Marsden Hartley, "Indian Point"

When the surf licks with its tongues
these volcanic personal shapes, which we,
defining for ourselves as rocks, accept
them as such, at its feverish incoming
isn't it too, in its way, something like
the plain image of life?
Those restless entities disturbing solid
substances with a curious, irrelevant,
common fret –
and, like so many simple looking elements, when
they seem the most playful, it is then that
they are most dangerous.
The bright woman looking out to sea
through the crisp telescope of her advancing
years,
there is no doubt but that she discovers the
same image as the child, who remarks the
radiant glint of his marbles on the top spray
of the wave he once played with,
or as the fringed lace on the dress of a
Titan's wife –
the inwash cooling at least the eye with
a something exceptional white or green or
blue, too pale almost to mention, if
frightening to the marrow,
for many have been sent to their death trusting
too much while regarding it affectionately,
the sea.

Antony Balch and William Burroughs, Towers Open Fire

Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari, from "1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible...", A Thousand Plateaus, Trans. Brian Massumi

Memories of a Sorcerer, I

A becoming-animal always involves a pack, a band, a population, a peopling, in short, a multiplicity. We sorcerers have always known that. It may very well be that other agencies, moreover very different from one another, have a different appraisal of the animal. One may retain or extract from the animal certain characteristics: species and genera, forms and functions, etc. Society and the State need animal characteristics to use for classifying people; natural history and science need characteristics in order to classify the animals themselves. Serialism and structuralism either graduate characteristics according to their differences. Animal characteristics can be mythic or scientific. But we are not interested in characteristics; what interests us are modes of expansion, propagation, occupation, contagion, peopling. I am legion. The Wolf-Man fascinated by several wolves watching him. What would a lone wolf be? Or a whale, a louse, a rat, a fly? Beelzebub is the Devil, but the Devil as lord of the flies. The wolf is not fundamentally a characteristic or a certain number of characteristics; it is a wolfing. The louse is a lousing, and so on. What is a cry independent of the population it appeals to or takes as its witness? Virginia Woolf experiences herself not as a monkey or a fish but as a troop of monkeys, a school of fish, according to her variable relations of becoming with the people she approaches. We do not wish to say that certain animals live in packs. We want nothing to do with ridiculous evolutionary classifications a la Lorenz, according to which there are inferior packs and superior societies. What we are saying is that every animal is fundamentally a band, a pack. That it has pack modes, rather than characteristics, even if further distinctions within these modes are called for. It is at this point that the human being encounters the animal. We do not become animal without a fascination for the pack, for multiplicity. A fascination for the outside? Or is the multiplicity that fascinates us already related to a multiplicity dwelling within us? In one of his masterpieces, H.P. Lovecraft recounts the story of Randolph Carter, who feels his "self" reel and who experiences a fear worse than that of annihilation: "Carters of forms both human non-human, vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were Carters having nothing in common with earthly life, but moving outrageously amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic continua...Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be aware of existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished from other beings," nor from all of the becomings running through us, "that is the nameless summit of agony and dread." Hofmannsthal, or rather Lord Chandos, becomes fascinated with a "people" of dying rats, and it is in him, through him, in the interstices of his disrupted self that the "soul of the animal bares its teeth at monstrous fate": not pity, but unnatural participation. Then a strange imperative wells up in him: either stop writing, or write like a rat...If the writer is a sorcerer, it is because writing is a becoming, writing is traversed by strange becomings that are not becomings-writer, but becomings-rat, becomings-insect, becomings-wolf, etc. We will have to explain why. Many suicides by writers are explained by these unnatural participations, these unnatural nuptials. Writers are sorcerers because they experience the animal as the only population before which they are responsible in principle. The German preromantic Karl Phillip Moritz feels responsible not for the calves that die but before the calves that die and give him the incredible feeling of an unknown Nature--affect. For the affect is not a personal feeling, nor is it a characteristic; it is the effectuation of a power of the pack that throws the self into upheaval and makes it reel. Who has not known the violence of these animal sequences, which uproot one from humanity, if only for an instant, making one scrape at one's bread like a rodent or giving one the yellow eyes of a feline? A fearsome involution calling us toward unheard-of becomings. These are not regressions, although fragments of regression, sequences of regression may enter in. 

We must distinguish three kinds of animals. First, individuated animals, family pets, sentimental, Oedipal animals each with its own petty history, "my" cat, "my" dog. These animals invite us to regress, draw us into a narcissistic contemplation, and they are the only kind of animal psychoanalysis understands, the better to discover a daddy, a mommy, a little brother behind them (when psychoanalysis talks about animals, animals learn to laugh): anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool. And then there is a second kind: animals with characteristics or attributes; genus, classification, or State animals; animals as they are treated in the great divine myths, in such a way as to extract from them series or structures, archetypes or models (Jung is in any event profounder than Freud). Finally, there are more demonic animals, pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity, a becoming, a population, a tale...Or once again, cannot any animal be treated in all three ways? There is always the possibility that a given animal, a louse, a cheetah or an elephant, will be treated as a pet, my little beast. And at the other extreme, it is also possible for any animal to be treated in the mode of the pack or swarm; that is our way, fellow sorcerers. Even the cat, even the dog. And the shepherd, the animal trainer, the Devil, may have a favorite animal in the pack, although not at all in the way we were just discussing. Yes, any animal is or can be a pack, but to varying degrees of vocation that makes it easier or harder to discover the multiplicity, or multiplicity-grade, an animal contains (actually or virtually according to the case). Schools, bands, herds, populations are not inferior social forms; they are affects and powers, involutions that grip every animal in a becoming just as powerful as that of the human being with the animal. 

