LETTER #2 - From The Digital Convent ❤️
When did the Digital Convent got started?
Well,
it didn’t start super intentionally.
BUT,
it kind of started internationally.
Tehehe (See what I did there? 😋)
I didn’t plan on it!
You see,
I happened to go to another country.
The name of that country: Spain.
I haven’t travelled very much in my life.
Which is a shame. When I was growing up, travelling was my biggest obsession!
More like, I was obsessed about THE IDEA of travelling. That was all I got at the time.
But I suppose I had other kinds of adventures.
When I was 6 years old, my Dad realized how many hours I spent drawing and painting.
He took an interest on it, and enrolled me in painting lessons with a cool guy who gave classes in his attic. This made my life explode with excitement!!!
Imagine.
At 6 years old I was painting with professional oil paintings surrounded by a bunch of adults! In an attic!! With a professional painter as a teacher!
I could not believe my excellent fortune. This was definitely not what most kids did with their Saturdays, back home in Mexico.
And, the other thing my Dad did:
He bought me two books about painters at the grocery store.
One was about Leonardo da Vinci, and one was Pablo Picasso.
Back home in Guadalajara, there are not public libraries. So, if you wanna read a book, you need to buy that darn book!
And because my family wasn’t one that travelled much or bought too many books, having not one, but TWO books about painters was a MASSIVELY EXCITING SITUATION for me!!
I felt like I won the lottery or something.
I devoured those books upon arrival. I looked through them until the pages wore thin and I got food and dirt smeared all over them. I carried them around the house. I went to sleep burning the images into my imagination. I brought them to school to flip through them.
I stared at the photos of their paintings until I memorized every little brush stroke. Every color variation. Every leg, every hand, every hair, every expression.
From Da Vinci, I got the idea of trying to be ambidextrous, so I wrote and used my left hand for an ENTIRE YEAR!
I ate with it. I wrote with it at school. I brushed my teeth with it.
That’s might sound a bit weird and nerdy, but it’s actually been very useful. To this day I can write with my left hand, even if a bit shakily, if I really have to!
Still, it was Picasso’s book that really sent an arrow straight through my artistic heart.
His book was about his Pink and Blue era, when he still used to paint people “realistically”.
Those images transported me to an entire new universe. The people were so interesting, so strange, SO BEAUTIFUL. So full of emotion. They were glowing on the paper!
For many years of my childhood, I would FEEL Europe through those paintings. I would inhabit good ol’ Spain through them.
Every time I looked through that book, I felt like I was suddenly immersed in a land where everything was possible. Where art was all that mattered. Where the air was sparkling with mystery and with magic.
And I WANTED to be like Picasso.
I wanted to be there, in Spain, with him!
I guess, more concretely: I wanted to BE him.
…
NOW, DECADES LATER…
I suddenly found myself in actual, real-deal, bona fide Spain!
Can you believe it??
I still can’t!!!
Many things have happened since I was a small girl, in my Guadalajara’s bedroom.
For example:
I actually became an artist!
Then I immigrated!
Then I got married!
Then I had babies!
Then I raised those babies!
Then I got divorced!
Then I became an author!
Then I continued raising my babies. They are teenagers now!
Some things have delivered, when it comes to the magic I expected from life when I was growing up.
Some things have definitely broken my heart, disappointed me, let me down quite terribly. I guess it was meant to happen!
But, when I was over there, staring at the art, riding the trains, inhabiting the architecture, breathing its nature, eating the food from its water, from its land…
Some fireworks went off inside my head. Something got unlocked in my brain. Memories. Feelings. Yearnings. Original dreams.
Being in actual Spain, made me remember…
This is what I wanted when I was little! Not only being there, but being like these artists!!!
The ones whose work surrounded me, hugged me tight, while in its presence.
The artists who LIVED art, the ones who BREATHED art, the ones who sacrificed EVERYTHING for art.
The ones who would create from morning to night, who lived in tiny rooms while writing, painting, sculpting, drawing, singing, creating architecture.
The ones who formed tight, adoring, perhaps dysfunctional but ever-exciting gangs with other artists.
When I was in the classroom at my elementary school, or on the bus. Every time I had a moment to think about my tiny existence, I would only dream about being an artist.
Then, I went and got married and had babies and my dreams got a bit derailed, didn’t they?
As almost any mother on planet Earth would tell you, having babies is one of the biggest, most transforming adventures you could go through! It is a gift. It grew me into the person I was meant to be! So, I wouldn’t change that part, really. I love them!!
But, my marriage was so sad. I can’t even begin to tell you. And it lasted for so long. It took my youth with it, basically.
Or more like, I gave my youth away!
People tell me I shouldn’t feel regrets,
but…
is it ok to admit that sometimes
actually
I do?
When I was in Spain, I started to wonder…
Had I betrayed my original dreams? Had I betrayed myself?
Because wanting a family had definitely turned me into another thing, for over a decade.
I lived for a very long time, the life of a non-artist.
Especially because my relationship caused me so much pain and I felt so desperately unhappy. Using my imagination just to survive the day to day. And later, to think of ways to escape, and to go through the raging flames of a horrible divorce and its aftermath!
But it was ME who put myself in that situation.
Didn’t I?
I had broken my own heart, as Heathcliff said to Cathy in Wuthering Heights.
I had abandoned art, in pursuit of another dream for a very long while.
Anyways,
I want you to have a feeling of WHY is that this trip took my breath away, to a spiritual extent!
When I was there, in some street or museum or restaurant or cobbled road, my heart got shocked. It got shaken. It got slapped into waking up. A thunderbolt went through it.
And I REMEMBERED.
I remembered how it felt to be ME, before all the shitty things had happened.
And not only the shitty things.
But also the numbing of my spirit.
The dulling of my edges.
The over-sharing of the decision-making about my own existence!
All of a sudden, I was me again, at six years old. Clasping my Picasso book to my chest, astounded, wide-eyed, in awe, IN MARVELLOUS AWE of what surrounded me.
THE WORLD, YOU GUYS!!! THE WORLD EXISTS!!!
THE WORLD I HAD ONLY HEARD ABOUT, AS A CHILD, ACTUALLY EXISTS!!!
SPAIN EXISTS!!
AND I WAS THERE!!!!!!!!!!
STANDING RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT!!!
Eating cheesecake and salchichas and tapas and roasted chestnuts on the street.
That was me, at six years old, only older, taller and with a bigger butt!
That was me, at six years old, only with a bunch of PTSD and life experience!
That was me, at six years old, following the contours of a brushstroke. Of a portrait. Of a cheek. Of a hand. Of a leg. Of an arm.
The eyes that feasted on those book’s pages. The same eyes, following the contours of the REAL world I had only read about.
It’s still me!!
Had I betray myself, perhaps?
Maybe?
But, even if I did… is it possible that I could un-betray myself now?
Who says we cannot question and rectify the decisions we’ve made?
Or at least attempt to?
Even for a little while?
I arrived back home, to Toronto, to my teenage kids, to my responsibilities, to my regular existence on November 3rd of 2025.
Since the day I arrived, I’ve created art every single day.
It’s grown-up Ani, and six years old Ani, making the artistic decisions these days.
Together.
At least for a little while.
How do I find the time, you ask?
How do I find the space?
How can I hear the voice in my head, in the midst of all the noise and chaos?
Well, it was that day,
that I unofficially,
entered: