COGNITIVE HEARTHS
In the early 1990's I had
the chance to visit the Texas Alamo in San Antonio. Up until that
point, the perceptual construct I had of this building was derived
from Walt Disney and Hollywood. But no longer is it simply a building
to me. It is a shrine. Albeit I ponder over the intense violence
and what came out of the suffering of those thirteen days in 1836...there
is the politically obvious. But for every grandiose scheme, there
is a microcosm of experience generally covered up by the greater
excitement of the moment. And as I visited that site and viewed
the artifacts taken from the field of battle, so many things began
speaking to me.
William Travis, no matter what you think of him politically, was a passionate human being. And stuck inside those walls he sensed the seriousness of the situation. Although he testified in his final letter that "God was on their side" and he had survived so far.....he also knew there were 189 defenders with him and 4000 on the other side of those walls. But clearly in his last discussions on this planet, he speaks in an optimistic tone, in the midst of grave circumstances. In his mind, there was no other place to be. It was a momentous moment. Travis made one last attempt to "call home" as it were, in the midst of his predicament. He was saying goodbye. His letter says it like it is:
Death where is thy sting? Additionally, there in the Alamo, as the story goes, Travis gave a ring he had obtained from a female friend, to a baby girl. Assuming it would be taken from him on the event of his death, he tied the ring around the neck of little Angeline Dickenson, the daughter of fellow defender Almeron Dickerson. Is the story true? No one knows for sure. The ring is on display, venerated under the lights of a display case in the Alamo museum. It caught my eye.
CONDITIONS
Maybe it was just the ambience of this
place. Somehow, when I saw that ring something seemed to say,
"Stop listen I have a story to tell." And then it seemed,
it was finally my moment to tesseract. As I considered that artifact,
and the place surrounding me, in some transcendental sense I found
myself there, feeling the weight of the inevitable, and the sheer
futility of it all. There was no way out, sans leaving behind
ones blood and the essence of the horrific, tortuous sounds of
death after death after death, echoing through the scrubby environs
on the outskirts of San Antonio. And then, as the last bayonet
was twisted from the last body there was a moment of silence,
and the macabre celebration of victory ensued. Santa Anna "spared"
the lives of a few in the Alamo. According to the story Angeline
Dickenson was one of those fortunate souls, Travis' ring survived
as an artifact in her possession.
And a little child will lead them.
Music at the Alamo was no doubt a multicultural mix of European and local flavour. This song seemed to naturalistically emerge in the syncopation of something of ballad.
Thank you for listening.