I need a new life...

I'm dreaming of running away to Mexico City! I want to find a local curandero (Mexican Shaman) so I can get some fresh Salvia Divinorum. Then I'd go trip out on top of Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán, the mythical city inhabited by Gods. Salvia divinorum has a long and continuous tradition of magico-religious use by Mazatec shamans, who use it to facilitate visionary states of consciousness. Most of the plant's local common names allude to the Mazatec belief that the plant is sacred to the Virgin Mary. Teotihuacán is where Our Lady of Guadalupe (The Empress of Americas) appeared to the Saint, Juan Diego. I have a friend who has a gorgeous house that she rents out in Mexico...an artist's retreat. I'd love to have a secret sanctuary of my own someday. Run away with me?

Remedios Varo

I'm also really aroused by the idea so many Surrealists sought refuge in Mexico. Favorites such as Remedios Varo, Frida Kahlo, and Leonora Carrington called Mexico their home. They and several other artists began a small transcendental surrealist movement after they fled during the Nazi occupation France (as did Salvador Dali and many other artists throughout Europe). André Breton visited Mexico in 1938. He returned to Paris convinced he had been to a land that lived and breathed Surrealism everyday.

Frida Kahlo

Once in Mexico, Surrealism quickly took root in unexpected ways. In literature, Octavio Paz, Juan José Arreola, Jorge Ibargüengoitia, the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who had collaborated with Dalí on the landmark Surrealist film Un chien andalou (1929) in Europe, fled the Spanish Civil War and wound up in Mexico, where he made such classics as The Exterminating Angel (1962). Surrealist poet and patron Edward James built Las Pozas, a surrealist sculpture garden in a tropical rain forest in the mountains of Mexico.

Leonora Carrington

Related links ~
Home of the Surrealist
The Return of Quetzalcoatl