The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Sarita!” he exclaimed, wiping juice from his lips with the tip of his thumb. “You’ve joined me! Good!” As she was about to speak, Miguel turned his whole body in the direction of the improbable horizon. “Do you see what I am seeing, Mamá?” Miguel pointed enthusiastically at the vision of Earth and all her exquisite colors. Sarita caught a glimpse of her son’s bare bottom as the back of his gown fell open. She was tempted to spank him right there, grown man that he was, but he was anxiously calling for her attention.

“Sarita, look!”

From where she now stood, she could see the planet floating beyond the bending branches of the giant tree. It shone bright and clear against a midnight sky, spinning slowly at the edge of the fantasy they occupied.

“La tierra,” she said, sighing. “Where we both belong. It is time to stop this idiocy.”

“Do you see them?” Miguel asked urgently. “All the moving lights?”

Frowning, the old woman peered through the branches again. This was not Earth as she remembered it. As the planet slowly turned, she could see waves of light burning bright, then lifting away and evanescing into space. The lights burned hot in some isolated places, and not in others. But wait . . . no. Some streamed over the entire globe. And even as little sparks rose and dissolved, more waves of light fell onto Earth like liquid dreams.

“Yes! Dreams!” her son exclaimed, as if he had followed her thoughts. “These are the dreams of men and women who change humanity. Small ones, bigger ones, and great, lasting ones. Dreams that begin and end, live, and then die.”

“If they die, where do they go?” she asked, puzzled at the rising and falling of light, much like the bouncing waves of sound displayed on her grandson’s stereo. “And where do they begin?”

“From creation—and back to creation!” he said with a laugh, taking another bite from the apple. “Do you see that bright one?” he marveled. “Wonderful! It feels like George, whose message is still remembered. So gentle a dream . . . do you see it?”

“George . . . ah, yes. He was your student. The very short one?”

“No, he was one of the Beatles, Sarita. And much taller than me.”

Oh, yes. Now she remembered. The Beatles. The sound that had serenaded her to this spot was their sound, their music. She was only now recovering from the throbbing noise in her head.

“Do you see my dream, Sarita?” Miguel shouted. “There! It shines in that area over there! And look! The threads of it are moving, getting brighter . . . everywhere! There! A yellow-gold—no, red-gold there. Wait!”

Sarita let the bag drop from her hands and gripped his shoulder. Miguel swung around to look at her, his face still glowing with joy.

“Your message is alive and growing, yes,” she said. “There it is. We see it.”

“Isn’t it magnificent!” With that Miguel abandoned his apple, tossing it aside. It vanished as soon as it left his hand. He moved to observe the vision of a dreaming humanity more closely, but his mother’s words distracted him, sounding stern and cheerless.

“We need Miguel to keep this dream alive. You are returning to me now,” Sarita said in as strong a voice as her son had ever heard. “It is not your time to die.”

“I’m already dead,” her thirteenth child answered, smiling.

“You are not. The doctors are caring for you. We are praying for you. The ancestors are moving heaven and Earth for you.”

Miguel twisted his face in mock despair, but his eyes still gleamed. “Madre, not the ancestors, please.”

“Your heart is mended now, m’ijo. You have only to take a breath and come back to us. Come back!”

“You’re talking about a heart that’s damaged beyond repair, Sarita. My lungs have failed and my body is collapsing without me.” He looked at her tenderly. “I’m a doctor, too, remember.”

“You are a coward as well! Come back and finish what you began!”

“You know that I’ve given all I can.”

“Have you?”

“Oh! Let me tell you about the sleeping dream I had before I got here!”

“Miguel.”

“I was one of the warriors who guarded Tenochtitlan and the sacred lake. I was—well, of course I wasn’t, but in a way I still am—that warrior. I could feel the fear and the urgency of the moment, the total surrender, and then it seemed that everything became starlight and space.”

“Stop, Miguel! Your world is more than starlight and space. You have a home, and people who love you. More than that, you have me. You are my son, and you must return to me!”

