The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys

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СКАЧАТЬ hesitated, and then turned around. Something had caught her attention, something that could not yet be seen. She would change course. She must follow her intuition—and the music.

      The music grew louder with every painstaking step she took. It seemed to vibrate from ground and sky at once, pulsing to a loud beat . . . perhaps to the beat of the drums in her living room. She thanked God silently for obedient children and continued walking, her feet moving heavily through a thick spray of illuminated dust. Beyond the near horizon, she could see Earth rising over the rim of this vacant dream, blazing with a spirited light. She caught her breath. In the darkening sky of storm and shimmering heat, she could see something silhouetted against Earth’s brilliance. A tree loomed in the distance! Its heavy limbs seemed to undulate with erotic pleasure, causing green leaves to quiver and shine. Sarita marveled at the sight of something so full and fertile in a land of such vast emptiness.

      Miguel . . . she whispered. In any dream where there was color and life, there would be her son. He used to say that fun followed him everywhere. Well, this was fun. This was magic. Wherever he was, there would be a celebration—of that she was certain. She walked on toward the tree, the music growing louder. The walk might have taken a lifetime, or a minute, or no time at all. She was aware only that her heart was beating to a lively tune while she walked. She must have come a long way, whatever the time, for the massive tree spread before her now—tall, wide, and graceful. Its limbs stretched in all directions, as if beckoning the universe into a huge, benevolent embrace. Sarita hesitated by a root that jutted out of star-silt, and peered up into what looked like a galaxy of suspended fruit twinkling in the unworldly light. As she gazed in wonder, her eyes fell on the one she had come to find. On the lowest limb of the gigantic tree, almost hidden among the dancing shadows and the thousand sparkling leaves, sat her son.

      Miguel Ruiz was lounging against the trunk of the tree in his hospital gown, quietly munching on an apple. Seeing her now, his eyes brightened and he waved enthusiastically for her to come closer. His mother edged toward the tree, choosing her steps carefully through the enormous tangle of roots, until she was standing by the limb that supported him. It swooped low along the ground, making it possible for her to look directly into his eyes.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