Jorge Luis Borges, an author renowned for his excess of culture, botched at least two books, only the titles of which are nice: first, A Universal History of Infamy, because he did not see the sorcerer's fundamental distinction between deception and treason (becomings-animal are there from the start, on the treason side); second, his Manual de zoología fantástica, where he not only adopts a composite and bland image of myth but also eliminates all of the problems of the pack and the corresponding becoming-animal of the human being: "We have deliberately excluded from this manual legends of transformation of the human being, the lobizón, the werewolf, etc." Borges is interested only in characteristics, even the most fantastic ones, whereas sorcerers know that werewolves are bands, and vampires too, and that bands transform themselves into one another. But what exactly does that mean, the animal as band or pack? Does a band not imply a filiation, bringing us back to the reproduction of given characteristics? How can we conceive of a peopling, a propagation, a becoming that is without filiation or hereditary production? A multiplicity without the unity of an ancestor? It is quite simple; everybody knows it, but it is discussed only in secret. We oppose epidemic to filiation, contagion to heredity, peopling by contagion to sexual reproduction, sexual production. Bands, human or animal, proliferate by contagion, epidemics, battlefields, and catastrophes. Like hybrids, which are in themselves sterile, born of a sexual union that will not reproduce itself, but which begins over again every time, gaining that much more ground. Unnatural participations or nuptials are the true Nature spanning the kingdoms of nature. Propagation by epidemic, by contagion, has nothing to do with filiation by heredity, even if the two themes intermingle and require each other. The vampire does not filiate, it infects. The difference is that contagion, epidemic, involves terms that are entirely heterogeneous: for example, a human being, an animal, and a bacterium, a virus, a molecule, a microorganism. Or in the case of the truffle, a tree, a fly, and a pig. These combinations are neither genetic nor structural; they are interkingdoms, unnatural participations. That is the only way Nature operates--against itself. This is a far cry from filiative production or hereditary reproduction, in which the only differences retained are a simple duality between sexes within the same species, and small modifications across generations. For us, on the other hand, there are as many sexes as there are terms in symbiosis, as many differences as elements contributing to a process of contagion. We know that many beings pass between a man and a woman; they come from different worlds, are borne on the wind, form rhizomes around roots; they cannot be understood in terms of production, only in terms of becoming. The Universe does not function by filiation. All we are saying is that animals are packs, and that packs form, develop, and are transformed by contagion. 

These multiplicities with heterogeneous terms, cofunctioning by contagion, enter certain assemblages; it is there that human beings effect their becomings-animal. But we should not confuse these dark assemblages, which stir what is deepest within us, with organizations such as the institution of the family and the State apparatus. We could cite hunting societies, war societies, secret societies, crime societies, etc. Becomings-animal are proper to them. We will not expect to find filiative regimes of the family type or modes of classification and attribution of the State or pre-State type or even serial organizations of the religious type. Despite appearances and possible confusions, this is not the site of origin or point of application for myths. These are tales, or narratives and statements of becoming. It is therefore absurd to establish a hierarchy even of animal collectivities from the standpoint of a whimsical evolutionism according to which packs are lower on the scale and are superseded by State or familial societies. On the contrary, there is a difference in nature. The origin of packs is entirely different from that of families and States; they continually work them from within and trouble them from without, with other forms of content, other forms of expression. The pack is simultaneously an animal reality, and the reality of the becoming-animal of the human being; contagion is simultaneously an animal peopling, and the propagation of the animal peopling of the human being. The hunting machine, the war machine, the crime machine entail all kinds of becomings-animal that are not articulated in myth, still less in totemism. Dumezil showed that becomings of this kind pertain essentially to the man of war, but only insofar as he is external to families and States, insofar as he upsets filiations and classifications. The war machine is always exterior to the State, even when the State uses it, appropriates it. The man of war has an entire becoming that implies multiplicity, celebrity, ubiquity, metamorphosis and treason, the power of affect. Wolf-men, bear-men, wildcat-men, men of every animality, secret brotherhoods, animate the battlefields. But so do the animal packs used by men in battle, or which trail the battles and take advantage of them. And together they spread contagion. There is a complex aggregate: the becoming-animal of men, packs of animals, elephants and rats, winds and tempests, bacteria sowing contagion. A single Furor. War contained zoological sequences before it became bacteriological. It is in war, famine, and epidemic that werewolves and vampires proliferate. Any animal can be swept up in these packs and the corresponding becomings; cats have been seen on the battlefield, and even in armies. That is why the distinction we must make is less between kinds of animals than between the different states according to which they are integrated into family institutions, State apparatuses, war machines, etc. (and what is the relation of the writing machine and the musical machine to becomings-animal?)

Rolando Klein, Chac: Dios de la Lluvia

James Maffie, "Metaphysics," from Aztec Philosophy

a. Teotl as Ultimate Reality and Root Metaphor

At the heart of Nahua philosophy stands the thesis that there exists a single, dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, energy or force: what the Nahuas called teotl (see Boone 1994; Burkhart 1989; Klor de Alva 1979; Monaghan 2000; H.B. Nicholson 1971; Read 1998; Townsend 1972). Elizabeth Boone (1994:105) writes, “The real meaning of [teotl] is spirit — a concentration of power as a sacred and impersonal force”. According to Jorge Klor de Alva (1979:7), “Teotl …implies something more than the idea of the divine manifested in the form of a god or gods; instead it signifies the sacred in more general terms”. The multiplicity of gods in official, state sanctioned Aztec religion does not gainsay this claim, for this multiplicity was merely the sacred, merely teotl, “separated, as it were by the prism of human sight, into its many attributes” (I. Nicholson 1959:63f).

Teotl continually generates and regenerates as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes the cosmos as part of its endless process of self-generation-and–regeneration. That which humans commonly understand as nature — e.g. heavens, earth, rain, humans, trees, rocks, animals, etc. — is generated by teotl, from teotl as one aspect, facet, or moment of its endless process of self-generation-and-regeneration. Yet teotl is more than the unified totality of things; teotl is identical with everything and everything is identical with teotl. Since identical with teotl, they cosmos and its contents ultimately transcend such dichotomies as personal vs. impersonal, animate vs. inanimate, etc. As the single, all-encompassing life force of the universe, teotl vivifies the cosmos and its contents. Lastly, teotl is both metaphysically immanent and transcendent. It is immanent in that it penetrates deeply into every detail of the universe and exists within the myriad of created things; it is transcendent in that it is not exhausted by any single, existing thing.

Nahua metaphysics is processive. Process, movement, becoming and transmutation are essential attributes of teotl. Teotl is properly understood as ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion — not as a discrete, static entity. Because doing so better reflects teotl’s dynamic and processual nature, I suggest (following Cooper’s [1997] proposal that we treat “God” of the mystical teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah as a verb) that we treat the word “teotl” as a verb denoting process and movement rather than as a noun denoting a discrete static entity. So construed, “teotl” refers to the eternal, universal process of teotlizing.

b. Dialectical Polar Monism

Although essentially processive and devoid of any permanent order, the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is nevertheless characterized by an overarching balance, rhythm, and regularity: one provided by and constituted by teotl. Teotl’s and hence the cosmos’ ceaseless becoming is characterized by what I call “dialectical polar monism”. Dialectical polar monism holds that: (1) the cosmos and its contents are substantively and formally identical with teotl; and (2) teotl presents itself primarily as the ceaseless, cyclical oscillation of polar yet complementary opposites.

