Indiana Gus - Mexican Adventure

By: Gus Victoria

There seems to be some bit of confusion as to my decision to soon go to Mexico. Let me, my friends, set the record straight as best I can. I indeed plan to leave soon. When the thought first occurred to me in the middle of last year I believed then that the trip would be a lengthy and potentially near-permanent move. Having been born there and with the majority of my family still residing there the pull is great. The desire to learn more about myself in the land of my birth was and is still nearly irresistible. Without a family to support and while I still have my health (for the most part) the time to go is now. I cannot delay this trip much longer. Its inevitability has been revealed to me in recent months. I will not be happy or feel myself on the right path if I do not take this trip soon. Beyond going, my expectations are few but my goals are many. I expect to learn as I complete those goals, but what I will learn or even how is up in the air. Mexico is a big place. The past there never dies and history is not forgotten.  Let me share a few things with you so you understand why I must go and what I plan on accomplishing while there. This blog will be updated prior to, during, and after the trip. So you can, in a way, join this journey with me.

Disney

Currently I work at Walt Disney World. It is murder to my artistic soul. The Disney product is great and the people I work with are quite wonderful. I owe much to the company and will never forget my time there as I have forged many lifelong friendships and more than one love. However, as great a company as it may be it is still a huge corporate entity and is therefore not a great home for truly free, artistic souls. We work to pay the bills and dabble in our art, whatever it may be, in our spare time. Spare time which, to make ends meet, slowly but steadily disappears. That may not be a consequence of a purely Disney problem but a wider societal problem I confess, but that it affects me is without doubt. I need to break those shackles of debt and (artistic) death while I am still able to. Add a family and children to support and my responsibilities makes those dreams of fulfilling my potential even more difficult to achieve. I’m not ready for that yet.

Right now I stand at a cross roads within the company. Concentrate, focus, and move up or leave. I choose to leave and follow my own dreams.

Mexico

Mexico is my birthplace. More than that, and forgive me, but I cannot make this sound unpretentious; Mexico is also my birthright. My family goes back nearly two decades here in the States, my entire life minus three years. In Mexico we are part of the tapestry of that nation. The name Victoria graces the very currency of the country and the other branches of the family are no less old or revered. There is the land that for centuries my forebears have called home.

I know it from stories and several trips throughout the years. I need more. I need to feel the magic of the land course through my veins and find its place on the page. As a writer, my inspiration is anchored by that immortal link to the land. I have a wonderful opportunity now to go and learn as I never have.

To travel the countryside for a bit and learn from the people that inhabit the small towns and the big city. To take pictures and steal words from the land and monuments erected over hundred and even thousands of years. To see in that mirror of time my own soul reflected and in that understood a bit more profoundly. Some stories will be collected and written down, others will take that reflection and knowledge and through the alchemy of the author be transformed into something worthwhile.

Hidden knowledge revealed.

The Family Business

Food. That is the immediate family business. My grandfather and uncles have restaurants and I wish to learn from their experience in starting one. Fret not friends! My restaurant eventually will find its way to Central Florida, but I need first to learn and perfect recipes. What better way to do that than in Mexico? I will learn how to make dishes native and common to Mexico. By the end of the year I hope my friends will be able to enjoy the fruits of this research. I am a perfectionist for what I am passionate about. Food, without doubt, is one of my top passions.

I’ll Be Back

This trip is not a one-way-never-see-you-again type of trip. Far from it. Too much of my life has taken root here in Florida for me to be prepared to move to another country yet, even if that country is Mexico. Its not an impossibility that I will someday make a home there, but not now, not yet. Too much to come back to right now.

Hope this clears things up a bit. As the time to leave approaches I’ll post links to where I will post articles, pictures, etc relating to the trip.

The Artist's Captor

By: Gus Victoria

Unseen lyrics and unheard melodies

Skitter across the shattered expanse

Of a bewildered mind

Wild with emotion

Lost in thoughts

Crowded with devotions

To ideal and art

Beyond the eye it cannot see

Beyond its own it cannot be

For the mind is decayed

Drunk on its own imagination

The ink yet flows from the pen

And the paint from the brush.

At what cost creation I ask,

At what cost the destructive forces

That in a hurricane build

And in a gentle breeze demolish

The incipient sanity of the artist

That from his mind has just escaped.

Thalia and Sophia - Ode to Beauty

By: Gus Victoria

Dreaming on a lonely hill,

Far from your touch

I was visited

By a woman ethereal.

Attended by Morpheus she came,

Her beauty dazzled even the sleeping senses,

And her laugh was music divine,

She drew near, this angelic interloper,

And she bid me stand

That in my ear she could whisper her name;

“Thalia.”

“Why comest thou here?” I asked

And she laugh as she spake,

“Who art though to speak as thou hast?”

Mockery and jest her aim,

She struck true,

“The modern language you deny,

Preferring an archaic tongue; why?”

And I could not answer her but to say,

“Beauty is not today known,

Nor is it written

As once it was before.”

Sharing a smile with Morpheus

In sweet sympathy she shook her head,

“Oh dear mortal, of your own volition

You suffer this fatal condition,

A poet-scribe that has captured beauty

And held her hostage to your will.

I come therefore to plea, by my sisters and me,

That you set her free

As she is meant to be,

You love Sophia, prove it so.”

And I tell you love,

Intransigent and a fool was I,

Though I knew this muse well

And her sisters too,

“Nay, man values beauty and love not as before,

They walk in ignorance

Enchanted by soulless mechanical wonders

Bedazzled by talentless artists.

They have killed poetry,

They have buried literature

And worship comfort and coin!”

And then she did laugh her greatest ,

Such was her mirth

My own spirit was lifted

As she defeated me without debate,

“When has it not been so?”