September 24, 2016

Aztec Icon #11 – OCELOTL (Jaguar), Lord of the Animals

At long last –Aztec Icon #11: OCELOTL, Lord of the Animals. In the midst of other projects and family stuff, it’s taken me all summer to finish this icon for the coloring book YE GODS! THE AZTEC ICONS. Not for lack of effort but the enormous amount thereof. Actually I’d already done the jaguar rampant a couple years ago, my first drawing directly to digital. Thanks to my freeware graphics program GIMP, in rendering this boggling Mesoamerican zoo, I’ve discovered almost godlike powers over pixels. But I try to be a beneficent deity.

The vast amount of effort came first in locating historical images of creatures in the ancient codices for stylistic models. Those I couldn’t find had to be drawn from photographed nature. Actually, my iconic jaguar is a departure from Aztec style in its naturalistic treatment. While there are many jaguars in the codices, in my opinion they all look too “cartoonish” to make an impressive deity. Besides, I liked the challenge of creating the pelt pattern for the little Jaguar Knights in the Chalchiuhtotolin icon. The regalia indicates the creature’s divine nature, and the wavy fork at its muzzle is the symbol of its howl.

Please note the large “dots” at each corner of the icon. They are the Aztec number four, and this is the calendrical day-name Four Jaguar, the First Sun (World) in the Mesoamerican cosmological sequence. That very first YE GODS! icon of Atl was the day-name Four Water, the Fourth Sun, and the fifth icon of Ehecatl was the day-name Four Wind, the Second Sun. You’ll have to wait a bit for the third and fifth Suns later in this series.

Ocelotl is lord of all animals: those belonging to Huixtocihuatl, Lady of Salt (Goddess of the Sea on the upper left); those belonging to Tlaltecuhtli, the hermaphroditic Lord of the Earth (on upper right); and those of the air ruled by Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent (at top).

The split circle over the deity’s head is the traditional symbol of day and night, showing its lordship over diurnal and nocturnal animals, the jaguar itself being nocturnal. The eagle to the left represents the Aztecs’ main god Huitzilopochtli as the sun at midday, and my very own “batterfly” on the right is Itzpapalotl, Goddess of the Night Sky, who was often depicted as butterfly, bat, and/or bird.

Ocelotl is also lord of the strange animal Man, as can be seen in the vignette at the bottom depicting the legendary creation of man from a primordial tree as shown in Mixtec codices.

By the way, I’ll note that the Aztecs adopted most of their cosmology and “religion” from the peoples living then and earlier in central Mexico like the Mixtec, Zapotec, Huastec, Toltec, etc., etc.—as had they from the even more ancient Teotihuacan and Maya. In the long history of Mesoamerican civilizations, their underlying myths have mostly been related, even inherited.

Ocelotl, the Jaguar, is a mythology from deep in history. The earliest (in Mesoamerica) Olmec famously revered the Jaguar (jaguar-headed babies?), and may have named the day in the calendar for it. Or maybe not. Elsewhere I’ve suggested that the Mesoamerican calendar could have come from South America, from the even earlier Chavín civilization, and curiously, the Jaguar-Man was also a prominent feature of that culture. Just saying… Deep history.

Some other notes on my Mexican menagerie: I can’t even identify some of the animals or birds, especially the silly little bugs. That odd creature at the end of the deity’s tail is the salamander called in Nahuatl axolotl. My Monarch butterfly (center left, just above the stunning Turkey) is geographically appropriate, as are my several other nature drawings of Mexican fauna, including the quetzal birds (top right). Don’t overlook the Xoloitzcuintli, national dog of Mexico, at the Jaguar’s left foot. Can you identify any more of the critters in this montage?

(You can still see or download the previous ten icons in the YE GODS! series by clicking on them in the list on the page for the coloring book.)

ICON #11: OCELOTL

(Lord of the Animals)

To download this icon as a pdf file with a page of caption and model images from the Aztec Codices, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.” You can also download it in freely sizable vector drawings from the coloring book page.

OCELOTL (Jaguar), Lord of the Animals

OCELOTL {o-se-lotł} (Jaguar) is the Aztecs’ deity of all animals of land, sea, and air. It is a nagual of the god TEZCATLIPOCA who created the First Sun, Nahui Ocelotl (Four Jaguar), a world peopled by giants who were devoured by divine jaguars. Ocelotl, the 14^th day of the month, was usually a lucky day, but anyone born on the day Ce Ocelotl (One Jaguar) was destined for sacrifice to one god or another. OCELOTL is patron of scouts and warriors, and the elite corps of warriors of the night were known as the Jaguar Knights. Ever since the Maya, in Mesoamerica jaguar pelts in shades of tawny gold to white were the sacred possessions of priests and royalty.

August 22, 2016

Huixtocihuatl and Mictlancihuatl, Aztec goddesses

No, I haven’t been on vacation since the middle of May. Well, actually I did go away with family for a week at the beginning of July to a beach house in Galveston. Just a week though. Otherwise I’ve been making good progress on the eleventh icon (Ocelotl-Jaguar) for my YE GODS! coloring book and restoring photographs by the dozen for a biography of my mother, which I hope to finish by October and publish under Writing. As if that weren’t enough of an excuse for no blog postings these three months, I’ve also been dealing with some medical issues I won’t bore you with, except to say they involved surgery and prescription for a blood thinner. No fun whatsoever.