Teotl’s process presents itself in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent and mutually complementary polarities which divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary arrangement of the universe. These include: being and not-being, order and disorder, life and death, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, dry and wet, hot and cold, and active and passive. Life and death, for example, are mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary aspects of one and the same process. Life contains the seed of death; death, the fertile, energizing seed of life. The artists of Tlatilco and Oaxaca, for example, presented this duality artistically by fashioning a split-faced mask, one-half alive, one-half skull-like (see Markman and Markman 1989:90). The masks are intentionally ambiguous. Skulls simultaneously symbolize death and life, since life springs from the bones of the dead. Flesh simultaneously symbolizes life and death, since death arises from the flesh of the living. The faces are thus neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead all at once.

The Nahuas’ notion of duality contrasts with Zoroastrian-style eschatological dualisms. The latter claim: (1) order (goodness, life, light) and disorder (evil, death, darkness) are mutually exclusive forces; and (2) order (life, etc.) triumphs over disorder (death, etc.) at the end of history. Acording to Nahua duality, order and disorder, life and death, etc. alternate endlessly without resolution. It neither conceives death as inherently evil and life as inherently good nor advocates the conquest of death or the search for eternal life (see Caso 1958; Burkhart 1989; Carmack, et al. 1996; Hunt 1977; Knab 1995; Leon-Portilla 1963; Lopez Austin 1988, 1993, 1997; Monaghan 2000; Read 1998; Sandstrom 1991).

The created cosmos consists of the unending, cyclical tug-of-war or dialectical oscillation of these polarities — all of which are the manifold manifestations of teotl. Because of this, the created cosmos is characterized as unstable, transitory, and devoid of any lasting being, order or structure. Yet teotl is nevertheless characterized by enduring pattern or regularity. How is this so? Teotl is the dynamic, sacred energy shaping as well as constituting these endless oscillations; it is the immanent balance of the endless, dialectical alternation of the created universe’s interdependent polarities.

Because essentially processive and dynamic, teotl is properly characterized neither by being nor not-being but by becoming. Being and not-being are simply two dialectically interrelated presentations or facets of teotl, and as such inapplicable to teotl itself. Similarly, teotl is properly understood as neither ordered (law-governed) nor disordered (anarchic) but as unordered. Indeed, this point is fully general: life/death, active/passive, male/female, etc. are strictly speaking not predicable of teotl. Teotl captures a tertium quid transcending these dichotomies by being simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead, simultaneously neither-orderly-nor-disorderly-yet-both-orderly-and-disorderly, etc.

In the end, teotl is essentially an unstructured and unordered, seamless totality. Differentiation, regularity, order, etc. are simultaneously fictions of human unknowing and artistic-shamanic presentations of teotl. In Western philosophical terminology, one perhaps best characterizes the radical ontological indeterminacy of Nahua metaphysics as an extreme nominalist anti-realism, and teotl, as a Kantian-like noumenon.

c. Pantheism

Nahuas philosophers also conceived teotl pantheistically: (a) everything that exists constitutes an all-inclusive and interrelated unity; (b) this unity is sacred; (c) everything that exists is substantively identical and hence one with the sacred; (d) the sacred is teotl. There is only one thing, teotl, and all other forms or aspects of reality and existence are identical with teotl; (e) teotl is not a minded being or ‘person’ (in the Western sense of having intentional states or the capacity to make decisions). (See Levine 1994 for discussion of pantheism.)

Hunt (1977) and I. Nicholson (1959) offer closely similar interpretations of pre-Hispanic metaphysics. Eva Hunt writes:

…reality, nature and experience were nothing but multiple manifestations of a single unity of being… The [sacred] was both the one and the many… It was also multiple, fluid, encompassing of the whole, its aspects were changing images, dynamic, never frozen, but constantly recreated, redefined (Hunt 1977:55f.).

Alan Sandstrom’s ethnography of contemporary Nahuatl-speakers in Veracruz, Mexico, offers a similar interpretation:

…everybody and everything is an aspect of a grand, single, overriding unity. Separate beings and objects do not exist–that is an illusion peculiar to human beings. In daily life we divide up our environment into discrete units so that we can talk about it and manipulate it for our benefit. But it is an error to assume that the diversity we create in our lives is the way reality is actually structured … everything is connected at a deeper level, part of the same basic substratum of being… The universe is a deified, seamless totality (Sandstrom 1991:138).

d. Teotl as Self-Transforming Shaman and Artist

Teotl’s ceaseless generating-and-regenerating of the cosmos is also one of ceaseless self-transformation-and-self-retransformation. The cosmos is teotl’s self-transformation or self-transmutation — not its creation ex nihilo. The Nahuas understood this process in two closely interrelated ways.

First, they conceived it artistically. Teotl is a sacred artist who endlessly fashions and refashions itself into and as the cosmos. The cosmos is teotl’s in xochitl, in cuicatl (“flower-and-song”). The Nahuas used “in xochitl, in cuicatl” to refer specifically to the composing and performing of song-poems and to refer generally to creative, artistic, and metaphorical activity (e.g. singing poetry, music, painting/writing [the Nahuas regarded painting and writing as a single activity]). As teotl’s “flower and song” the cosmos is teotl’s grand, ongoing artistic-cum-metaphorical self-presentation; teotl’s ongoing work of performance art or “metaphor in motion” (Markman and Markman 1989).

Second, they conceived teotl’s self-transmutation in shamanic terms. The cosmos is teotl’s nahual (“disguise” or “mask”). The Nahuatl word “nahual” derives from “nahualli” signifying a form-changing shaman (suggesting its indigenous shamanic roots). The continual becoming of the cosmos and its myriad aspects are teotl’s shamanic self-masking and self-disguising (see P. Furst 1976; Gingerich 1988; H.B. Nicholson 1971; Ortiz de Montellano 1990).

Teotl artistically-cum-shamanically presents and masks itself to humans in a variety of ways: (1) the apparent thingness of existents, i.e. the appearance of static entities such as humans, mountains, trees, insects, etc. This is illusory, since one and all are merely facets of teotl’s sacred motion; (2) the apparent multiplicity of existents, i.e. the appearance of discrete, independently existing entities such as individual humans, plants, mountains, etc. This is illusory since there is only one thing: teotl; and (3) the apparent exclusivity, independence, and irreconcilable oppositionality of dualities such as order and disorder, life and death, etc. This is illusory since they are interrelated, complementary facets of teotl.

