Journey to Ixtlan

"I left. And the birds stayed, singing."

This haunting remark is spoken by don Juan's companion sorcerer, don Genaro. He is paraphrasing a line from The Definintive Journey, a poem by Juan Ramón Jimenéz. Jimenéz is one of my own favourite poets, so here is the poem as quoted in Castaneda's text:

...and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with its green tree, with its water well.
Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon.
The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year.
But my spirit will always wander nostalgic
in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

We all journey towards our own Ixtlan, whatever that Ixtlan represents to us. For this image I wanted to convey the idea that the landscape somehow felt unreal. Rather than use an actual landscape, my solution was to create one with virtual software. The eagle and the sky also were created with the same software program.