This is not a MEA CULPA

On my trip to Arizona and happiness as a radical act.

I'm sitting here on a rock at this dirt path in the Sonoran desert. It’s 110 degrees and I’m carrying two bottles of water. When I walk, my shoes make the same noise that I've heard on multiple YouTube videos of immigrants crossing the border while trying to avoid footprints easily identifiable by the border patrol. 

I obviously have very mixed feelings about being here, especially after all the work I've done with immigrants and especially immigrants that cross the border from Mexico just to die in the desert chasing an elusive American dream, the same desert where I am standing right now, enjoying a week vacation with my husband, celebrating our 8-year wedding anniversary. 

But unlike the Grand Canyon or Sedona’s Tlaquepaque, The Wall is not a tourist attraction which is why I decided to leave it out our trip itinerary despite my interest in the US-Mexico border as a legal fiction and the extent to which it has informed my art practice in the last 4 years.

Also, because being here made me realize how the immigration story is really not my story—something someone suggested once and has been simmering in my mind for months. The matter of the fact is that while I am in such close proximity to the border, I am still distant enough to smell death from the pool of my five-star resort overlooking the sonoran desert where bodies are decomposing from dehydration as I take another sip from my cocktail. 

So close yet so far. So close yet so disconnected regardless of all my interest, my good intentions, my righteous rage, the immigration books, the research, and the cruel stories I have been exposed to in the past few years.

The Catholic in me desperately wants to self-flagellate in order to redeem our sins and save us from death but I’m not wasting anyone’s time with my futile guilt when in reality, I’m here for fun. And while I’m not cynical about it, I’m neither a performative activist, which obviously does not mean I don’t care about how broken and inhumane our immigration system still is.

I just finished playing tennis with an 81 year old instructor. I said I’ll see him next year for an art fair we both want to attend. He expressed hope in our potential reunion but warned me he doesn’t buy green bananas, meaning his long-term consists of next week. 

Meaning this moment is really all he has. 

When he asked me what I did, I said I am an artist. And he said, oh, what's your goal? His question stroke me but I was prepared for the answer because I've thought about it: I want to be at MoMA one day showing my work. He said: good! What about after that? 

This man had accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish in his professional life including success and financial stability. Enjoying his family was what was next. His wife died 18 months ago. I said I'm sorry but he said her death was actually a blessing—COVID would have been very hard on her soul and her body affected by Parkinson’s and dementia as she would have never understood lockdowns and masks and everything that was (and still is) going on. 

He now plays tennis for fun. 

That’s what he got. That was his story to tell.

And while I don’t know what mine is yet, I sure know what is not, and what I refuse to be about.