I Geomagic Relationship
There is a geomagic relation I want to tell you about, between Guatemala and Ireland. Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, with Western Europe.
But first I will tell a bit about myself and about this wonderful, terrible place that is my home: Guatemala, Central America, Mesoamerica. The Geomagic relation is my lay-person’s interpretation of the climate effects which originate in the hot winds blowing out of Africa over the South Atlantic, creating a warm ocean current which flows west and collides with South America, follows the northwestern slant of its profile, delivering the warm current into the Caribbean basin limited on the west by a ribbon of land which is Central America; this brief waistline of the American continent prevents the warm current from passing into the unimaginable vastness of the Great South Sea, or Pacific Ocean.
But we are here, we and our land, and the warm current collides and seeks its way northward, following the lines of the land, until it is finally freed back into the same Atlantic it came from; although not the same: this is the North Atlantic, and now the current is heading east… On and on, not as warm now as it was at birth, but still some; it breaks at last on the beloved wild Atlantic shores of western Ireland. Also western Portugal, France and Spain, but that’s another story. And so instead of white and snowy, Ireland is green and rainy, as are we in Mesoamerica also green and rainy, though warmer.
Now for me, this is totally of mythological dimensions… Our loving Great Mother, the Earth, in one of her kinder moments… because there are those times when hurricanes batter us down and wash us out, three days of rain unceasing that make us think, inevitably, of the Great Waters of ancient story… Or the earth shakes and splits, suddenly, or a sea of fire spews from a hole in a mountain… and the stars watch on, perhaps unmoved but I don’t think so… for they send us dreams in which stories are born and grow into explanations we can work with…
There are stories here in Mesoamerica, stories of the first days and the first comings, of creation itself and the heroes that opened the ways of the world for generations to come. Not so many stories, sad to say, because an accident struck down this entire continent and turned its avenues of record and learning off towards alternate bearings, some, and many into the abyss and oblivion. But fire is fire and wind is wind everywhere, and like all peoples they imagined and told stories of how we came to be, and why rabbits and deer have such short little tails… it stands to reason that stories here and there sometimes touch and even run along brief stretches hand in hand, until any bump in the landscape sends them off again on different paths that also eventually arrive at the same good place: the hungry hearts of generations, eager to rest a little while from the harsh tumbles of modern life, so often fruitless, and delve into the wisdom of the ancients… those who saw far in the clear airs of the world still young.
I believe Cú Chulainn sometimes encounters Jun Junajpú in the fair fields of the Otherworld, that Danu and Ixmucané don’t always agree on formulas but share their curiosity, and that my beloved Manannán surely communes with Tepeu and Gucumatz as they observe the efforts of their creatures to find their way back home. I, for one, am among these creatures, and may plainly say that the ancient stories have indeed steered me to places of reflection and points of reconnection to the greater meaning of life and the world and what we are doing, or should be doing.
Ireland is an old, old land, its Burren carved and shaped by the very glaciers, while Mesoamerica emerged from the ocean floor only a short while ago, in the ages of the earth, and still spouts fire from half a dozen volcanos that have given us this amazing rich soil in which all the seeds of the green world sprout happily and give fruits that could feed humanity, if not for the greed of the few, powerful, who have defied creation itself… These small countries one can walk across in a week or two, everything close enough visit when we want, and the sea always at hand, rivers plentiful as well, and lakes… how not to feel at home, familiar?
I stood on the bridge over the mouth of the Corrib in Galway, in love and wonder at the sight of sea and river arguing terms… yet my mind instantly popped up the Río Dulce, sweet river, the estuary binding our largest lake, Izabal, to the glorious Caribe that gently bathes our eastern shores … No hurricanes, there: many sailing boats from as far away as Florida moor in the little harbor, where the only bridge spans Río Dulce and the highway goes on towards the northern lowlands where the Classic Mayas once thrived.
These small islands, blessed for perfect human habitation and given in generosity for all time, have not done so well under the patriarchal Judeo-Christian law of ruling the earth and taking advantage of its wealth; as opposed to cosmovisions like the Celt and the Maya, that -even far from perfect- certainly took a very different view of how we little monkeys should relate to the ground we walk upon and that feeds us, as she feeds all her creatures, great and small.
There is a brother and sisterhood we must pay attention to, a storytelling practice common to all of us, I’m sure, but that I can definitely attest to in my myth dimension where the Tiger People and the Tuatha de Danann think nothing of the sea between them and traverse it when they wish.