Meanwhile, I’ve wondered what to write about next. I considered a lament about the current sad climate for dance in Santa Fe, but you don’t want to read about my withering opinion of what they’re calling nightlife and dance music nowadays. Rants about today’s absurd political situation seemed particularly egregious, and philosophical essays seemed pointless. I’ve been planning to write about 30 years ago, but that purely autobiographical subject, while formative and somewhat dramatic, isn’t all that exciting. So I’ll fall back on my eccentric art for a topic.

Sorry about taking so long on the Ocelotl icon, but it demands an exorbitant number of elements. The Jaguar being the Aztec’s main animal deity, lord of the animals, I’ve got to include as many of the animals indigenous to Mexico as I can manage. It’s been a hoot drawing them: armadillo, peccary, xoloitzcuintli, quetzal, turkey, iguana, tortoise, coati, etc. There are several yet to go, like pelican and giant anteater. It will present the Mesoamerican biota of creatures of the land, air, and sea.

To show this inclusiveness, I’ve drawn Tlaltecuhtli, the androgynous deity of the earth (the land); Quetzalcoatl, the composite deity of the sky (the air); and Huixtocihuatl, the Lady of Salt (the sea). In addition, in the tenth icon of Mictlantecuhtli I included a new cameo of the Lady of the Land of the Dead, Mictlancihuatl.

Since these two divine Ladies don’t figure in the Aztec ceremonial calendar, they didn’t make it into my batch of illustrations for that 1993 book. So here for your delectation are images of two more Aztec goddesses:

Huixtocihuatl, Lady of Salt, and Mictlancihuatl, Lady of the Land of the Dead

May 24, 2016

The Iris Man

What a wonderful May! For the first time in maybe ten years I’ve got a stellar flowering of iris. Every spring the buds would be forming and then it would freeze hard enough in vicious late April to turn their buds into what I disgustedly call “corpsicles.”

I feel so heartily happy about the exceptional display of my iris this year because for a great long while those exquisite flowers/plants provided my livelihood. For fifteen years, as noted elsewhere, I was the Iris Man at the Santa Fe Farmers Market (1997-2012), and these amazing blooms bring back fond memories of the indescribable varieties I sold and the beautiful gardens I worked in. Driving around town now, I admire iris beds I planted long ago and rejoice in how well they grow.

Well, the Iris Man is back! This year, while the days often got unseasonably warm, it stayed quite cold at night, and I guess that held the rhizomes back a bit. Also we didn’t get our usual late freeze. When those enthusiastic bloom stalks started emerging from the fans of leaves, I was on pins and needles watching the weather. Then each day became a new thrill with the opening of another variety. They should last another week.

Here are several of my prize varieties with their names—if I know. Could somebody please identify the unknowns for me. (Use the comment doohickey below.) I haven’t included the more common yellows, reds, or pinks, though they are all equally gorgeous, if you know what I mean. I was sad that two of my favorites didn’t make it to flower this year: Loud Music and Heartbreak Hotel. Maybe next year.

Iris blooms, 2016

May 16, 2016

Aztec Icon #10 – MICTLANTECUHTLI, Lord of the Land of the Dead

Though there were times when I wondered if I’d ever finish this drawing, I’ve actually managed to complete the next icon in the series for the coloring book YE GODS! THE AZTEC ICONS.

This icon of the Lord of Mictlan, the Land of the Dead, contains a lot more mythological narrative than even hinted in the caption. Starting at the upper left and moving clockwise around the temple, dead persons enter Mictlan at the mouth of the Underworld. Then the monstrous deity Xolotl serves as their guide (psychopomp), and the dog Itzcuintli is their companion through Mictlan, where they must climb eight hills and cross nine rivers (in four days). The realm of Mictlantecuhtli is an empty place of darkness, dust, and vermin/vile insects (centipedes and scorpions among others), but that’s where most people had to go after death. I wonder why they ever bothered to struggle over all those hills and rivers just to get to a nowhere like that.

Meanwhile, in the center of the lower register the wind deity Ehecatl (nagual of Quetzalcoatl) negotiates with the Lady of the Land of the Dead, Mictlancihuatl, for the bones from the Fourth Sun (Four Water). He then breathes life into those bones to create the people for the current Fifth Sun (Four Earthquake).

(You can still see or download the previous nine icons by clicking on them in the list on the page for the coloring book.)

ICON #10: MICTLANTECUHTLI

(Lord of the Land of the Dead)

Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Land of the Dead

MICTLANTECUHTLI {meek-tłan-te-kooh-tłee} is the most prominent of several deities of death, 5^th lord of the night, and 6^th lord of the day. His worship reputedly involved ritual cannibalism. (Counter-intuitively, skulls and skeletons were symbols of fertility, health, and abundance.) His wife is Mictlancihuatl. Only souls who died normal deaths went to the Land of the Dead, Mictlan; souls of heroes, warriors, sacrificial victims, or who die in childbirth joined TONATIUH in the Fourth Heaven, and those who drown went to TLALOC’s Eighth Heaven, the paradisiacal Tlalocan.

