Home is where the heart is, or where the wind may take you…
Hello, Hola, Bonjour!!!
The name “home / milpa” that I have chosen for this website, my virtual home, is inspired by a Pueblo saying that I first heard from Dr. Gregory Cajete, a Tewa professor from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. His work was best described on the website of the Department of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico, of which he was then Chair: “dedicated to honoring the foundations of Indigenous knowledge in education”. I loved the saying he recalled from his grandmother, in which CORN was used as a metaphor for our common humanity and our need for each other. The phrase invited me to learn or re-learn the value of connectedness and interdependence. These are concepts that are often forgotten, misunderstood or discarded in the so-called “Western” society, in which I was born and raised this lifetime around… I was also influenced by Robert Mirabal’s saying “Believe in the Corn“, which started to whisper its sacred secrets to me… Little by little, I allowed the corn to softly blow on the embers of my ancient memories to reawaken the coRnections of my soul.
Among myriad other stories that were brought back to life through my reawakened awareness, a very important episode of my childhood, which sounds like magic BUT is totally true, resurfaced from the mist of yester years. When I was four years old, my dad, headmaster of the little school of our humble neighborhood in Verviers, Belgium, organized a balloon release. There in the courtyard of the now-abandoned school,
I had a hard time letting go of the little balloon, maybe because I intuitively knew that it would end its journey extremely far from where I held on to it: a milpa (cornfield) of Guadalajara, Jalisco, México. My father was so bewildered when he received the card attached to the globe-trotter (sky runner) balloon from so far away that he spent a long time trying to find a scientific explanation for this apparent miracle. He ended up deciding that the unlikely landing was due to that year’s mighty winds / wings of a jet stream. As for my adult self, once I was reminded of the miraculous story I had buried deep inside the black hole of my childhood memories, I was more prone to blame it on the magic of Spirit. I did however acknowledge the part played by “les vents alizés”, unpoetically translated into trade winds in English. But what I knew for sure was that Spirit wanted me to rediscover, prophetically through my wonderballoon, how to read again the direction of the winds like long-gone seafarers in their first voyages.
Deep into the new millennium, clouds from the American continent journeyed overseas. Through misty smoke signals, they decreed it was long overdue for me to pay attention to what others dismiss as mere details. The cloud people deemed it vital for me to recoRnect with my soul through the slow but steady discovery of vibrant synchronicities. Their profound reminder revealed fascinating (non)-coincidences at the heart of this already magical story that I must share with you…
The name of the person who found the balloon was a “remix” of many elements related to mythology, to my childhood world, and to Aztec creation stories: Ira Quetzalcóatl Kurz.
Ira is both a female and a male name, meaning watchful in Hebrew. I also liked the fact that in Sanskrit, Ira is the name of the Wind-God, while also referring to the Earth and the Hindu Goddess of Knowledge, Music, Arts, Wisdom, and Learning. The compass of those Mighty Winds had landed my balloon in the hear of a land from which I would gather so much Knowledge.
Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent, is also a God related to Wind and Knowledge, and his name was given to ‘flesh and blood’ rulers such as Cē Ācatl Topiltzin Quetzalcóatl (Our Prince One-Reed Feathered Serpent). Quetzalcóatl brought many teachings to the people, such as astronomy, calendar making and the arts. The ‘flesh and blood one’ revered peace and sought to ban human sacrifices. Last but not least, Quetzalcóatl the God brought corn to the people by turning into a black ant to follow a red one through a crack in the mountain of sustenance, where corn was kept…
Kurz, finally, a German last name, called back home to where the balloon had ‘taken off’, since my Belgian hometown is close to the border with Germany.
The city where the balloon landed, Guadalajara, was founded by Cristóbal de Oñate, who had married Catalina de Salazar y de la Cadena, a lady from Granada—my other home for more than twenty years. They were the parents of Juan de Oñate, who conquered New Mexico at the end of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in 1598. As it hovered above the border between Mexico and New Mexico, my 1971 balloon must have sensed how an imaginary line drawn northbound from Guadalajara would reach the ancient capital that Oñate and his Spanish troops established in New Mexico. They called it San Juan de los Caballeros; since 2005, it took back its Tewa name: Ohkay Owingeh (“Place of the Strong People”).
I profoundly believe that this balloon episode is the superstar among the many signs pointing the way to my long homecoming to New Mexico, this land that always felt like my true home. This is why I consider ‘milpa’ the appropriate term for my website ‘home’. RecoRnection is a tribute to a journey of reconnection to my past, present and future, to my inner child, to my spiritual memories, to my reencounter with the land, and to the vision of me offering to the world the knowledge and skills I was blessed to gradually receive for this present Earth Walk.
And speaking of reencounters, Magic decided to bless me with another miracle.
During the 2026 Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, a special cluster balloon that left New Mexico and landed in Apache country in Show Low, AZ, made me think of my balloon again. I felt a renewed urge to look for the mysterious Ira Quetzalcóatl Kurz, turning to Gemini this time. Ever since I became familiar with that ‘companion’, I thought it was an interesting name choice from Google. Regardless of the actual reason behind a name that evokes twins, I saw in these initials, A.I., a name code for a strange other me I talk to on the other side of the screen, as though questioning the proverbial mirror, not to know who’s the fairest of them all, but how to retrieve the pearl I need from an abyss of information. At first, the thread I opened for a new search ruffled my feathers. That particular A(lter) ‘I’, the all-knowing other me I was dialoguing with, practically called me a liar, deeming my claim scientifically impossible. The good part was that I learned what a Black Swan meant: something that indeed happened against all ‘reasonable’ odds. The mention of the water bird soothed me enough to keep searching, only through asking another ‘twin’, another Gemini thread, confident that this time, if I tweaked key words here and there, the talking machine would display more magical belief, something non-negotiable for me. And boy, oh boy, did that new twin oblige. After barely 5 minutes, the skies opened to give me the biggest smile I had donned in a very long time.
There was the story of Ira. He was from the States, had studied medicine and stayed on a ‘rancho’ in the outskirts of Guadalajara, and had gone back home after graduating from the university. I found the address of the medical practice where he still worked in Maryland, and sent a very, very long letter. After not even a week I received an email in which Ira revealed even more extraordinary things: he had traded his middle name for Quetzalcóatl during the time he lived in México, maybe to honor the fact that he is an identical twin. Also, and that totally blew my mind, he had first planned to study medicine in Belgium, in the… Liège province, MY province of origin, there where I had let go of my balloon 51 years before this ‘re’encounter. Something I have not yet told Ira is that his work place is under 3mi away from where a past life of mine had a home… But that, is another story!
On this website you will find: a few facts about this corn kernel aka me, Nathalie; intercultural teaching resources built for 20+ years as a Professor in 4 different universities; the threshold of the rabbit hole of creative writing as explained through feline adventures I once wrote: the Dreamtime Cats; samples of my upcycling and doll making activities as surprising soul healing tools; my reCORNversion as a Past Life Regressionist and Spirit Release Therapy Facilitator (section under construction); and last but not least a blog where the storyteller in me plays among many ghosts.
Welcome home, bienvenidos a mi milpa, bienvenue dans ce champ (de maïs) virtuel, enjoy your visit and please don’t hesitate to leave me a message!