“All of it is starlight and space—this world, that world, this mother and this son.”

“You are not starlight and space. You are—”

“I am exactly that! Look at me!” With that, he disappeared among the twinkling orbs that danced before her eyes. There were only stars now, and the space between.

“Come back!” she shouted.

“Impossible,” he replied, laughing, and she saw him again within the tree that seemed to come and go, straddling another limb, his bare legs swinging as he waved to her. “Stay with me, Mamá.”

His mother’s fear exploded into fury, and in that moment Miguel saw her transformed. The frail old woman who had come to him, wrapped in a shawl and shivering with cold, was an old woman no more. Before him, in the full sun of an eternal moment, stood a young and beautiful woman, naked but for the shawl that fell from her beautiful breasts and shoulders. She scowled at him, her hair caught in the wind that had risen in her anger. A fierce light shone over her, licking at her hair and skin like dragon fire.

“You are mine!” she raged. “How dare you leave! How dare you!”

“I haven’t left you, my beloved,” he replied gently, watching her with intense interest. “But the dream of Miguel is done. Game over.”

“Not done! Not over!” she cried. “You can do much more—and you will do much more!” She turned her angry gaze toward the planet again, and pointed at the glittering lights. “Are you content to see your dream fade—here, right here before your eyes?”

Miguel, recognizing this voice, answered with a smile. “You can’t move me, my love. My journey is endless, but my poor body won’t go another mile.”

“The body will do as you say. It always has! Come away from this place and return to me . . . to us!” In the far distance rose the sounds of his family—brothers and sons, their wives and children—as they chanted in a circle, calling for his return to the physical world. He knew they meant to help. He knew they followed his mother’s will.

“I cannot,” he said simply.

“You are mine!” she shouted.

“I never was.”

Miguel looked into the eyes of his beloved and saw her beauty, her sorrow, and her worth. He heard the pleas of his mother, but could comprehend only the desperate cry of this one—who had been called many things in human storytelling. She represented humanity itself, a vibrant miracle trapped within its own spell. It was she who had lost the memory of paradise. It was she who had cast a shadow across sublime light. As he looked at her, remembering countless others who had said they loved him while they raged against themselves, his voice softened and he reached for her.

“Your temptations are strong—stronger even than your need for me.” The touch of his hand on her bare arm cooled the fire in her eyes, and he began to see his mother, old again, and trembling from an unfelt chill. She gazed at him, her eyes softening, pleading.

“Don’t worry yourself, Sarita,” he soothed. “I am everything now.”

“And what of me?” she asked, sounding like a child as she shivered in her nightgown, looking at him with wide, fearful eyes. “Do not leave me,” she cried. “Do not abandon me to a world that does not include you.”

“Miguel can’t return. He’s dead.”

“The old ones sometimes brought the dead to life!” Her eyes flashed, and then she lowered her gaze self-consciously. “I will ask. They will know, m’ijo,” she muttered.

“They would not bring back Miguel, your son, even if he agreed to it. He will be a spent dream, attempting to survive within a dying body.”

“So . . . it might be done!” his mother exclaimed. The fire was in her eyes again and he felt the temptation that burned strong behind it.

“Sarita, do not ask this.”

“I will have you back! I will, or—”

“Or what—or you’ll die? Do it now! Come home with me!”

“I am not ready for this bleak surrender!”

“Madre, you don’t listen.”

“Come back, then, and make me hear you,” she cried. “Come back and teach me what I would not learn.”

Miguel sighed. She was using words to bend him, as she always had. It had never been easy to win an argument with her. Sarita had been his teacher, his patient master, and it was hard for him now not to respond as a student. He leaned heavily against the trunk of the tree and turned his attention to the great, glittering sphere that floated above the horizon, welcoming certain dreams and abandoning others.

“Your dream is fading already,” Sarita pressed on, following his gaze. “Such a tragedy. Your sons are not strong enough without you; your apprentices are weak and selfish.”

