209 Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life, edited by Robin M. Boylorn and Mark P. Orbe, 197–209. © 2013 Left Coast Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Chapter Twelve  Mindful Heresy, Holo-expression, and Poiesis An Autoethnographic Response to the Orthodoxies of Interpersonal & Cultural Life Sarah Amira de la Garza I reland always has surprises for me when I visit. This time, I have some time to myself. My students have all gone to discover the delights of the music scene in downtown Galway. I walk away from the city center and head towards some of the streets on the west end of town, near the coast. The lights reflect off the clouds, giving the end of day a little more brightness than usual. It’s an Irish summer, and it’s cool, the kind of cool that is warm to folks who don’t live in the desert infernos I have called home most of my adult life. I love the feel of the air on my cheeks; it keeps me awake, alert. The heat in Arizona closes the mind, like a fire, burning fuel. I breathe deeply and wonder where I am walking. That is my approach to my autoethnographic method. No matter where I am, the world around me is full of messages, if I can only recognize them and really have the courage to travel into them, rather than jump to a favored or familiar, defensive, or fearful interpretation. Sometimes rapid sensemaking is really the avoidance of sense. Dissonance is about music that one hasn’t learned to hear. Over time, I’ve come to know that those discordant notes of unfamiliar or triggering realities are often the introductory movements to some of the most beautiful and mysteri- ous ballads I had no idea my life was ready to compose. And so, I set out, walking, and sensing, releasing those clutching impulses to plan or retreat into something predictable. It’s quiet. It’s Saturday night, and most of the activity is elsewhere. I turn the corner off the main street I’d been walking. Critical Autoethnography.indb 209 9/3/2013 3:58:36 PM