Blossoming Through the Fence
I came here not knowing what to think. That perhaps it would not be wise to stay past the time of arrival. The birds know I don't know this land but my blood retains knowledge. Despite this, it is kept dormant under the hand of sands from places afar. Sand of an ancient people that had no idea of an existence of another ancient people who travel with boats made of mangrove and coconut and were painted permanently neck to toe. They knew water in a different type of way, they knew these waves long before they swept the land.
Those waves sounded like the cannons to celebrate the lives of the dearly departed. Like the steps of treacherous lands uncharted. Like the voices of youth, fool hearted. Like the contemplations of ancestral councils highly regarded. When the waves touch you is when you remember the warmth of the sun, beaming through your veins as your fingers act as your journey back home.
It is summer. The clouds were drifting away from the land and a thought sprung. How far away things are.
Those waves crashed through my feet as if I were invisible, sinking down into the sand where the mole crabs live. I think that this is but a dwelling, not a home. A place to visit. This Ring of Fire and that arduous archipelago cannot make a home for someone built for the desert. I cannot fight a crocodile, but a coyote. Would it be going home or going to a place unearned, without the stripes of Delano, without the strife of Bataan, without the skills of skrima, without the knowledge of bahala na, without the taste of binungor in my mouth. My family knew this way, best to return. Let us do away with the cans of Vienna Sausages and Beach Cliff Sardines. In that same manner, we must understand the changing of the world and how worlds can clash, it is true that it is difficult to maintain that. But is that not why we have two hands to craft, why we have two feet to run? I ask this not as a rhetorical issue but as one of utmost gratitude. To be born into two worlds is a gift but a challenge indeed, a welcomed challenge. I came here not knowing what to think - now I know, these islands are home.
About the Artist
Niko Trujillo V. is a product of synthesis. From his father sprinkling salt on the watermelon after running the fields behind the old house to the Famous Amos stand that his mother would wait in line for on Sunset Boulevard. Despite these two ideal role models, he often found himself foregrounded in a sense of longing. He resolved to come home, not where his immediate family is based, but rather, the home immemorial. Niko traveled with the wind to live in New Mexico. As a citizen of the Pueblo of Guadalupe, Niko came back in an act of returning to the source. His writing was developed from this unceasing pursuance of self-exploration and developing it with history.