Pelechar is a verb that is used to say that everything is going well, that everything will move forward. A mandatory word in any dictionary of Antioqueñismos and that Juliana Muñoz’s mother frequently uses to say that a plant is going to green up and become beautiful.
Before Juliana’s eyes all the plants in her mother’s front garden were fighting with words and caresses. That place, where she took her first steps and buried her childhood pets, was the genesis of the interest in those constructed paradises that led the Bogota author to write a literary essay in which she proposes theories that could be hypotheses of the soul or her gaze. , mixed with data, authors or stories already told that are the result of their research into garden stories.
In his self-portrait the wild garden is present, the garden that is a labyrinth that lovers walk through, the garden where the artist seeks shade and inspiration. To travel through its pages is to accompany the author through personal gardens or through new interpretations of known stories: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the gardens of Monet – who cultivated a large garden in his house in Giverny to have a continuous source of inspiration-, the garden of promises from Romeo and Juliet, the Gardens cultivated in times of war to feed hope – and hunger – in the midst of horror.
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The book is from Tusquets publishing house
The spacious front garden of his childhood was a great reference for this book. Today, the lifestyle has changed to apartments with little space to have a garden, it is almost a luxury. How does this idea of taking care of your own garden change?
I totally believe that having a garden is a luxury, but it is also a luxury in the sense of seeking to have the ideal garden. If we stray from that ideal, it can live in a window or a little piece in an apartment. I would also call that a garden because it also has a history, there is care, something alive there. My own garden can start with a succulent or a cactus, it means that I can take care of something more and in that care of something more I take care of myself because I make time for myself, I learn and I know myself better.
Writing, embroidering, knitting, narrating, learning about plants are actions present in your work that you weave to address new stories. How do you connect these actions with the awareness of care and time inherent in them?
I connect it with creation, it is taking care of what you create. Although I do many things, there is also a point where I stop to take care of what I created. It is not enough to create something. In my case it is not enough to write this book, I also have to talk about it, I want to present it to other people, I want to be present and continue taking care of it. It’s about asking yourself, how do I take care of it? How am I going to feel proud of this? How am I going to make it deeper? It is the relationship between creating and caring, but also connecting it with other creations through that thread that is my life, of what I want to tell about it.
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How did you manage to identify that all those garden stories could be part of your work?
The moment I felt like I had the garden glasses on and I had a lot of information that I had been collecting, I asked myself, ‘How can I classify this?’ There arose the need to put together the stories that spoke, for example, of the garden and love; on the other hand, those that talk about the gardener’s job. There is another part of the book that talks about the garden from a philosophical point of view. The moment of writing was when I managed to organize and stop searching because it is a topic that I will never be able to cover.
Juliana Muñoz was inspired by the hanging gardens of Babylon, among others.
Andrea Moreno/ EL TIEMPO
From your search, could you affirm that each garden tells a story?
Of course, history is what happens while one is in that garden, the conversations one has while walking through it, the memories that garden carries. There is a garden that I mention a lot in the book, it is my mother-in-law’s. She talks about her parents who emigrated from Germany to Colombia bringing seeds in their stockings because for them, flowers were part of her home. It was about how they could have a little bit of their land in addition to the items they brought. There is the garden that is a witness to the passage of time of those stories. When all those connections began to emerge in me, this book began to form.
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In your complete work, how is the garden present?
First, the garden as a setting. I write a lot about childhood and a great place for children is the garden, beyond technology, children of all times are united by nature. Then, the garden as a metaphor, that space that one takes to create. To ‘prune’ the writing is to edit it so that the light reaches it. For me, in writing, if there is an excess of something, it does not reveal what I really want to say and that is like a leaf covering another leaf. I tend to write shorter than long, because I want to be subtle in finding the message I want to come across.
Is this book your most faithful self-portrait?
It is a self-portrait of many that could be, it is a self-portrait in profile. The front one and the full body one are missing. It is a facet that I want to show in which I feel that I am not only talking about myself because I feel that the reader can connect with all these references of gardens, of books, of poems.
Is it your most intimate book?
I think so. It is my most intimate and challenging book.
ANDREA MORENO
EDITORIAL TIME
2023-09-18 04:41:00
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