On Writing, or, The Undead Pegasus Flies on Over los Techos de Teknochtitlán

I was looking at the sky just now and saw the skeleton of a pegasus. I think it had died in flight because it looked like it was flying. Or more probably it was dead and was flying. Or better yet: it is still out there flying among the thousands of airplanes and hundreds of helicopters that crowd this city's sky. Just because I came inside to write about the skeleton of a pegasus in no way should mean that an undead pegasus ceased to exist when I stopped looking at it.

And writing is always like that: an investment of time in order to distill a moment. Distilling, yes. Like making mezcal. A maguey will take six full years to slowly raise its spined arms closer to the sky before the palenquero comes by––one morning just after dawn––and chops off each and every one of those arms, and then the roots, throwing the corazón del maguey into the back of a waiting pickup. The corazón will be buried and roasted, then mashed by a stone pulled by a burro walking in circles. The mash will then sit in its juices for a time, then be put again to heat, sent through the clean copper distiller, and out the other side comes a fragile stream of pure mezcal blanco. (As an aside, the only mezcalero I've had a long chance to listen to assures me that the only good way to seal the metal of the distiller is with nixtamal ground into masa––corn meal. A tortilla seal.)

So I am the burro walking in circles, taking the harvest of moments and distilling them down into [while finishing this sentence I was beset by the craving for a good mezcal, which luckily, is sitting right next to the desk. Served, I continue,] an unnaturally potent account. Acuteness. Sharp at the first, smooth after a few. Clarity. A process of noticing and exclusion: pruning away the spines, getting at the heart of the thing, and laying it clear to be consumed.

But the calaca of the pegasus is still out there in the sky, above the fist-sized raindrops that have begun to fall, avoiding the racing helicopters of the super-rich. Collecting plastic shopping bags from the gutters & allies, building a multicolored altar for the next Día de Muertos, just around the corner. Though I've never asked, I do think los muertos build altars to the living just as the living build altars to their muertitos. It would seem congruent with everything I know about the mexica cosmovision & general Mexican idiosyncrasy. Six weeks is a reasonable amount of time to spend edifying those on the other side. Especially for the living, whose time seems to pass so much quicker than for the muertos.

Point is: my pegasus is an undead installation artist of miquixtli, the rain has begun to fall along with the night, and this mezcal is delicious. Bien suave depués del primer sorbo. The neighbor is listening to a piece of classical music and the thunder is debating something I can't get my head around.

And among all of this, the search for clarity, for the story, the foto, the poem, the moment to highlight, to hold aloft screaming look at this, chingao! Among all the spines, el corazón del cuento. (Not the fact of the matter, the heart of the matter. As matter of fact, fact is not matter, it is theory, and it matters to me very little.)

I have been the writer that can't swear off watching the clouds to come inside off the roof and write the damn story. I'd tell you that if I looked away, the pegasus would cease to exist, and I write too slow to get the details anyway. I'd like to think that I've been planting magueyes and that some day I'll sit down to share a mezcal of my own vintage, distilled with my own vision of clarity. But there are so many things happening in the sky, it's been heard to put on the yolk and to begin to walk in circles. The burro needs to get to work. Or the pegasus needs to land on the damn roof and let me ride it, chingá.