When we went to Morelia, a Zapatista caracol, an autonomous space where the seat of buen gobierno (good government) or civilian government is located, our sense and relationship to time changed. We were no longer part of our rigid, right agenda.
The caracol, or snail, is a spiral, where inside meets outside. And when the story of the caracol was shared with me, it was in the context of the seemingly slow pace of Morelia - turbine of our dreams - from an outsider's perspective, when in reality there is a lot happening and being discussed and figured out in that space. The story I heard goes something like this, although I doubt I can fully do it justice, or tell it as beautifully as I heard it.
When the world was formed, full of colors happiness and brightness, the snail, or caracol was a very fast animal. Caracols were messangers from one place to another, one world to another, because of their speed. But when the caracol was in the middle of a journey taking a message from one place to another, the world began to change. Everything became faster, people began running around, machines sped up production, life took on a sense of hurriedness. And so when the caracol arrived back to its world everything was different, the caracol's speed was now slow. Now we view the caracol as being slow, because our worlds have changed, and the caracol did not change with them.
It was so beautiful to be on caracol time, to play basketball and soccer, eat lunch together, talk, and to observe and feel the new space that we were in, reflecting on the meaning of the caracol and caracol time.
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