of wit.

Why? Maybe as a throw-back on the days when there was no time to lose, many things to do, many chores to attend to. The old “the devil finds work for idle hands”? No matter that our great-grandparents, used to physical work, would probably consider most of our lives as “idle”.

Maybe because we are now used to television and films where all hesitations are erased and people react instantly and in a suitable manner. Again, we are set up against fiction, and reality takes a beating.

Today our extra-curricular activities and hobbies allow us to project that part of ourselves that is constrained at work and exercise our taste and fancy – otherwise called “creativity” – in a manner which is pleasing to us and not disruptive for general run of organised work.

Is it only another way of not being alone with our thoughts? Is this sane? I have smy doubts.

Is this why childhood is no longer the happy and protective land I remember? The world indeed has changed, and while I have never been Polyanna I am shocked this change has made everything that was sweet become bitter. All the landmarks upside down.

Just as an example, let me mention that when I was a child the circus was considered a world in which the actors and artists were happy to work as acrobats and trapeze artists or clowns. Then the circus became a difficult world in which hard feelings, envies and hatreds ran freely while the artists strove not only to be great in their specialty, but cruel antagonists intent in their survival. The countryside was beautiful, sunny, the farmers led healthy lives. Now the emphasis is on its difficulties, the long hours of labour, the high costs, the mean rewards. And these are only two examples. It seems what was taken positively before, now is considered negatively. Neither is completely right.

It is not that I think all was sugar and roses and now it isn’t. I think things were pretty much as they are now, but the emphasis, of those living in those worlds, and especially of those looking into those worlds was totally different.

Is this applicable to childhood now? When I read interviews with young people of many walks of life, I often think young people are intent in giving themselves a traumatic childhood. It must mean an extra point or two when trying to call attention to themselves if they can plea psychological hardship, or whatever.

Still, thinking about the lives they live, maybe they have been cheated out of their childhood, the type of childhood that grants the personal resources needed to lead happy and fruitful lives. Maybe they are right in saying they have suffered traumatic childhoods, although the trauma and the drama is not what they claim. The trauma might be just that they have not had a childhood they can recognise as such.

No wonder people do not feel quite happy or satisfied. How can be anyone be happy in a place in which, one way or another, they are not wholly present. Maybe it is a question of the parallel universes science fiction has evoked more than once.

Still, if frustration is here and now… can modifying the where and when help mitigate it?

My son once said that people are unhappy because they try to fix their past by mortgaging their future, and lose their present in the doing. His view, which makes sense to me, is that the present is the only real thing we have. The past is gone and little can be done to fix whatever we think we did wrong or wronged us. The future does not exist yet; but by ignoring the present, today, we can effectively spoil, not only the present but the future as well.

How can we enjoy the world we are so prone to ignore? How can we pretend to protect it? Is its protection just another gambit to gain control? Nothing can be protected if it is not controlled. Think of it: a canary is under full protection, and fully controlled, jailed, at mercy of when we choose to feed it or to take it out into the breeze. A baby is fully protected, and fully controlled. A child escapes our control and protection at times. Wild animals, if free, are beyond our control and protection. And we want to protect – control – the world?

Is it because we have been taught that adult behaviour means doing what is suitable and convenient? Is it because we have to be “reasonable” and nobody has bothered to define “reasonable”. How can we seek happiness in a world in which we don’t stop long enough to enjoy? Is it because we can’t stop because stopping is related to wasting time? Are we trying to postpone gratification as sensible thing to do?

We have deceived ourselves into thinking that an over-stuffed life, full of activities that do not really interest us, a radio tuned in all day, a television playing, the internet spewing keeps us abreast with the world and in the world… and all it really does is to make us feel lonelier, sadder and more helpless when we take stock of our lives.

This happens in all walks of life. A child’s day today is appalling. They have schedules that would ground top executives in any great firm. School is prolonged into extracurricular activities which go from sports to foreign language, music, art, karate and theatre… but that no longer are “enjoyable” because they become competitive and exacting.

The children today move in such a tight grid they can barely allow themselves to sneeze and blow their nose except when it is allowed, or they might miss their following connection. A rat race in every way worked out for the child’s future benefit. Surely his future will be better if he speaks English, French and/or Chinese, plays basket ball or is adept at roller skating, plays the violin or the piano. His future will surely be great… if he manages to get there. But he will have lost out on childhood. The funny (or sad) part is that the future is only reached through today.

Remember when we had a bevy of people “abducted” by UFO’s? Today it seems we have all been abducted by cutting edge technology. Technology today allows us to communicate in so many manners and with such immediacy that what we have surrendered to it our capacity for reaching agreements, engaging in commitments, and even planning ahead.

We pride ourselves in living “to the minute”. I hear my children set up a date for going to the cinema in the afternoon and end the conversation with a “we’ll call each other later to confirm”. That type of laxness is good on one hand because it means we enjoy the use of reliable communications that allow us to change plans, but it also means that we have no firm plans… practically nothing is firm other than the actual moment. There is no commitment. And that, living perpetually in the uncertainty of present is, at least, tiring.

Today we seem latched to our mobile phone. I see people busily talking to someone – who might be in a different country – while they walk rapidly along the street, totally absent to the world they are present in. They wait for the bus or underground deep in their book, newspaper or telephone conversation, absent to their surroundings.

Others are busily viewing the sights through their cameras and will not be aware of where they were until they see the pictures on the screen or printed.

We seem to have been abducted by the idea that technological advances can be better for us than thinking and understanding, and the comprehensive use of technology to advance human beings in the enterprise of keeping the world alive for all.

We learn to rely on technology and disdain our own skill, knowledge, perception, intuition… we distrust ourselves and prefer o give pre-eminence to machines – designed, programmed, and run by men. Ask any engineer about his preference in hiring draftsmen. They want someone who can draw on his own, and then put his thoughts and insights to use with the computer design program. First the man, and it is the man who uses the machine.

Somewhere along the line we have forgotten that, and if we are to make good in this world, we must recover the sense of capacity, of responsibility, of achievement, in short, of being human.