tradition

following tradition is like walking on paths travelled and tested in the past. because walking belongs to movement, following tradition pertains to the past but also regards the future. now if a tradition involves bodies, then the sense of movement therein implicates not only time but also space.

one follows a tradition being followed by both memory and history.

within macro traditions are micro ones—precious and pernicious aberrations from the mainstream. ways of being in general and ways of being in particular. belonging to the macro but unbelonging from other micros. to each an open way and a law.

traditions enable us to inhabit the structures of identity and difference in our worlds. when we move away from one tradition, we move toward another tradition. we are situated between traditions, in colors we reflect and in colors we invent. our bodies and the personas that adorn them historicize our belonging and unbelonging to traditions. we are at once stabiles and mobiles, pieces of art to be taken up by an artist, scrambled matter to be reanimated by an inventor. maybe we are all similar to the seated passengers of frida’s bus, moving across different worlds. we move when and where we dwell and vice versa. in our dwellings we ground and are degrounded by traditions.

Frida Kahlo. “The Bus.” 1929.