April 18, 2016

Source of Aztec Calendar

A friend mentioned that the Aztec ceremonial calendar of 260 days might be based on the zenithal passage of the sun at some particular latitude. I calculated: 260 calendar days / 365.25 solar days = 0.7118 of the annual cycle X 93.6 degrees per year (back and forth between the Tropics) = 66.62834 X .5 = 33.3142 degrees – 23.4 from Tropic of Capricorn to Equator = 9.9142 degrees N (9^o54’ 51”). I was surprised that this latitude runs through Costa Rica.

Reading the book “Cycles of the Sun, Mysteries of the Moon” by Vincent H. Malmström (University of Texas Press, 1997), I was even more surprised that the professor of geography announced the latitude as 14.8 degrees N, without showing calculations. He then identified the pre-Olmec site of Izapa as where the calendar was probably invented. By my count, at 14.8 degrees N, the southern lap of the sun’s cycle lasts about 297 days. That’s way off.

Let’s assume that the invention of the calendar happened 1400—1100 BC to allow time for it to get to Izapa and, as Malmström so reasonably proposes, cross over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec into the early Olmec area. But there were pre-Olmec cultures all along the Pacific coast from Mexico through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and down into Costa Rica. As a matter of fact, in Costa Rica the Las Mercedes site (from 1500 BC) lies on the slope of the (active) Turrialba volcano at 10.167 degrees N. It’s worth noting that Turrialba’s peak is at 10.01 degrees N, so Las Mercedes is directly east, which would make for a huge gnomon.

Now I read in “The Art of Mesoamerica” by Mary Ellen Miller (Third Edition, Thames & Hudson, 2001) that the unworkable Izapa proposition has survived in scholarship for at least four more years. But this author proposes the human nine-month birth cycle as more likely. I calculate 9 x 30 days = 270—close but no cigar, and too variable. Miller argues that a zenithal source of the ceremonial count “seems an unlikely basis for a calendar first recorded to the north of the 15-degree latitude.” Given the astronomical bent of the ancients, I’d say it’s an exquisitely likely basis for a calendar, whenever or wherever first conceived or recorded.

IF the 260-day ceremonial calendar was based on the sun’s zenithal passage, THEN it must have been invented at a latitude where that time period obtained—approximately 9.9 degrees. That latitude also runs along the Caribbean across the northern sections of Colombia and Venezuela, but there don’t seem to be any significant culture sites in those areas from appropriate times.

If not in Costa Rica, then how about at 9.9142 degrees South? That imaginary line runs across the Amazon basin just slightly north of the Beni region in Brazil and Bolivia —which by the way hosted an enormous hydrological culture from 4000 BC to 1300 AD(!). Though they built canals, causeways, raised fields and living sites, we essentially know nothing about them.

That latitude also crosses the Andes in Peru, running right through Chavín de Huantar in the Ancash valley. It was the main site of the earliest South American civilization (1200—400 BC), which occupied many other sites in the region and along the coast. Other sites were even older though, like El Paraíso (2500—1100 BC). But the Chavín culture was the first to produce distinctive art and ceremonial architecture, specifically truncated pyramids. Chavín de Huantar lies directly east of an Andean peak which again could serve as a magnificent gnomon.

Significantly, there are many obelisk– and slab-shaped stelae/gnomons at the site, the main one being the Lanzon stela, a 15+-foot stone spire with wonderful decorative carvings. It stands within a pit in the “temple” and extends up through a hole in the roof, a foolproof way to demonstrate the exact zenithal passage of the sun. By the way, the figure carved on the stela points eloquently upward with one hand and downward with the other. Of course, this site’s 260 days between the sun’s passages are on its northern lap between the Tropics.

I propose that Chavín de Huantar was the birthplace of the 260-day calendar, which probably was what caused its rise in ceremonial importance around 1200 BC, turning it into the cultural and religious hub of that first civilization and a destination for pilgrimages and rituals. Even though no archaeological traces of a 260-day calendar have been found amongst these non-literate Andean civilizations, they may well have observed it religiously alongside the solar calendar, which is precisely how it worked later in Mexico. And it got to Mexico by sea.

The Chavín and other even earlier Pacific coastal cultures were accomplished sea-faring folk using balsa-wood rafts and boats. (Balsa trees grow all along the coasts of South and Central America.) There was a lot of maritime activity, trade, and exchange among the various cultures long before the Chavín. In the dim past maize was brought from Mexico to the Andes, and the art of metal-working passed in the opposite direction. The Pacific coast from western Mexico down to northern Chile was one enormous “economic zone” of productive ecologies between sea and mountains. The Chavín were the first efflorescence of those cultures (fertilized by contacts with the Beni?), and wherever they went, they understandably preached their religious calendar.

