Some days I don’t feel like working on the manuscript so I read my two Nahuatl dictionaries for coded messages that may inspire me to write. It is possible to do a great deal with a language we don’t speak or understand, as long as we freely employ our imaginations and have access to good dictionaries. Today as I browsed through the a’s and the c’s (Nahuatl has no b), my eyes were attracted to the Nahuatl words that appear to me to be onomatopoeic; but I also look for rhyme or the repetition of sounds in a single word. I used the “ca” sound of Nahuatl to write my rain cloud spell awhile back, so I started with “ca” again.
“Ca” means because of you.
“Cacahtli” means water dweller with a loud croak.
“Cacacuicatl” means toad song.
“Quiahuitl” means rain.
“Oquiah” means it rained.
“Ehecaquiahuit” and “yehyecaquiahuitl” both mean rainstorm.
Are the “Eh” and “Yehye” sounds before the word for rain intended to be exclamatory or prayerful?
“Quiahuatl” means rainwater.
Just after I wrote down the list of words in Nahuatl and English suddenly a white rainstorm arrived out of the southeast with only a little thunder and lightning. White and gray nimbostratus clouds roll over the hills. Now we are in the clouds!
As the huge white rain fell minute after minute, it seemed there might be something about Nahuatl words written in ink on paper that works as a rain cloud spell. I will have to continue to experiment with this.
As I browse in the Nahuatl-English dictionary I also watch for words that are combinations of other words; the Nahuatl word for cloud is “mixtli” the Nahuatl for snake is “coatl” the Nahuatl for tornado is “mixcoatl” but “mixcoatl” is also a cloud companion, a ghost warrior or ancestor. “Cuahtilli-n-totolye mochiuh ocelomixcoatl” means: he’s become an eagle, a jaguar, a cloud companion!
The Bierhorst dictionary shows a number of meanings for each word. Often a double meaning refers to the ghost warriors. For example the Nahuatl word “celiya” means to take root, to sprout or to grow green again, but it also means returned ghost warrior. The word “cempohualxochitl” means marigold but also means revenant warrior. It is apparent that many Nahuatl words have a double meaning which links them to ghost warriors so the revenants hold a central position in the Nahua cosmology. Could it be that the revenants are responsible for bringing rain?
“Calli” means house.
“Mixcocacalli” is the House of the Cloud Companions, the dance hall or music room where the ghost singers perform the ghost songs, often in the form of lullabies.
“Ahua conetel!” means Hail little baby and is used by the ghost singers to address the revenants. “Ahuitzotl,” little longed for child, is another term of endearment used to call the revenants.
“Olini” means to stir, to come to life as the ghost warriors do when they arrive on Earth.
“Matlahuah calli” is a pack basket used for carrying the revenants from Paradise to this world.
“Malina” means to be spun or whirled, and refers to the ghost warriors as they emerge from the matlahuah calli.
CHAPTER 45
Another gardening error — fatal for my double white daturas. I misidentified some voracious speckled red bugs as ladybugs. These flying red bugs are the same size and shape as ladybugs and mimic the ladybugs’ red color. They lack the precise black spots of the ladybugs and have instead asymmetrical black splotches. I thought they were a variation of the ladybug.
I didn’t want to kill a species of ladybug so I took awhile to observe their numbers and behavior. After they attacked the double white daturas I realized they were not ladybugs. They denuded the young white daturas and devastated the purple datura so I made a concoction of dish detergent, garlic olive oil and red pepper from Viet Nam to spray on the ladybug imposters.
While I was observing the initial effects of my spray repellant from my chair on the porch, I heard a rustle in the dry leaves and stalks around the clay pots. I turned and caught a glimpse of the head of the garnet and ruby red racer snake who’s lived in my front yard more than fifteen years. She stopped but didn’t seem to mind me looking because she knows I won’t harm her.
I turned away from her to reassure her so she could proceed by me, and as she passed I looked down at her (she’s four and a half feet long so it takes a moment for her to go by me). I was shocked to see a slash wound in her side that was draining infection, and then came her tail — the very tip of her tail was gone and had traces of dried blood on it.
My long-time racer snake neighbor had been in mortal battle last night or early today. But with whom? Roadrunner? Owl or hawk? Any one of them might slash and eat a red racer snake.
I knocked the ladybug imposters from the tattered remnants of the datura leaves; the red bugs lay on the ground as if dead. I thought probably the dish detergent and red chili sauce suffocated them. But about twenty minutes later the red bugs regained consciousness and flew away.
I was about to go indoors to escape the flies when I heard the rapid beak clatter of a roadrunner. One suddenly flew up from the bird water dish to the fence and was gone as fast as a thief. Right then I knew who the likely attacker of the red racer snake was. Would a roadrunner eat a hummingbird? I suspect it would; Lord Roadrunner eats anything alive, and is very quick.
I went to fill the water trough down at the old corrals. The small water pans were dry and the level of the trough was low. As I waited for the trough to fill, I saw a small covey of half-grown Gambel’s quail coming to water. When they saw me they skittered across the old corral and retreated to the bushes — survivors of the heat and rain and my carelessness that drowned six chicks earlier in the spring.
All the desert is bright new green and the cactus wrens and thrashers excitedly chirp and sing for all these lovely afternoon and evening rainstorms.
Today the clouds form heavy layers on all the mountaintops. I feel I can’t communicate with so many clouds. Across the west and northwest sky the clouds unreel themselves. Suddenly bird songs and bird-calls create a cacophony of joy; for the desert is bright green and the rains come.
Masses of tall silver blue rain clouds stream down from the Sierra Madre Mountains into Arizona and New Mexico. I make sketches of the clouds with light gray and white chalk on a page of light blue paper. I found the cloud photographs Stieglitz called “Equivalents” among some post cards years ago. Whenever I look at them, I want to make cloud prints from contact negatives on blueprint paper.
The second time I wrote the same Nahuatl words in my notebook the blue rain clouds gathered and the rainwater overflowed the barrels. Apparently, certain Nahuatl words written in ink on paper can bring rain clouds at certain times.
Then I remembered where I had gotten the notion that words in ink on paper could bring rain. My friend Linda Niemann found the rain book in Mexico City in 1993 and had given it to me. The book was made of traditional amate, paper from the bark of the fig tree, by Sr. Alfonso Garcia Tellez in 1978 in the town of San Pablito, Pahuatlan, Puebla.
In times of drought the people of San Pablito made a pilgrimage to a cave in the mountains three days’ distance from their town, bringing a small handmade foldout book of amate paper to ask for rain. Sr. Garcia Tellez wrote the words in the rain book by hand, in Spanish; facing each page of text were paper cutout figures also made of ochre and brown amate paper. The figures represent “dioses” or spirit beings, mostly cultivated plants, who also plead for rain.