“It doesn’t matter, Sarita. They are happier than they used to be. The world is happier.” He turned back to her with a look of contentment.

“Who gave birth to you?” she snapped. “Who taught you, and trained you, and prepared you to seduce Mother Earth herself?”

“Tu, Mamá,” he answered quietly. He knew what was coming. It would be hard to say no to her, as it had been hard to say no to the rest of her kind. She counted on that.

“Obey your mother. Time is running out, and I will not return without you.”

“And I ask you to join me, Sarita. There is nothing left for you but physical suffering. I would spare you that.”

“Do not paint me as a victim!”

Miguel regarded her thoughtfully. She was not a victim. She was a woman who abhorred the ravages of age and would not willingly face the end alone. They had collaborated for fifty years now, like two children inventing games—games, in this case, that changed the dreams of human beings. In his absence, there would be no one like her left in the world . . . but did she understand the price his body would pay to come back? Could she imagine the extent of his physical pain? Something stirred in him, and he felt the force of his love begin to shift the dream. He looked into his mother’s eyes and spoke to her, choosing his words carefully.

“If this body lives, Madre, it will need my presence; but it will also need something of the old structure.”

“Was it not I who taught you about the human form?”

“There’s no form left—no belief system.”

“Such things can be retrieved!”

“Who was Miguel, Sarita? How can he be recovered, when there is no answer to that question? There are only memories to point the way. Memories lie, and the lies change with every telling. Memories may give direction, but never truth.”

“They will give me you!”

Miguel looked at his mother, a vision of shifting moods and remembered phrases. She seemed real, warm, and so sweetly unassuming in her nightgown and slippers that he was tempted to change the conversation to everyday things. He wanted to tease her again, to make her laugh as he used to. He wanted to hear her calling him to breakfast, or casually gossiping about people he didn’t know. He wanted to feel her fingertips on his forehead, over his heart, as she gave him her usual morning blessing. This was not an ordinary encounter, however. She had found him somewhere between life and death. She had found him because life had laid a path for her . . . and now, instead of yielding to this fragile dream, she was attempting to manage it.

What could he offer her as consolation for a lost son? How could he calm her fears as he once did? She was fighting him, and it appeared she would not stop. She seemed set for battle, even as she stood unsteadily before him, an old woman in a cotton gown and slippers. She would be the warrior, frail as she was, until it became obvious that there were no more wars to fight. What she hoped to win he could not say, but she was plainly determined.

Miguel offered her a smile. “You have a shopping bag, I see. Was it your intention to put me in it?”

“I might have!”

“It appears to be full already.”

“Here!” she exclaimed, her voice raspy from all the talk. He noticed her renewed enthusiasm and let her talk. “I brought the usual tools of our trade! Perhaps we can do ceremony together . . . just as we used to. Prepare yourself, m’ijo. Make yourself pure, and bring the forces of life toward our task.”

Miguel did nothing. He watched his mother patiently as she bent over her bag of treasures, one hand resting on his knee and his eyes shining with a curious light. He had been a shaman once and knew what was coming. The time was over for tricks, but how could he tell her that? The dream was over for Miguel, the main character of his story, but she would not listen. She would insist on having her son returned to her, even if he was a faintest copy of the truth, living within the most tenuous form.

Sarita began lifting items out of her shopping bag with pride and newfound enthusiasm. Could it be that she and her playmate of old were to invent yet another new game? Could fortune be on her side again? She felt the nearness of her ancestors and smiled. Out of the heavy bag she pulled a small drum and stood it on the ground, carefully placing a stick wrapped in ceremonial red ribbon on top of it. From a tiny pouch she shook out a collection of Aztec shards and lined them up neatly on the skin of the drum, adding to the arrangement a glorious eagle feather. That done, she stacked three gourds at the base of the drum, along with a pot containing charcoal and frankincense. Satisfied that she had laid the groundwork for all that was to come, she reached into the bag for her precious icons, and one by one she placed them on the limb of the tree.