Besides the calendar, the Chavín spread other concepts of their culture and art all along the coast. Their pyramids and intricate figures and motifs of jaguars, caimans, and serpents bear a distinct resemblance to the architecture, themes, and imagery of the later Maya and other Mexican cultures. The Chavín anthropomorphic jaguar and truncated pyramid must surely have accompanied the ceremonial calendar across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to inspire the Olmec—and subsequent Mesoamerican cultures.

March 15, 2016

Two Decades Ago

It’s always fun, or at least interesting, to look back over the decades of our lives and see where we were when and what we were experiencing in those bygone days. Not long ago I took a look back a mere decade to a thriving and exciting situation.

Now I want to step back yet another decade and talk about that fascinating time capsule. From September, 1996 to September, 1997, when I was in my mid-fifties, was a year of remarkable transition, though perhaps a stereotypical mid-life crisis. Two decades ago brought the end of my sixth personal era (the Mature Gay Gentleman) and heralded the birth of my seventh persona (the Grandfatherly Gay Character).

That mid-September morn, standing on the sidewalk on Montezuma Avenue outside the La Casa Building (note the poetic persistence of the Aztec and La Casa themes in my life), I watched a huge U-Haul truck drive away with its institutional load. It was hauling the whole of the Western States Arts Federation off to Denver, leaving me and twenty more professional administrators unemployed. Thank you, Newt Gingrich, and your Contract on America. You don’t want to know the gory budgetary details.

As Director of Administration, I’d dutifully organized this planned exodus but also looked around for a commensurate position. I even went to San Francisco to interview with the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies. But shortly before that interview, after considering the whole San Francisco city/California thing, I decided I didn’t want to leave Santa Fe. Back home that summer, I applied and made the finals for the heads of the McCune Foundation and SITE Santa Fe but lost both bouts.

So that September I went on unemployment and ground out the requisite applications for a certain number of jobs each week, knowing all the while that nobody wanted an overly mature, upper-level, nonprofit arts administrator—with reasonable salary expectations—nor were there any such openings in the first place. As I said before, stereotypical. However, rather than agonize, I decided to go on vacation. After 15 years of hard work, I could take a sabbatical.

At the time, I was driving a silver 1985 Plymouth Horizon and headed west. First stop was the Grand Canyon. In the 70’s I’d hiked down from the North Rim, and in the 80’s from the South Rim. This time I camped on the South Rim and just stayed up there. Still I managed to waste as much film as almost anybody on the unimaginable spectacle. I love this shot from the rim (inner gorge in foreground). Look, 20 years ago you could still see through the pollution to the far North Rim. Imagine that.

Grand Canyon, 1996

Westward-ho, this middle-aged man went on to see the boggling Hoover Dam and then went for a hike at Lake Mead at a spot reputed to be a nudist area. Feeling liberated from work and societal stuffiness, I tromped nude though the scrub willows along the lake. I saw only one odd naked fellow with a tent, whose kind invitation to tea I politely declined. From there I climbed to the top of a low hill to a giant tamarisk tree which served obviously and odorously as rookery for several unkindnesses of ravens. A malevolence of ravens?

Next stop was San Diego. I pitched my tent at the Campground on the Bay in view of Sea World across the water but didn’t go there till a couple days later. Instead, I spent my days at Black’s Beach near La Jolla and Torrey Pines State Park. An honest-to-John nude beach, you get down to it from the high bluff (at least back then) via a fragmented and dubious wooden staircase. Safely down, I shucked clothes and explored the lovely but sparsely populated (late-season) beach, my first time to the actual Pacific. (Puget Sound doesn’t count.) I noted the waves were understated, more like the Gulf than the Atlantic, eponymously pacific surf.

Spreading my towel back near the cliff out of the constant up-draft wind from the sea, I lay there in my splendid nakedness watching the hang-gliders take off from the bluff top and float around in the rising columns of wind like so many colorful seagulls. In skinny strolls along the beach I encountered only a few other bathers enjoying their own private leisure. I’d been advised that gay shenanigans went on back among the occasional dunes, but sandy sex wasn’t and still isn’t my bag. On one of my walks along the water I encountered a guy who was impressed by my cock-a-doodle, even though it wasn’t a Prince Albert.

While in San Diego, I did indeed visit the wonderful Sea World and go to the Zoo, which was almost more than I could handle. Most sentimental was my walk in Balboa Park where some years before my dear old friend Charles ended his troubled days on one of the park benches. Wandering around the city, I found a Kwan Yin to add to my collection, a beautifully brocaded figure riding on a fish-dragon, a good omen for my unemployed future. On the way home, I went by Joshua Tree National Park and took an illegal buff hike among rocks and Joshua trees. Isn’t it odd that only people care about clothes?

Well vacated, I returned to Santa Fe and got back into the swing of making futile job applications to get my meagre unemployment checks. That fall, with the luxury of not working, I started pulling together a draft of my book on ‘get’. (It would take another decade to reach its final form.) By December when public assistance ended, I really had to do something for an income. So I went to work part-time helping my daughter’s young man Rich in his woodworking shop. A totally new experience for me, the complicated job of making cabinets and doors was actually rather relaxing. The sanding and finish work was less fulfilling and far more tedious.

