It was in Flagstaff that I first encountered the wonderful Mexican tradition of creating
ofrendas, offering altars
for the departed, during
Dia de los Muertos, which correlates to Halloween, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day in the Anglo tradition. Two things struck me the most: first, just the very practice of collecting photos and special artifacts from an individual's life in order to remember and honor them and second, a strong injection of humor into our human condition of dying, taking the grim reaper to the Jay Leno Show.
This memory box was created to hold just such precious objects from a life past, a kind of everyday
ofrenda to visit, to remember, to honor. Fundamentally similar to a
jewelry box, it departs, however, from it by being taller and having no removable tray or segmented compartments. In the
Dia de los Muertos tradition the dead are said to visit their
ofrenda, take sustenance and cleanse themselves. Regarding this, a true story: I was pulling my F150 up to the garage, this memory box in the cab, and a powerful dust devil parked itself in our drive forcing me to stop. I waited for it to move along, but it just dissipated, vanished, leaving a snowfall of yellow palo verde petals, identical in color to the petals that were tossed at the memorial for the individual whose memory box I carried. Arizona and New Mexico: places where wind is the garb of spirits.
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| Dovetail Detail |
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| El Tiradito, Barrio Viejo, Tucson |
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| Interior Detail |
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