Reuben: The Minerals

My mom is from Hermosillo. My father is from Douglas. They met in Douglas. There’s a cemetery in a little village outside of Douglas called Pirtleville, where my grandparents are buried and my great grandparents are buried and my aunts and uncles and babies that didn’t make it. So I feel when I come home that I breath in the dust of my ancestors. And I have a strong connection to this place because of it. My parents live in Tucson and a lot of my relatives live here and my deepest relationships in terms of friendships are here. The landscape is important for me. I’ve described it as all of the minerals and the copper and the turquoise and the malachite and the silver, it’s magnetized and it always brings me back home. Those minerals, they run silently through my veins. It’s not that I don’t have a choice. I’m just pulled back home.

-Reuben