With the New Year and the unaccustomed leisure, I took a trip to Carlsbad Caverns—where I’d once gone with family in like 1953. I think it was an early Monday morning, January 7, when I got there and found the parking lot empty. As a matter of fact, beyond a couple workers at the food service, no one was there. I mean no one. I did a totally private tour through the caverns. It was almost mystical. You could even hear the distant drip of water from stalactites. Around noon, just as I was leaving, another car pulled into the parking lot. Afterwards I took long drives along the eastern and northern escarpments of the Guadalupe Mountains around to Dog Canyon on the west. How marvelous to think of that vast coral reef now thrust up as mountains.

After that special getaway, I returned to Santa Fe and my lot as a part-time carpenter’s helper. It was actually sort of fun work, the only pressure being to do it right, and I enjoyed long talks with the young fellow who had already been Aimée’s main squeeze for ten years. While warm and friendly, he was seriously amused by his girlfriend’s father being a gay man. Life rolled on smoothly for a few months with no other professional prospects, but I must admit that I found the physical labor tiring. So I got the idea of finding someone to share the work with me.

I mentioned my search for relief to an old friend, Peter Igo, a great silk-screen artist, and he suggested a young fellow who’d done some handyman chores for his place in Eldorado. (Peter’s remarkable “grow-hole,” a six-foot deep ditch covered with plastic, is what inspired my digging the “greenhole” several years later, and when he passed from cancer, I salvaged his many plants through Babylon Gardens.)

A posed portrait of Marcelo. He spoke spectacular English.

When I met in early May with Peter’s handyman, a tall, attractive Brazilian named Marcelo, he seemed interested in the work. The next day, May 10, I took Marc to my special spot on the Santa Cruz River in the Caja de Cundiyo, where we splashed and played in the rushing stream.

This is moi in the Cundiyo waterfall.

Back at home that afternoon, I didn’t decline Marc’s intimate proposition. After all, it had been at least five years since I’d gotten physical with anyone. Well, it turned out that Marc didn’t relieve me of any woodworking duties, but against my better judgment, we entered into an amorous liaison. As liaisons go, this one lasted longer than necessary—enough said. Marcelo is now back in Rio de Janeiro, and I’ve got good reason to think that he regularly checks in on this website. I hope he appreciates this fond mention.

Meanwhile, on May 16 Aimée and Rich got married—after ten years together.

Aimée and Rich, May 16, 1997

The affair was in the garden of our local posh hotel, La Posada de Santa Fe (to whom long before I’d sold a huge Eastlake walnut over-mantle mirror which I’d brought from DC and painstakingly restored). The whole family from both sides showed up for the festivities, and I met Rich’s father Harvey for the first and only time. He looked exactly like Ernest Hemingway. I was resplendent in my tuxedo (not as much as Rich), and still have the rose (like his) that I wore in my lapel. Safely cushioned in a little jar, its pale pink has turned all golden brown after these 20 years.

Actually I didn’t need any help with the woodworking after all. In June, some old professional friends offered me a job as Business Manager for their cultural nonprofit, Recursos de Santa Fe. After only a week or so on that job, with great chagrin (for the first time in my life!), I told my friends that I was unable to do the job. What they really needed was an accountant.

No matter—the next week I snatched up another job as assistant to the Dean of the College at the College of Santa Fe. (Both he and the institution are now defunct.) No sooner did I report for work than the Dean took off for the summer to care for his ailing mother. With absolutely no job description and even less orientation, I had to figure out what I was supposed to do to run the academic show. It was fun, not to mention a snap, dealing with the closed universe of students and faculty, and rather pleasant having great clout. Big fish in tiny pond.

So the summer of 1997 turned out to be exceptional. I’d weathered my mid-life crisis and for that matter come out on the other side with a new professional niche—and what’s more, a young boyfriend. (Marc was only 32.)

As soon as the Dean got back, before the fall term was to start, I took my guy from Brazil on a grand tour of our western parks and landmarks. We hit Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Hopi-land, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, and Aztec Ruins. Talk about a lot of film! I wish I could post a whole travelogue of photos of me and my Brazilian, but there simply isn’t space or time to do so.

Of particular note was the morning Marc and I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, making the descent by 10:30. Shortly after a kindly hiker took this shot of us crossing the bridge over the Colorado River, when we were at Phantom Ranch wading in the creek cooling off our tired dogs, I remarked that we were just about as far from civilization as one could get. Not a minute later from over by the restroom shed a hiker, who had ironically been using the emergency telephone, hollered to his nearby friends: “Hey, guys, Princess Diana was just killed in a car crash!” So much for escaping from civilization. Within mere hours of its occurrence, that earth-shattering news had reached down to us at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Marcelo and me in the Grand Canyon, 1997

When we’d recovered from that culture shock and appropriately mourned the royal passing, Marc and I set off on the ascent. On the climb from Indian Gardens, we stopped frequently to breathe, etc., and made it up to the rim by early evening. We marveled at the 16 miles, the uphill half of which had felt more like 20. Marc said I was in terrific shape for such an old man. (Note the minimal middle-aged spread. I’m proud to have an even smaller paunch now—and to be in even better shape.)

