Week Seven: Athualpa

I have told you about Jose Barrios, my father. Better known as Pepe to his family, or "la polvora" to his friends back in Mexico. "La polvora" means gun powder. My Apa tells me he has always been a nice man, cordial and respectful to all. But, when he was young, people did not dare cross him, for if they did, my father would not hesitate to whip out his pistol. He carried one since he was eight years old. He also started drinking and smoking at this age.

Such stories seem impossible to believe. At times I do not know when he is fibbing or telling the absolute truth. In a way, I don't care. It's the way in which he tells it, the shape his words take, like birds made of smoke, as they leave his mouth. These stories were drawn out with Athualpa, as I said in a previous post. Therefore, I decided to sketch my father sleeping, curled up. Wrinkles rake his face. He is wise and old and my friend.

He enjoyed the part where Athualpa shares his favorite description of the pampas, "...como un cielo al revez." My father stopped me at that point and asked me, "Que crees que significa?" "Pues maybe the man thinks that the pampas are so flat that you can't tell where the sky begins and where the land starts." "Alamejor," my papa said. "Or maybe, the man is so in love with the Pampas that he believes it to be heaven. So that the sky does not hold that sacred holy place, the land that he loves is that sacred place."

I drew my father in a landscape of mountains and sky. My father is my heaven, my sacred place. His stories, full of mountains and colors are my Pampas.