As an epistemological consequence of teotl’s self-disguising, when humans customarily gaze upon the world, what they see is teotl as a human, as a tree, as female, etc.–i.e. teotl self-disguised — rather than teotl as teotl. As we shall see shortly below, wisdom enables humans to discern the sacred presence of teotl in its myriad disguises.

e. Teotl as Root Metaphor of Nahua Philosophy

Teotl functions as Stephen Pepper (1970) calls the “root metaphor” and what Alfredo Lopez Austin (1997) calls the “archetype” and “logical principle” governing the “unifying” “coherent nucleus” of Nahua philosophy. Teotl possesses metaphysical, epistemological, moral, and aesthetic facets in that it functions simultaneously as the source, object, and/or standard of reality, knowledge, value, rightness, and beauty.

f. Popular Aztec Religion

Many of the preceding claims were expressed mythologically and polytheistically in state-sanctioned, popular Aztec religion. Although the priests, nobility, and sages embraced its monistic aspect, the uneducated masses tended to embrace the polytheistic aspects of Nahua metaphysics (see Caso 1958; Leon-Portilla 1963:Ch II; H.B. Nicholson 1971:410-2; I. Nicholson 1959:60-3). State-sanctioned Aztec religion construed teotl as the supreme god, Ometeotl (literally, “Two God”, also called in Tonan, in Tota, Huehueteotl, “our Mother, our Father, the Old God”), as well as a host of lesser gods, stars, fire, and water (Leon-Portilla 1963). Ometeotl was the god of duality, a male-female unity who resided in Omeyocan, “The place of duality”, which occupied the highest levels of the heavens. S/he fathered/mothered her/himself as well as the universe. As “Lord and Lady of our flesh and sustenance”, Ometeotl provided the universal cosmic energy from which all things derived their original as well as continued existence and sustenance; s/he provided and maintained the oscillating rhythm of the universe; and s/he gave all things their particular natures. In virtue of these attributes s/he was called the “one through whom all live” (Caso 1958:8) and the one “who is the very being of all things, preserving them and sustaining them” (Alonso de Molina, in Leon-Portilla 1963:92). Because metaphysically immanent, Ometeotl was called Tloque Nahuaque, the “one who is near to everything and to whom everything is near” (Angel Garibay, quoted in Leon-Portilla 1963:93). Because epistemologically transcendent (in the sense that humans are not guaranteed knowledge of Ometeotl), Ometeotl was called Yohualli-ehecatl, the one who is “invisible (like the night) and intangible (like the wind)”.

g. Living in “The House of Paintings”

Nahua tlamatinime standardly characterized earthly existence as consisting of pictures, images, and symbols painted-written by teotl on its sacred amoxtli (Mesoamerican papyrus-like paper). The tlamatini Aquiauhtzin (ca.1430-ca.1500, from Chalco-Amaquemecan), for example, characterized the earth as “the house of paintings” (Cantares mexicanos fol.10 r., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1992:282.). According to Xayacamach (second half of the fifteenth century, from Tlaxcala), “Your home is here, in the midst of the paintings” (Cantares mexicanos fol.11 v., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1992:228). Like the images on amoxtli painted-written by human artists, the images on teotl’s sacred canvas are fragile and evanescent. The renowned tlamatini and ruler of Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl (1402-1472), sung:

With flowers You paint, O Giver of Life!
With songs You give color, with songs you give life on the earth.
Later you will destroy eagles and tigers: we live only in your painting here, on the earth.
With black ink you will blot out all that was friendship, brotherhood, nobility.
You give shading to those who will live on the earth…
we live only in Your book of paintings, here on the earth. (Romances de los senores de Nueva Espana, fol.35 r., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1992:83).

Because they saw everything earthly as teotl’s nahual, Nahua tlamatinime claimed everything earthly is dreamlike. Tochihuitzin Coyolchiuhqui sung: “We only rise from sleep, we come only to dream, it is ahnelli [unrooted, untrue] it is ahnelli [unrooted, untrue] that we come on earth to live.” (Cantares mexicanos, fol.14v., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1992:153). Once again, Nezahualcoyotl sung:

Is it nelli [rooted, true, authentic] one really lives on the earth?
Not forever on earth, only a little while here.
Though it be jade it falls apart, though it be gold it wears away, though it be quetzal plumage it is torn asunder.
Not forever on this earth, only a little while here.
(Cantares mexicanos, fol 17r., trans. by Leon-Portilla 1992:80).

Nahua tlamatinime conceived the dreamlikeness or illusoriness of earthly existence in epistemological — not ontological — terms (pace Leon-Portilla 1963). Illusion was not an ontological category as it was, say, for Plato. In the Republic (Book VI) Plato employed the notion of illusion: to characterize an inferior or lower grade of reality or existence; to distinguish this inferior grade of reality from a superior, higher one (the Forms); and to deny that earthy existence is fully real. This conception of illusion commits one to an ontological dualism that divides the universe into two fundamentally different kinds of existents: illusion and reality.

Nahua tlamatinime employed the concepts of dreamlikeness and illusion as epistemological categories in order to make the epistemological claim that the natural condition of humans is to be deceived by teotl’s disguise and misunderstand teotl — not the metaphysical claim that as teotl’s disguise all earthly existence is ontologically substandard and not genuinely real. Earthly existence provides the occasion for human misperception, misjudgment, and misunderstanding. The dreamlike character of earthly existence, the mask of unknowing which beguiles us as human beings, is a function of our human perspective and teotl’s artistic self-disguise (these being ultimately one and the same!) — not a metaphysical dualism inherent in the make-up of things. When Nahua tlamatinime characterized earthly existence as ephemeral and evanescent, they did so not because earthly existence lacks complete reality but because as facets of teotl’s disguise they are subject to the endless oscillation of dialectical polar monism. Illusion is a function our mistaking the commonly perceived characteristics of the myriad shapes, structures, and entities of teotl’s disguise as characteristics of teotl itself. In sum, the Nahuas’ epistemological conception of illusion does not commit them to an ontological dualism between two different kinds of existents — illusion and reality — and is therefore consistent with their ontological monism.

A further consequence of Nahua monism is the metaphysical impossibility of human beings perceiving de re anything other than teotl, for teotl is the only thing to be perceived de re! But then how can Nahua tlamatinime claim that humans normally misperceive and misunderstand teotl? Humans normally perceive and conceive teotl de dicto or under a description, e.g. as Nezahualcoyotl, as maleness, as death, as night, etc. When doing so they perceive and conceive teotl’s nahual (self-disguise) and consequently perceive and conceive teotl in a manner that is ahnelli – i.e. untrue, unrooted, inauthentic, unconcealing, and nondisclosing. It is humans’ misperceiving and misunderstanding teotl as its disguise (nahual) which prevents them from seeing teotl (reality) as it really is.