When we got back to Santa Fe, it was high autumn, and my rocky mountain asters were in full spate. In this sweet photo of Marc and me you can also see the golden maximilian sunflowers. Eventually, I’d make hunks of money at the Farmers Market selling them. Also eventually, I’d turn the hillside behind us into a bunch of terraces to display my found-object assemblages which I cleverly call Yard Art. However, I have not yet discovered another boyfriend.

Marc and me hip-deep in asters

March 9, 2016

Aztec Icon #9. – MAYAUEL, Goddess of Pulque

After along haul of boggling detail, I’ve completed another icon in the series for the coloring book YE GODS! THE AZTEC ICONS. That makes nine in two years. Only 17 to go. Good thing I’m patient—and persistent.

The icon of this popular goddess of drunkenness (as well as intoxication by other drugs), was a lot of fun to draw if only because of all the drunken rabbits. She herself is based on an image from Codex Rios with details from Codex Laud and Codex Nuttall, and the vignettes come from various other sources like Codex Vindobonensis. It was also a rare chance to draw the other hallucinogens: psilocybin mushrooms, Datura and morning glory flowers, peyote cactus, and marijuana leaves. The two little blooming peyotes are drawn from plants I used to have in my greenhouse. The flowers are pink.

(You can still see or download the previous eight icons by clicking on them in the list on the page for the coloring book.)

ICON #9: MAYAUEL

(Goddess of Pulque)

To download this icon as a .pdf file with a page of caption and model images from the Aztec Codices, right click here and select “Save Target (or Link) As.” You can also download it in freely sizable vector drawings from the coloring book page.

MAYAUEL is the personification of the maguey plant and a maternal and fertility goddess connected with nourishment. Besides fibers for ropes and cloth, the most important maguey product is the alcoholic beverage pulque (or octli). As a pulque goddess, she is often depicted with many breasts to feed her children, the Centzon Totochtin (400 Rabbits), octli gods that cause drunkenness. (Drinking was generally only permitted in ceremonies, but the elderly were free to drink whenever they wished. There were rabbit deities for all kinds of intoxication.) With the birth-name of Eight Flint, she also protects mature wombs and probably is the wife of PATECATL.

January 16, 2016

A Decade Ago

Two weeks into the New Year may be a bit late, but I’m inclined to reminisce about life as I knew it a decade ago. I feel like, you know, doing some spontaneous memoir-izing. Indulge a few fond ‘memoiries,’ if you will. Let’s look back on when I was still the Grandfatherly Gay Character around Santa Fe, 2005-2006, sole proprietor and employee of Babylon Gardens Salvage Nursery. Oddly, of my two previous careers, it was the most wonderful and fulfilling.

Though I’d supposedly “retired” on early Social Security in 2004 from a long career of arts administration, I‘d kept on working half-time in local nonprofit organizations (including education, health care, and philanthropy), for minimal compensation, of course. For some years I’d been happily working on grants and technical assistance programs with the Santa Fe Community Foundation and then in April 2006 decided to move over to manage a new state-wide organization of nonprofits called NGO-NM. The sad finale to my illustrious administrative career was having to close that worthy effort down at the end of the year. I still have the incised plastic door-plaque somewhere.

My 2005-6 season (speaking both academically and organizationally) started quite dramatically in August with Hurricane Katrina. Residing in Metairie, my elderly mother (87) lived through it, sheltering at Bonabelle High School. Of course, that’s a remarkable story in itself. When she finally made it here to New Mexico—on her own! —to stay with me, I convinced her to write about the historic event for her descendants. Soon I should type it up and post it for them and you.

In late November 2005 when at least Metairie was back to functioning again, I drove Mother home. Miraculously her home was essentially undamaged, no flooding at all as it stands atop a vestigial ridge between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi. A few blocks north or south had been six feet under water. Personally, I’m inclined to attribute her good fortune to a Kwan Yin I’d given her. Compassionately, the female Buddha still stood on a console directly across from a thin aluminum picture window to the southeast, having apparently peacefully faced down Katrina, the monster storm of the new century. Meanwhile the big maple at that corner of the house had snapped off about four feet above the ground and merely fallen on the yard.

As if I weren’t being creative enough with the organization work, soon as I got back to Santa Fe for the holidays with my local family (grandson then just over three), I went back to work on my weird linguistic hobby of some 40 years, a structural definition of the innocuous English verb ‘get.’ By the time I started with NGO-NM, it was ready to publish with http://www.AuthorHouse.com, then under a different name, entitled “Getting Get, the Glossary of a Wild Verb,” which came online in November. Sometimes since, I’ve humbly suggested to forbearing friends that this absurd little pamphlet could well be my work of genius. If only anyone but I were eccentric enough to see its simple profundity.

NEWS FLASH:

GETTING GET is posted on this website for free download.

Just right click here and do it.

