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.
Dreams
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.
