Dreams

Dreams are important in Oaxacan mythology. Do we create them ourselves? Or do they come to us as celestial messages? Can they exist without us? Or do we form a symbiotic relationship each dependent on the other?

Eight Deer or Tiger Claw / Ocho Venado or Garra de Tigre is a Mixtec Hero; his name is composed of two parts: (1) day name (ie the name of the day on which he was born) Eight Deer and (2) nickname Tiger Claw. His symbol in the códices is a small circle with a comma like a tiger claw. Nuttall is the twentieth century editor of the Zouche Nuttall Codex in which Eight Deer’s history of conquest is recounted. Nine Wind / Nueve Viento is another Mixtec Hero and the founding father of the race, according to some códices.

Once I stole the nose from a sacred statue;
today I watch it cross the square attached to a face.

Eight Deer walks past with a fanfare of conches:
you can tell him by his donut with its little tail.

A shadow moves as zopilote wings his way across the square.
I caught him once on a midnight bus;
he begged me to fold his wings and let him sleep forever.

A gringa called Nuttall sells tins of watery soap.
Her children fill my days with enchantments:
bubbles born from a magic ring.

Eight Deer, eight years old, sets out on his conquests.
Nine Wind births his people from a flint,
or was it the magic tree in Apoala?

The voices in my head slip slowly into silence.
Sometimes I think they have no need of me,
these dreams that come at midnight, and knock at my window.