Like I said before, I come from artists and brujos. So if my mother's side of the family represents the artists, then why is it my father's side seems like the brujo side to me? This is the Cervantes side. Yes, direct descendants of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Great, Great, Great, Great Grandpapa Quixote is what I call him.
Cervantes is considered the greatest writer in the Spanish language. He's credited for authoring the first modern fiction story, Don Quixote. This has become one of the most translated books in history. I'm proud to be related to the the person who had the courage to birth Don Quixote and change the way humans think.
And what of brujos? I look at this way, writing is an art. Fiction, drama, and poetry are all considered literary arts. It seems like if the art is good enough, if the art transforms the way someone sees the world, then this type of transformation is magic.
Consider this: my great, great, great, great grandfather helped change the way millions of people think, and he did it with just pen and paper. Don Quixote broke the back of literary, artistic, and even political views from that point forward. He basically let a whole new Pandora out of the box; and once these ideas were out, there was no turning back.
After Don Quixote, humans are able to create themselves. It's a huge transformation, probably one of the biggest changes in human thought ever. Great, Great, Great, Grandpa Quixote is part of a long line of "game changers". From Homer, Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, Plato, Copernicus, all before him, to Da Vinci, Las Casas, Luther, Descartes, Joan of Arc, and Shakespeare during his time, and Russo, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Emerson, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Poe, and Mickey Mouse after him (of course there are many more "game-changers out there and I can't list them all). And the only one of these "game-changers" who is a fictional crazy man: Quixote; Mickey Mouse is a close second, but he's not really considered CRAZY.
Grandpa Cervantes used "crazy" to allow a way for us to "Dream the impossible dream", and "crazy" kind of goes with brujo. I mean, the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans understood this idea thousands of years ago, as evidenced by what they called oracles. The oracles were magical people who inhabited temples throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Real people who would hang out at the temples and others would come from all around to consult with the oracle for guidance. Oracles were thought to be portals through which the gods spoke directly to people. This divine portal idea left room for oracles to express pretty much anything and sometimes people couldn't even understand what the oracles were actually talking about because oracles talked in riddles, or poetry, or in some type of bipolar secret code.
In this culture, the oracles are basically labeled as mentally ill and regarded as a burden, not a strength. The U.S. displaces and abandons the mentally challenged; medicating them, locking them away, discounting them, ignoring them, and doing everything in our powers to shut the portals which allow the gods to speak through humans. I think it's why we have some of our problems today.
Off on a tangent there, but I look at crazy as a strength, not a weakness; my dad taught me this. He said,
"You don't want to necessarily feed your crazy parts, but, embrace them, learn from them, try to understand how they manifest in your life, and know that they are powerful, challenging, and ultimately liberating. My crazy isn't a cage, but wings; and I just need to remember not to fly too high."
Pretty good advice from a dad. I'm lucky he's not afraid of being anoracle, and an even more powerful breed of oracle: deaf oracle.
YOU ARE READING
MC Quixote
General FictionThis story is about a fifteen year old moving from Mexico to the United States with her deaf father. She experiences many challenges and turns to writing songs and creating music to overcome the difficulties of moving to a new culture while growing...
