Lucia Ortiz R.

Lucia Ortiz R. -Writer

Mexican, an adventurer, traveller, teacher, archaeologist and young woman of letters but to name a few. I would say she has that special thing that sets people apart - a blend of curiosity that leads her to explore everything that life can offer, an open mind, boundless energy, and finally courage to keep her company on all the paths she takes. What's more - she writes!

 I’ve great pleasure in posting some of Lucia's poetic prose. Simple, lovely, and very true. Enjoy.

So this is my discovery... Let me tell you about it. When I saw it for the first time.

It was as though I’d found something insignificant, a graceless object, without shine, without colour. But some time after having held it in my hands and offering it a place in me, my vision of it changed. In this place the object shone differently – I do not know if it was the light that entered through the window at that moment or the objects that surrounded it, but its attractiveness was obviously a call for me to observe attentively. So I began. My mind was full of questions without answers: how had it been shaped? Where did it come from? What was its story? Surprised, I smiled before this object. Because each minute I spent in contact with it, I noticed that its image pointed leftwards and away – as if it did not, and had never wanted to, show its face. It was clear that it was hiding something…

As time passed, I was able to look at the traces etched into its rough body. Like scars showing everything it had been through, what it had fought against not to be trawled until lifelessness. Really, I believe it had struggled greatly not to be distanced from its life, its natural home. But destiny had decided that it was the moment to part.

Today, when I came into my room and looked at its other side, I understood it was a lesson in life, a very precious treasure. Not only a piece for study, but art, a sculpture which held its memories, had its roots, a lineage, a past, a history.

Later, after long appraisal, I put it to my ear. Both contact and harmony were perfect because it gave me great peace. So I closed my eyes and almost mystical, I could hear the place it had the nostalgia to return to. It was then that I understood that after death, the mind remains intact as memories and experiences lived, until they return to the place where they were born. And this was how I discovered the origin of a shell, a body, capable of transmitting the sounds our senses receive – always sent by the echo of either a snail, the ear or the heart – and that they are one and the same; each with a different name, for us to understand in that a difference.

Lucía Ortíz R.