The only way humans experience teotl knowingly is to experience teotl sans description. Humans experience teotl knowingly via a process of mystical-style union between their hearts and teotl that enables them to experience teotl directly i.e. without mediation by language, concepts, or categories. One comes to know teotl through teotl. One’s perception and conception are no longer befogged by “the cloud of unknowing” (to borrow from the fourteenth century English mystical text by the same name) or the “breath on the mirror” (to borrow from the Mayan Popol Vuh) constituted by de dicto perception and conception. Note however that although metaphysically immanent within human hearts (in keeping with Nahua metaphysical monism), teotl is nevertheless epistemologically transcendent in the sense that humans are not guaranteed knowledge of teotl.

A fundamental metaphysical difference thus divides the underlying problematics of Nahua and Cartesian-style Western epistemology. The latter conceives subject and object dualistically and the relationship between subject and object as one mediated by a “veil of perception”. The subject’s access to the object is indirect, being mediated, for example, by appearances or representations of the object. The Nahuas’ epistemological problematic conceives the subject and object monistically and the relationship between subject and object in terms of a mask. And masks in Mesoamerican epistemology have different properties than veils.

In their study of masks in Mesoamerican shamanism (in which sixteenth-century Nahua epistemology was deeply rooted and to which it remained closely related), Markman and Markman (1989:xx) argue that masks “simultaneously conceal and reveal the innermost spiritual force of life itself”. For example, the life/death masks mentioned above simultaneously conceal and reveal the simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead figure. The mask does not symbolize, represent, or point to something deeper, something hiding behind itself, for the simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead figure rests right upon the surface of the figure. The simultaneously neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead figure does not lurk behind the mask; nor is our access to it obstructed by a veil or representation. It is fully present de re yet hidden de dicto by our unknowing, i.e. by our normal tendency to misperceive reality as exclusively either dead or alive — as opposed to neither-alive-nor-dead-yet-both-alive-and-dead. After years of ritual preparation, Nahua tlamatinime were able to see the life-death mask de re or “unmasked” as it were, and in so doing discern the complementary unity and interdependence of life and death.

h. Time-space

Nahua metaphysics conceives time and its various patterns as the dynamic unfolding of teotl. Time and space form an indistinguisable time-space continuum. The four cardinal directions, for example, are simultaneously directions of space and time. Weeks, months, seasons, years, and year-clusters all had spatial directions. Time-space is concrete, quantitative, and qualitative. It does not consist of a uniform succession of qualitatively identical moments, nor is it a neutral frame of reference abstracted from terrestrial and celestial events and processes. The quantitative dimensions of time-space are inseparable from its qualitative, symbolic dimensions. Different time-spaces bear different qualities.
All these dimensions coalesced in the activity of Nahua time-space-keeping (astronomy), which included observing, counting, measuring, interpreting, giving an account of, and creating an artistic-written record of various patterns of time-space. Nahua time-space-keeping included tonalpohualli (“counting the days”) or counting the days of the 260-day cycle; xiuhpohualli (“counting the years”) or counting the days of the 360+5-day cycle; xiuhmolpilli (“binding the years”) or counting the 52 years of the “calendar round”; counting the 65 “years” of the cycle of Quetzalcoatl (the Venusian cycle); and counting other cycles in celestial and terrestrial processes. Nahua “time-keepers” (cahuipouhqui) were knowledgeable of the time-space rhythms of teotl and responsible for keeping society and humankind in balance with the cosmos.

Calendrical cycles govern human existence. A person’s birth date in the tonalpohualli determines her tonalli: a vital force having important consequences for her character and destiny. The Nahuas used the tonalpohualli to divine the nature of this force. The tonalpohualli assigned different daysigns to each day, each daysign having different effects on a person’s character and destiny. Time-space bears destinies, carried burdens, and conveyed these to events falling under its influence. The reckoning of any period of time-space always leads one to investigate the tonalli or “day-time-destiny” associated with it. Everything happening on the earth and in humans’ lives from birth to death is the outcome of tonalli.

The history of the universe falls into five successive ages or “suns,” each representing the temporary dominance of a different aspect of teotl. The present era, the “Age of the Fifth Sun,” is the final one and the one in which the Aztecs believed they lived. Like its four predecessors, the Fifth Sun is destined to cataclysmic destruction, at which time the earth will be destroyed by earthquakes and humankind will vanish forever. (For further discussion, see Lopez Austin 1988, 1997; Leon-Portilla 1963; Read 1998; Carrasco 1990; Maffie [forthcoming].)

Bruce Chatwin, from "In Patagonia"

The Mylodon was a Giant Ground Sloth, rather bigger than a bull, of a class unique to South America. In 1789 a Dr. Bartolome de Munoz sent from Buenos Aires the bones of its even bigger cousin, the Megatherium, to the King of Spain's cabinet of curiosities in Madrid. The King ordered a second specimen, live or dead.

The skeleton astonished naturalists of Cuvier's generation. Goethe worked it into an essay which appears to anticipate the Theory of Evolution. The zoologists had to picture an antediluvian mammal, standing fifteen feet high, which was also a magnified version of the ordinary, insect-eating sloths that hung upside-down from trees. Cuvier gave it the name Megatherium and suggested that Nature had wanted to amuse herself with 'something imperfect and grotesque.'

Darwin found the bones of a mylodon among his 'nine great quadrupeds' on the beach at Punta Alta, near Bahia Blanca, and sent them to Dr. Richard Owen at the Royal College of Surgeons. Owen laughed at the idea of giant sloths up giant trees before the Flood. He reconstructed Mylodon Darwini as a cumbersome animal that reared up on its haunches, using its legs and tail as a tripod, and, instead of climbing up trees, clawed them down. The mylodon had a long extensible tongue, like a giraffe's, which it used to scoop up leaves and grubs. 

Throughout the nineteenth century mylodon bones continued to surface in the barrancas of Patagonia. Scientists were puzzled by the innumerable lumps of bone found with the skeletons until Ameghino correctly interpreted them as an armour plating, like the plaques of an armadillo.

