Do I regret it? Yes.

Lavender Silk Dress

c. 1907

maker unknown

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I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.

There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.

And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.

In a country where about 40 percent of people self identify as indigenous, the National Indigenous Queen of Guatemala contest carries great prestige. In contrast to mainstream beauty pageants, the contestants for the Rabin Ajaw title, aged 14 to 26, have to demonstrate proficiency in their native language, Mayan traditions and worldview; awareness about mining and other threats to Mayan livelihood and resources; a nuanced view of gender roles; and leadership in their community.

The 19th century style Afghani wooden box camera used by the photographer meant that the women had to sit still for several minutes gazing into the camera, enabling a depth of engagement rarely achieved with today’s hectic technology.