“Now! We start with the Son of the Virgin, of course!” She balanced a small figurine of Jesus on the broad limb of the tree. It was a clay piece, daintily sculpted, showing the Lord holding a lamb. Next, she brought out the Virgin Mary, arms opened in an ascension pose. “There. Mother and Son united,” Sarita said with satisfaction, then muttered a prayer.

Miguel watched in silence as she finished her prayer and hesitated, apparently unsure what to do next. Pursing her lips, she leaned over the bag again. After a few seconds of rummaging noisily, she straightened up, a brass statue of the Buddha sitting heavily in both her hands. She looked at her son, as if expecting a challenge.

“And why not?” she asked. “Is he so proud that he cannot come to the aid of a fellow teacher?”

“He is not proud, although he has good reason to be,” said Miguel calmly, nodding his head toward the lights that flickered above him. “His message still moves the dream of humanity.”

“Precisely so!” The old woman lifted the statue onto the tree, wedging it in the joint of two limbs. Closing her eyes, she mumbled another prayer, presumably to the ultimate bodhisattva himself. With another sigh of satisfaction, she reached into the bag again. This time she found a more delicate statue, wrapped in a silk cloth. It was a Chinese goddess, represented beautifully in pale jade. After a few seconds of consideration, she placed it beside the Virgin.

“A mother hears the cries of her children. She will answer.” Sarita looked at the two women, standing gracefully under the light of the living world, and she smiled. “Yes, a mother answers.”

Next came another brass figure—this one an elaborate version of the war goddess Kali. Miguel wondered how many households his mother had ransacked to fill her bag with fetishes. It was doubtful she knew the names of these goddesses, much less their significance.

“What do you think?” Sarita asked. “She seems like a fighter, but I don’t want her to think that death is our objective.”

“You may see that there are greater things to battle than death.”

Sarita looked at her son as if seeking comprehension. He met her look, and she felt more confusion than comfort. Looking quickly away, she reached for the nylon bag and shook it. There was something left at the bottom. Grabbing it, she brought it out with a shrug and a sigh. It was his childhood plastic figure of Popeye, pipe in mouth and both biceps bulging. This she had found in his dresser drawer.

“Now we can talk!” exclaimed her son, laughing. “I am what I am!”

Sarita smiled with satisfaction. The meaning of this silly item eluded her, but she had been right to suspect that it would please him. She withdrew her withered hands and tugged on her cotton gown nervously. What else? Feeling around for a pocket, she withdrew a necklace: a silver chain holding a star of David. This she hung from a leafy twig, and gave it a spin. Then she took the gold crucifix from around her neck and draped it over the same twig. The two charms spun and gleamed in the surreal light, sending little sparks of fire into the upper branches of the tree. “Old gods, young gods. How are they different?” she whispered.

“Why bother with gods at all?” her son asked. “Why call on the saints and the ancestors? Why bring any of them to a conference between mother and son?”

“Because we need help.”

“You need faith—but not in them.”

“Then . . . in what?”

“Is it possible you’re asking me this?”

“I have great faith in you, my lamb.”

“Not in me. Faith in you. It’s what brought you here, guided you to me. Faith is life itself, breathing through matter and moving us both.”

“You are not moving at all.”

“Am I not? Haven’t I been moved already?” He gave his mother a look of resignation, shaking his head. What more could he tell her?

“M’ijo,” his mother said softly, clearly. “I will have you return to me, or I will die trying.”

Yes, I see that, he reflected. Now, however, she was alive. Life still pushed through her, invigorating an old body with an unmistakable will. If she were to revitalize him, she would need that will to become even stronger, for he had slipped past her emotional reach. She would need total faith, which could come only from an awareness that presently eluded her. Yes, even Mother Sarita, sage and healer, had revelations waiting . . . and a journey ahead of her, too long postponed.

“You will not die today, Sarita,” he stated at last. “Nor, apparently, will I.”