There was, however, a point at which the extinct beast merged with the living beast and the beast of the imagination. Indian legends and travellers' tales had convinced some zoologists that a big mammal had survived the catastrophes of the Ice Age and lingered on in the Southern Andes. There were five contenders: 

a. The Yemische, a kind of ghoul.

b. The Su, or Succurath, reported as early as 1558, living on the banks of Patagonian rivers. The creature had the head of a lion 'with something human about it,' a short beard from ear to ear, and a tail armed with sharp bristles which served as a shelter for the young. The Su was a hunter but not for meat alone; for it hunted animals for their skins and warmed itself in the cold climate.

c. The Yaquaru or 'Water-Tiger' (often confused with the Su). The English Jesuit, Thomas Falkner, saw one on the Parana in the eighteenth century. It was a vicious creature that lived in whirlpools, and when it ate a cow, the lungs and entrails floated to the surface. (It was probably a caiman.) 'Water-Tigers' also figure in George Chaworth Musters's memoir At Home with the Patagonians; the author describes how his Tehuelche guide refused to cross the Rio Senguer for fear of 'yellow quadrupeds larger than a puma.'

d. The Elengassen, a monster described by a Patagonian Cacique to Dr. Moreno in 1879. It had a human head and armoured carapace, and would stone strangers who approached its lair. The only way to kill it was through a chink in its belly.

e. The fifth and most convincing report of unexplained fauna was a huge animal 'resembling a Giant Pangolin' shot at in the late 1880s by Ramon Lista, then Governor of Santa Cruz.

Such was the background to Florentino Ameghino's pamphlet. For years, he told journalists, his brother Carlos had heard the Indians tell of the Yemische. At first they assumed it was an aboriginal terror myth, a mere product of their incoherent theology. Now they had new and startling evidence to believe in its existence as a living mammal:

In 1895, he said, a Tehuelche called Hompen was trying to cross the Rio Senguer, but the current was strong and his horse refused to enter. Dismounting, Hompen waded in to persuade it to follow. But the horse whinnied, reared, and bolted for the desert. At that instant Hompen saw the Yemische advancing towards him.

Coolly eyeing the beast, he threw his boleadoras and bola perdida 'weapons of formidable efficiency in the hands of an Indian.' He entangled it, skinned the carcass, and kept a small piece for his friend the white explorer. 

Carlos sent the skin to Florentino. The moment he handled the skin and saw the white ossicles he knew that the 'Yemische and the Mylodon of the past ages were one.' The discovery vindicated Ramon Lista's hunting story: he was renaming the animal Neomylodon Listai in memory of the assassinated ex-Governor. 

'And the skeleton?' asked the journalist.
'My brother is looking into the matter of the skeleton. I hope to have it in my possession soon.'
No. Dr. Ameghino did not think the animal could have floated from Antarctica on an iceberg.
Yes. He had asked the Minister of Public Works for a large sum of money for a mylodon hunt.
Yes. The Tehuelches hunted mylodons, often with sunken pits, hidden by leaves and branches.
No. He didn't doubt they would catch it. 'Despite its invulnerable carapace and aggressive habits, it will eventually fall prisoner to man.'
No. He was not impressed by Dr. Moreno's discoveries at the Eberhard Cave. If Dr. Moreno knew he had a mylodon skin, why hadn't he brought it to the attention of science?

Ameghino's press conference was another international sensation. The British Museum pestered him to cut off a tiny piece. The Germans wanted a photo of the dead animal. And, throughout Argentina, there were a number of sightings: an estanciero on the Parana lost a peon to a 'water-tiger' and heard the crack of branches and the animal swimming: 'clap...clap...clap...' and howling 'ah...joooooo!'

Moreno got back to La Plata and took his piece of skin to London. He left it at the British Museum for safe-keeping, where it remains. In a lecture to the Royal Society on January 17th 1899 he said he had always known it was a mylodon, and that the animal was long extinct but preserved under the same conditions as moa feathers from New Zealand.

Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Palaeontology, only half believed this. He had handled moa feathers. In St. Petersburg he had also handled pieces of Pallass's woolly rhinoceros and the deep-frozen mammoth from Yakutia. Compared to these, he said, the mylodon skin was so 'remarkably fresh' and the blood clot so red that, were it not for Dr. Moreno, he would have 'no hesitation in pronouncing the animal recently killed.'

Certainly there was sufficient doubt in England for the Daily Express to finance the expedition of a Mr. Hesketh Prichard to look for it. Prichard found no trace of the mylodon, but his book Through the Heart of Patagonia seems to have been an ingredient of Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

Meanwhile two archaeologists dug in the cave. The Swede Erland Nordenskjold was the more methodical. He found three stratified levels: the upper contained human settlement; in the middle were the bones of some extinct fauna including the 'Dawn Horse'; but only in the bottom layer did he find remains of the mylodon.

The second excavator, Dr. Hauthal of La Plata, was an impressionist who apparently didn't understand the principles of stratigraphy. He uncovered the layers of perfectly preserved sloth dung, mixed with leaves and grass, which covers the floor to the depth of a metre. He also pointed to the wall of stones which cut off the back part of the cave. And he announced that the place was a mylodon corral. Early man had domesticated mylodons and kept them penned up for winter rations. He said he was changing the name again, from Neomylodon Listai to Gryptotherium domesticum. 

Among Erland Nordenskjold's helpers was the German goldpanner Albert Konrad. Once the archaeologists were out of the way, he rigged up a tin shanty at the cave-mouth and started dynamiting the stratigraphy to bits. Charley went up to help him and came away with yards of skin and piles of bones and claws, which, by this time, were a saleable commodity. He packed the collection off to the British Museum, and after a tremendous haggle with Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward (who thought Charley was trying to up the price when he learned that Walter Rothschild was paying) sold it for £400. 

My grandparents got married about this time and I imagine he must have sent a small piece as a wedding present. 

Ameghino's part in the affair is most suspicious. He never came up with Hompen's piece of skin. The chances are he snooped in Moreno's crate, and saw the skin but dared not steal it. One fact is certain: his pamphlet became as rare as the beast it attempted to describe.

The modern verdict, based on radio-carbon dates, is that the mylodon was alive ten thousand years ago, but not since.

Edgar Garcia, from Boundary Loot

the wind is a canoe on the sea

said under my breath

seeing neither the sea

nor a canoe nor the wind

but a multiform pressing down

              on the waves

        to make the waves

over which some invisibility moves

maybe it is like that

       maybe not

it could be that one is a strand

lengthways on a cloth

crossed by another

              together

sagging under a heavy weight

like paper under ink

like stone under the beating light

the light’s tail is also a snake

and the snake

opens out to the water

       so I wrote

the wind is a canoe on the sea

Pierre Guyotat, from "Coma," Trans. Noura Wedell

Owls, fish, black pigs, coral in the beating water below.

To see the world as the water spider, the eagle, the mole--who sees so little--see it; to feel the world like the dust mite, the crab, or the whale; like the seagull in the cold settling on the crown of the king's statue, warming up there by defecating.

