I too have been RE-READING MARÍA SABINA and am especially intrugued by both the manner in which she was granted authority via a visionary experience whereby the "principal ones" gave her a huge Book of Language from which all her authority originates, and this while functioning freely as a "woman of language"/poet within an ancient postmodern! culture and an oral tradition
and
the manner in which her role as poet functions within the community as a source of empowerment for that community.
Intrinsically, she as poet is needed and valued as a healer, and as such the community derives strength,
we might say,
from its poets, wherein a symbiotic relationship between community and poetry thrives.
This community acceptance of course undermines bureaucratic control factors - Sabina was arrested briefly for hallucinogenic mushroom distribution once she became "famous," though she did not travel to do this; rather, others traveled to her for guidance - as Plato and Laura Bush both feared - but I imagine it isn't unreasonable to assume the the US put pressure on the Federales to somehow do something about this woman who had acquired a reputation they couldn't abide.
And then there's the business about the book, an issue which Gordon Wasson examines in his retrospective essay citing a document "assembled by Hernando Ruiz de Alcarón in 1629" wherein "Nahuatl Wise Ones" also refer to a similar source of authority known as amoxtli, or "the hand painted Códices of the Nahua."
And here there is plenty of room for specualtion, in consideration of whatever or wherever authority might intervene, and that perhaps having both negative and positive characteristics, depending upon motives and the source of that authority, AKA, dreams and visions as opposed to government surveillance or simply, Bill Gates or Wal Mart.
Unfortunately, I am out of time, but it's all quite intriguing and more than simply a game of the intellect,
the example which María Sabina offers being something huge and which might serve to help us dismantle the current socio/political/economic structures by which today we are being systematically crushed.
Tomorrow we might make it otherwise.
and
the manner in which her role as poet functions within the community as a source of empowerment for that community.
Intrinsically, she as poet is needed and valued as a healer, and as such the community derives strength,
we might say,
from its poets, wherein a symbiotic relationship between community and poetry thrives.
This community acceptance of course undermines bureaucratic control factors - Sabina was arrested briefly for hallucinogenic mushroom distribution once she became "famous," though she did not travel to do this; rather, others traveled to her for guidance - as Plato and Laura Bush both feared - but I imagine it isn't unreasonable to assume the the US put pressure on the Federales to somehow do something about this woman who had acquired a reputation they couldn't abide.
And then there's the business about the book, an issue which Gordon Wasson examines in his retrospective essay citing a document "assembled by Hernando Ruiz de Alcarón in 1629" wherein "Nahuatl Wise Ones" also refer to a similar source of authority known as amoxtli, or "the hand painted Códices of the Nahua."
And here there is plenty of room for specualtion, in consideration of whatever or wherever authority might intervene, and that perhaps having both negative and positive characteristics, depending upon motives and the source of that authority, AKA, dreams and visions as opposed to government surveillance or simply, Bill Gates or Wal Mart.
Unfortunately, I am out of time, but it's all quite intriguing and more than simply a game of the intellect,
the example which María Sabina offers being something huge and which might serve to help us dismantle the current socio/political/economic structures by which today we are being systematically crushed.
Tomorrow we might make it otherwise.
posted by Stephen @ 11:00 AM
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