You probably already know, however, that Santa Fe’s notorious for poor folks having to work multiple jobs to get by. Accordingly, besides organizing stuff and defining the wild verb, I spent a miraculous third half of my time as the famous Used Plant Man at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. In honor of my signature product, in the summers I turned into the infamous Iris Man.

Every Saturday morning, and Tuesdays in summers, I peddled previously-nurtured, restored, or recycled house plants. Not mention that in my spare time I did what I cleverly and artistically called ‘land-shaping,’ which involved terracing, rock walls, and laying flagstone patios. In other words, I played around digging in various folks’ yards, gardens, and sandboxes.

2005 in the greenhole

2005 in my booth

That greenhouse was of my own design and construction. I called it my ‘greenhole,’ literally a hole I dug six feet deep and slapped a plastic roof over it .

The Greenhole

The only other infrastructure for the business were folding tables, a portable pop-up tent with the proud banner of Babylon Gardens,

2006 booth at Farmers Market

And the gallant Grover (the Grey, like Gandalf), a 1970 Chevy C-10 pickup. Grover hauled load after load of plants and paraphernalia through so many pre-dawns and then stood nearby for thousands of touristic snapshots of a typical Santa Fe scene.

Grover the Grey

As if doing meaningful work for society, publishing a fantastic book, and selling spectacular plants weren’t enough, in June, 2006 I came out as an artist in an art show for the Santa Fe Gay Pride celebration. I’d earned the gay category 45 years earlier, also in June. I showed three pieces: the assemblage shrine Bull of the Sun, the carved sandstone Venus, and my very first piece of digital art, the cover for my novel “Gymnopedie.”

NEWS FLASH:

“Gymnopedie” the novel has been withdrawn from publication and

rewritten as a backwoods novella called “Bat in a Whirlwind,”

available for free download by right-clicking here.

2006 publicity with baby jade

While we’re at it, I want to share with you a picture of one of my favorite plants in the greenhole. Soon I really should do a post with more stuff on the wondrous plants I had in there. This one has an outrageous Latin name I loved reciting to folks: pachyphytum oviferum amethystinum (fat-leafed, egg-shaped, amethyst). Here it is in bloom in 2005.

Pachyphytum Oviferum Amethystinum

The Farmers Market always went outdoors somewhere in late April around my birthday, and in both the 2005 and 2006 seasons that was on the wide-open corner of Guadalupe and Cerrillos skirting the railroad tracks behind SITE Santa Fe. In my humble used plant vendor opinion that point out there in view of two busy streets was the perfect, I mean the ideal, location for our wonderful community market.

In years past we’d simply popped up our tents, if we had one, further north along the tracks across Paseo de Peralta behind Santa Fe Clay. (And in years before my time, it had been in the parking lot of Sanbusco Center.) Now almost all the vendors, including makeshift Babylon Gardens, flew a white canopy like a flag to be seen from all around. We were truly a spectacle of folk life that made me proud.

As a matter of fact, it seemed a vindication of the pleasure a certain clueless kid once enjoyed in peddling peaches in a booth beside the highway. It was that splendid interaction with people around a subject you deeply love and the thrilling opportunity to share the work of your own hands with them. Every day, even the slow ones, I loved the glory of hawking my beautiful plants, talking about them and how they like to be treated. In a word, it was a trip.

Ironically, the fortuitous move from the hinterlands of the railyard up to this prime spot was caused by big city projects afoot for the neglected old railyard. I believe the powers that be moved the Market out where people could see it to get support for the new building they were preparing in those same hinterlands as an indoor place for us in the winters.

Among other opponents of that project, I felt the current arrangement, as I said before, was ideal. For the winter seasons, we’d been going indoors at El Museo Cultural, and vended there happily, even with poor lighting and no call for flashy tents. It felt very folksy, local farmer cultural.

But the majority of vendors, or at least the power that were at the time, had their hearts set on a fancy market hall like in Boston or Seattle or wherever. This ambition caused a whole bunch of trouble, but don’t get me started.

(Can’t help it. For just a few repercussions. Before the building was even done, the Trust for Public Land and other powers kicked the Market off that superb spot on the busy corner to make the new Railyard Park. I suggested, clearly not vociferously enough, that they design that great space on the corner for a fancy open market plaza for us farmers and for other fairs on other days. Irony Alert: My sweet old vending space is now in a rotunda of rose gardens where few people care to walk. Roses to be smelled and not sold.

Kicking us out made the Market wander for a couple summers around parking lots. The summer beside the DeVargas Center was a huge come-down, but in more levels of irony, our summer of 2008 in the almost ideal PERA lot was the most spectacular in the history of my unorthodox nursery. To make matters worse for us gypsy farmers, for some reason we also lost the El Museo space and had to spend a winter in a grungy industrial place on Cerrillos Road. Again the irony, it had once upon a time been a gay nightclub, the Cargo Club, I think it was called. Or Club Luna? I’d gone there only a few times to dance.)