He must take this chance to attend to her. His mother had always been ready to fight for him. She had always defended his right to be who he was and to achieve what he wanted. This time she was defending his right to live. As he saw the light come back into his mother’s face, the face that had graced him over the years with a thousand expressions of love and pride, his imagination was set alight. He would give Sarita a mission, if she felt she needed one, and give the warrior one last battle to fight. While he still could, he would set her on a journey far more important than its intended destination.

“You say you will do anything?” her son asked.

“Yes!”

“Even if it means following instructions?”

Sarita could feel her heart beat faster. “My angel, in this peculiar world, you are the teacher,” she said. “I will gladly take your instructions.”

Okay, now who was teasing whom? Miguel thought wryly. Even a dying man had to laugh. And he was surely dying . . . the process had begun. He could see that Sarita had come to him as an impassioned force of life; and in a dream made of memory and waning desires, only life could stop that process.

“Not my instructions, Madre,” he said, his smile brimming with love. “In my peculiar world, the outcome makes no difference. In someone else’s world it is everything.” He looked past her, to something in the distance.

“What do you—” she began. “Someone else?”

Sarita’s eyes followed his gaze to a point along the far horizon. “What is this?” she asked. “Another tree?”

Far from this gleaming place they occupied, on another hill in a similar landscape, loomed an enormous tree. She hadn’t noticed it until this moment. It was in every way the same as this one, the one that held her son on its noble branches. It was . . .

“A copy,” he informed her.

“And who sits there? A copy of my son?”

“An impostor of another kind. The one who lives in that tree knows the science of illusion. Speak to that one, Mother.”

Sarita looked across desolation to the tree in the distance. It was obscured by shadow, but radiant with color, as this one was. Nothing moved, however. Its leaves did not flutter, and nothing shone. Shadows did not play with flickering rays of light. There seemed to be no living thing among its branches. She was mesmerized. It took a deliberate act of will to look away and return her attention to her son, there in his Tree of Life, where he sat silhouetted against the brilliant colors of Earth.

“It is not more illusion I want. It is Miguel.”

“Your journey begins there, Sarita,” Miguel advised, taking another glance at the tree in the distance. Everything perceived was reflection, illusion. She would now have the chance to make her choices based on that awareness. “If you must know how to bring back your son, there lies your first instruction. As always, believe nothing you hear, but listen.”

He plucked another apple from the branch above him and began polishing it on the hem of his hospital gown. He took a hearty bite, and as he began to chew, sweet juice streaming down his chin, he lifted his eyes to the black sky and grinned with profound delight at the vision of a planet blazing with dreams. His mother would prove herself adept, he had no doubt. Her awareness would grow with every challenge. She would put her considerable wisdom to use and consult the ancestors, as she always had. She would deal with the one who rules the world of reflections—a world he had left far behind—and, for a while at least, she would forget the pain that springs from a mother’s intolerable fear. He winked at her cheerfully and readied himself to follow life, wherever it led.

Sarita smiled back, confident now as she felt the power of her intent moving time and circumstance forward. She must stay in her son’s dream, no matter what. Here, she could persuade him. Here, he would feel the force of her will. In her mind, she had made her case well, and for now he was conceding. He was pointing the way to a solution, however dubious it appeared to her; and this was progress. She would indulge him, of course. She would try things his way . . . until his way became her way.

Sarita set her eyes on the horizon. No one could face what lay ahead but her, however many hours her family might spend on music and prayer. She turned from Miguel without another word, picking up her empty bag, and began walking again, this time toward whatever lurked in the shade of the great tree in the distance.

There was no wind. In this still landscape, canopied by a storm-threatened sky, there was no sound. She wondered why she could no longer hear the relentless roll-and-rock that seemed to play continuously in her son’s head. Roll-and-rock? Rock-and-roll? Whatever, it was gone now. She was alone, for now. She swung her nylon bag lightly, in a gesture of defiance against doubt. Soon this strange escapade would be over. Soon she would have her son again—alive, and in her embrace.

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