The eye is the organ that is least watery; to understand the world, one must love it, see it, feel it thus, with several eyes superimposed, several animal senses combined. The human eye would then be in addition; to think what animals think, man is no more the king of the universe than the lion is the king of animals. Man must also believe his evolution continues as the animal's evolution does. We must see ourselves as animals see us. Ever since I have discovered it, I have felt the evolutionist vision to be more grandiose than the vision of Creation, its historical space is immense, such an increase of time and space cannot damage the history of man and the beauty of his advent. 

***

"God" cannot have created the world with human senses: creating a species of insects, of fish, for example, wouldn't He watch the world through the eyes of the species He is creating? Isn't evolution the trajectory of God's thought, as he thinks creation to come and thinks it as a synthesis of His visions? The trajectory of Evolution = the trajectory of the thought of God the Creator.

There is something of this in human creation, in fiction, in how a figure appears and is formed. The temporality of the book is the temporality of evolution. What is ideal theater but the moment when the creator disappears in favor of his creature, when those creatures speak, answer one another beyond his control. When I think of such a scene, I hear the most beautiful language of desire.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, "And Sometimes We Believe in the Informative Value of Tremors Running Through the Atmosphere," from '68, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith

A movement results from combinations that even its own participants cannot control. And that its enemies cannot calculate. It evolves in ways that cannot be predicted, and even those who foresee it are taken by surprise.

It was raining during those days, and the city had turned enormous. I wanted to capture the moment in a poem but could not. Happily, there were others who could, others who had written earlier, in other cities under the rain. Like the sometimes pedestrian Yucatán poet José Peón Contreras (to us, at the time, the name of an avenue), who had asked: "Where can the beach be that awaits us?"

Since I couldn't manage a poem, I crisscrossed the city from appointment to appointment, rally to minimarch, assembly to conference, brigadista powwow to underground planning session. I went from setting up a mimeograph machine to stealing paper, from a siesta snatched in some truck to hair-raising trips in Galilee, which was Paco Pérez Arce's car, and on to a rendezvous with a bunch of refinery workers in Puente de Vigas. From there to a quince años party in Doctores, where with waltz music in the background we planned a propaganda campaign in the factories of Ixtapalapa, or else to Mixcoac to eat chicken soup as the day broke. Sitting still was a sin--the only sin I can remember from those days. I spent my time picking up the vibes, which I would discuss later with my two ideological gurus, Armando Bartra and Martín Reyes, both in their undershirts, cooped up in an apartment in Lomas de Plateros so full of smoke from the Del Prado plant that you could barely see the walls. 

There was no day or night, just actions, the street, and vibrations that called for interpretation by someone. 

Richard Sauder, "Understanding the Matrix," ed. TransAlchemy

Alfonso Reyes, from "Vision of Anáhuac, 1519," trans. Carina del Valle Schorske

I.

Traveler: you have arrived at the air’s most transparent region.

In the Age of Discovery, books appear filled with extraordinary news and fanciful geographies. History, obliged to discover new worlds, overflows its classical channel, and so political fact cedes its post to ethnographic discourse and to the picture-painting of civilizations. 16th century historians fix the frame of just-found lands—lands like this one appear to the eyes of Europe: accented by surprise, sometimes exaggerated. The diligent Giovanni Battista Ramusio publishes his peculiar pilgrim’s compilation Delle Navigationi et Viaggi in Venice in the year 1550. The work consists of three volumes in-folio that were later reprinted individually, and illustrated with profusion and enchantment. Its usefulness cannot be doubted; the 16^th century chroniclers of the Indies (Solís, at least) came upon some of Cortes’ letters in the book's Italian translations.

In its illustrations, delicate and innocent, in keeping with the elegance of the time, we begin to see the progressive conquest of the coasts; tiny boats slide along a line that crosses the sea; in the open ocean, a sea monster twists, like a hunter’s horn, and in the corner a fabulous nautical star projects its rays. From the bosom of the impressionistic clouds, a fat-cheeked Aeolus blows, indicating the course of the winds—the constant guardian of the sons of Ulysses. See the footprints of African life, beneath the traditional palm tree next to the squat straw hut, always smoking; men and beasts of other climes, minute and detailed scenes, exotic plants and imagined islands. And on the coasts of New France, groups of natives given over to hunting and fishing, to dancing or the building of cities. An imagination like that of Stevenson, capable of dreaming Treasure Island before a child’s cartography, would have woven into Ramusio’s illustrations a thousand and one delights for our cloudy days.

Finally, the illustrations describe the vegetation of Anáhuac. Hold, here, your eyes: here is a new art of nature.

Ceres' ears of corn and paradisical plantains, fruits ripe with unknown honey; but, above all, the typical plants: the Mexican biznaga—image of the timid porcupine—, the maguey (which we are told drinks from rocks), that flowers at ground level, then tosses its plumage high into the air; the organ cactus, its branches joined like the reeds of Pan's pipes; the discs of the nopal—like a candelabra—joined in a necessary hierarchy pleasing to the eyes: all of this appears to us as an emblematic flower, as though conceived to decorate a coat of arms. In the sharp outlines of the illustrations, fruit and leaf, stem and root, are abstract forms, their clarity undisturbed by color.

These plants, protected by thorns, announce that nature here is not, like in the south or on the coasts, abundant in saps or nourishing vapors. The land of Anáhuac hardly even exhibits fertility at the edges of the lakes. But over the course of centuries, man will contrive to drain away the waters, working like a beaver, returning to the valley its own terrible character: —In the hostile, alkaline earth, plants stiffen, raising the thorns of their vegetable claws against drought.

The desiccation of the valley has been going on from 1449 to 1900. Three races have worked on it, and almost three civilizations—how little there is in common between the viceroyal organization and the prodigious political fiction that gave us thirty years of Augustan peace! Three monarchical regimes, divided by parentheses of anarchy, are here an example of how the work of the state grows and corrects itself before the same threats of nature and the same land to hoe. From Netzahualcóyotl to the second Luís de Velasco, and from them to Porfirio Díaz, the slogan seems to be, drain the land. Our century found us still digging up the last shovelful and tearing open the last ditch.

The draining of the lakes is its own small drama with its own heroes and scenic backdrop.  Ruíz de Alarcón had vaguely foreseen it in his comedy El semejante a sí mismo. Before a great assembly overseen by the Viceroy and the Archbishop, the sluices were opened: the immense waters riding in through the deep cuts. This, the stage. And the plot, the intrigues of Alonso Arias and the tragic error of Adrian Boot, the self-sufficient Dutchman, until the bars of the prison close behind Enrico Martín, who holds his level aloft with a steady hand.

Like the spirit of disaster, the vengeful water spied over the city; troubling the dreams of that cruel and petty people, sweeping clean its flowering stones; lying in wait, blue eye open, for its brave bastions.

When the makers of the desert finish their labors, the social catastrophe erupts.

The American traveler is condemned to hear the same question from Europeans: are there many trees in America? We would surprise them if we were to speak of an American Castile higher than Spain's, more harmonious, surely less bitter however much they are broken by enormous mountains instead of by hills, where the air glitters like a mirror and enjoys perennial autumn. The Spanish plain suggests ascetic thoughts; the Mexican valley, simple and sober ones. What one gains in tragedy, the other in formal precision.

Our nature has two opposing aspects. One, the virgin jungle of America, so long-sung it is hardly worth describing. An obligatory object of praise in the Old World, it inspires Chateaubriand's verbal effusions. Hothouse where energies seem to spend themselves with generous abandon, where our spirit drowns in intoxicating fumes, it is the exaltation of life and the vital image of anarchy: the bursts of greenery tumbling down the mountainside, the Gordian knots of creepers and lianas, the tents of banana trees, the treacherous shadows of trees that lull the traveler to sleep and steal over his senses, overpowering vegetation, slow and voluptuous torpor, all to the whir and whine of insects. The cries of parrots, the thunder of waterfalls, the savage eyes of beasts! In these profusions of fire and fantasy, other tropical regions surely outdo us.

Ours, Anáhuac's, is something better and more bracing. At least for those who like to have their wills alert and minds clear at all hours. The most quintessential vision of our nature is in the regions of the central highlands: there, the harsh, heraldic vegetation, the organized landscape, the atmosphere's intense clarity in which colors themselves drown, the general harmony of the design which compensates for that loss, the luminous ether which brings each thing into singular relief, and, at last, to put it in the words of the modest and sensitive Fray Manuel de Navarrate:

a resplendant light

that makes the face of heaven shine.

So observed a great traveler, whose name merits the pride of New Spain; a classical and universal man like those of the Renaissance, who resuscitated in his century the ancient way of acquiring wisdom on the road, and the habit of writing only of his own memories and meditations: in his Political Essay, Baron von Humboldt noted the strange reverberation of the sun's rays on the mountainous mass of the central highlands, where the air purifies.

In that landscape, not without a certain aristocratic sterility, where the eyes wander with discernment, the mind deciphers every line and caresses every curve; beneath the brilliance of that air and in its pervasive freshness and placidity, those undiscovered men let their broad, meditative, spiritual gaze wander. Ecstatic before the cactus with its eagle and its serpent—the happy essence of our country—they heard the bird's prophetic voice promising them refuge on those hospitable lakes. Later, from that little stilt village a city had welled up, repopulated with the incursions of mythological warriors that came from the Seven Caves—the cradle of the seven tribes spilling over our land. Later, the city became an empire, and the clamor of a Cyclopean civilization, like that of Babylon and Egypt, endured, wearying, until the ill-starred days of Moctezuma the Mournful. And so it was then, in an enviable hour of amazement, having crossed the snowy volcanic peaks, Cortés' men (“dust, sweat, and iron”), peeked over that orb of resonance and resplendence—the sweeping cirque of mountains.

At their feet, in a mirage of crystals, the picturesque city spread out, emanating from the temple, so that its radiant streets extended the corners of the pyramid.

To their ears, in some dark and bloody rite, came howling the moan of the ancient oboe and, multiplied by the echo, the throb of the savage drum. 

*     *     *     *     *

II.

It resembled the house of enchantments that the book

of Amadís describes... I know not how to describe it.

          Bernal Diaz del Castillo

*     *     *     *     *

The conversations come to life without clamor: the race has fine ears, and sometimes they speak in secret. Sweet clicks can be heard; the vowels flow and consonants tend to liquify. The chatter is a delicious music. Those x's, those tl's, those ch's that so alarm us written, drip from the lips of the Indian with the smoothness of maguey syrup.

*     *     *     *     *

The water, oozing, trills in the pungent jars.

*     *     *     *     *

III.

The flower, mother of the smile.

          EL NIGROMANTE

If in all the manifestations of indigenous life nature played as important a role as  revealed in the accounts of the conquistador, if the garden's flowers were the adornment of both gods and men, the refined motif of both the plastic arts and the hieroglyphs, they could not be absent in the poetry.

The historical age in which the conquistadors arrived proceeded precisely from the rain of flowers that fell on the heads of men at the end of the fourth cosmic sun. The land avenged its old shortages, and men waved the flags of jubilation. In the drawings of the Vatican codex, this is represented by a triangular figure adorned with trellises of plants; the goddess of licit loves, hung with verdant ribbons trailing to the ground, while seeds burst from above, dropping leaves and flowers.

The principal material for studying the artistic representation of plants in America is found in the monuments of culture that flowered in the valley of Mexico immediately before the conquest. Hieroglyphic writing offers the most varied and abundant material. The flower was one of the twenty signs of the days; the flower is also the sign of the noble and the lovely, and, at the same time, represents all perfumes and drinks. It also arises from the blood of sacrifice, and crowns the hieroglyph for oratory. Garlands, trees, maguey, and maize alternate as the hieroglyphs for places. The flower is painted in a schematic mode, reduced to a strict symmetry, seen in profile or in the mouth of the corolla. In the same way, a defined scheme is used to represent the tree: it is here a trunk that opens in three equal branches crowned with leaves, and there two diverging trunks that ramify in a symmetrical manner.

In the stone and clay sculptures there are isolated flowers—without leaves—and radiant fruited trees, some as attributes of the divine, others as personal adornment or decoration for utensils.

In the pottery of Cholula, the background of the pots flaunts a floral star, and on the interior and exterior walls of the vase run interlaced calyxes. The cups of the spinners have black flowers on a yellow background, and, on occasion, the flower appears to be evoked merely by a few fugitive lines.

We also seek the flower, nature, and the landscape of the valley in the indigenous poetry. 

*     *     *     *     *

IV.

But glorious it was to see, how the open region 

Was filled with horses and chariots…

          Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Whatever historical doctrine one professes (and I am not one of those who dream of absurd perpetuations of indigenous traditions nor place too much faith in perpetuations of the Spanish), it unites us with the race of yesterday, without speaking of blood, with the community of effort to dominate our dense and fierce nature; the effort which is the brute base of history. Much more profoundly, we are united by the community of quotidian emotion when faced with the same natural object. The confrontation of human sensibility with the same natural world cultivates and engenders a common soul. But if one accepts neither one nor the other—neither the work of collective action, nor of collective contemplation, let it be conceded that the historical feeling is part of contemporary life, and that without its glow, our valleys and our mountains would be like a theater without light.  .  .