At any rate, between Market days Grover and I would tootle all over town and even out to Espanola or Eldorado to grub freely in folks’ iris beds or do plant rescues or paid land-shaping jobs. It was a splendid gimmick, an ingenious concept if I say so myself. I provided a free, much-appreciated community service and turned my (minimal) physical labor into totally free merchandise. No overhead except gas for good old Grover. Good job for an old guy.

Frequently folks gave me way more plants than I could ever hope to sell at the Market. Like 500 lb. of blue iris? I’d just give them away. Once I got a whole greenhouse collection from an estate and recycled (propagated) thousands of new plants to give away to garden clubs, school classes, and anybody I could foist them off on. I always kept a FREE box at my booth, and folks checked it frequently for adoptions. I joked that I was a “philplanthropist.”

Sometimes I’d simply show up at a business or office building, like that time at the Toney Anaya Building when I marched in and told the receptionist, “I’ve got a giant jade tree that wants to live in your lobby.” A couple times I simply arranged for gigantic plants to go to great spots like at the Capitol complex or other public spaces. They had to do the hauling though.

A decade ago I was a plant freak in his element, and my only problem was believing what a happy old man I was. Even older now, I’m still a happy fellow—and I believe it.

January 10, 2016

Rediscovered Sculptures and Artist Statements

While I was digging around in the piles of stuff we surround ourselves with, I was very pleased to find some forgotten photos and rediscover some more pieces of my sculpture, which I’ve just added to the gallery. Check it out.

Since I’m now in a leisurely mood, I think I’ll run off at the keyboard about the newly remembered pieces with attempts at artist statements. In case they’re helpful in inspiring your aesthetic appreciation.

Boy on a Dolphin (sold)

Boy on a Dolphin: This is the first piece I ever sold—at my first show. It’s composed of two pieces of old iron (like plow-points or teeth of some kind) on a micaceous stone wave. The upright boy was found in the DC area in the 70’s, the dolphin was found in New Mexico in the 80’s. When I put the two pieces together, they echoed that prehistoric/modern Cycladic art of the Minoan era from around the Aegean Sea. Though at the time I didn’t know from Cycladic, I heard the Art loud and clear.

Dark of the Moon (sold)

Dark of the Moon: The most complex of all my assemblages, this shrine includes wood, stone, metal, glass, magnets, ceramics, lava, white sand, and (apparently) rubber, all on a slate panel. It’s one of my favorite pieces, but it sold in my second show and moved to California. Zoom in on the surreal details, like the ball-bearing stars. There are even piston rings. The true enigma is the figure on the altar with the dark visage (rubber?). I once found a similar piece, but less detailed, and the “head” was empty. The centered “dark moon” globe on the “sky” backdrop is a spherical lava geode, and the 13 irregular porcelain “white moons” are for the visible stages.

What does the dark of the moon mean to you? To me it’s connected with a verse of Robert Herrick’s poem “The Night Piece, to Julia” that I’ve quoted elsewhere. Starting, “Let not the darke thee cumber, / What though the Moon do’s slumber?” the verse embodies my refusal to live in fear, which I mentioned emphatically in a recent blog on fear and violence.

Cipactli – Earth Monster (sold)

Cipactli: Being an inveterate curiosity collector, one of my stash piles was of interesting weathered wood. Over the years I’d walk by and occasionally add another piece as inspiration seized me to the plank lying on the ground, and either the pile or the sandy New Mexico dirt (spontaneously?) spawned this Earth Monster of Aztec cosmology, cipactli, the first day of the month. The primordial one that ate Tezcatlipoca’s left footwhen the Black God defeated it and created the First Sun (world) on its back. I like its mythic animistic Art. The Monster went from my first show to a friend of my Farmers Market days.

Tepeyollotl – Heart of the Mountain (sold)

Tepeyollotl: Another Aztec shrine, this is the Heart of the Mountain. I can’t resist listing the components on the board: two axe-heads, one broken; broken hammer-head, fragment of gear-wheel, sheet-iron triangle, and multiple piston rings and pieces. In the foreground stands a heavily rusted chisel-pointed spike on a magnet with fallen rust flakes clinging to it, and the base is a grindstone from an electric drill. It went to another Farmers Market friend.

(Forgive me for this for parenthetical sentimentalism: I gave that (Sears) drill to my late father for his birthday when I was 10. You do the math. Then, believe it or not, that drill in its little red box became my only legacy from him. And then in the late 80’s, when I had some workers doing something around the house, the heirloom drill disappeared, less its battered red box and accessory bits, which I still have hanging about somewhere.)

Signifires (sold)

Signifires: Regrettably the clumsy photo shows only two of the three installations on weathered wooden posts mounted on a long, narrow board, another of my favorite early pieces. On a much shorter piece of wood and at a greater distance, the missing third is an identical rusty nail with identically twisted wire around it with loop and free ends waving like flames or smoke in the wind, signal fires. At least that’s my artist’s rationale for the feeble neologistic title. But of course they might also be misspelled signifiers. But then what might they signify?

I find the back-story on this one astounding. Over the course of many (20?) years, I found and kept each of the (identical) flaming/smoking nails singly in open/wild places in far-flung locales I’ve now forgotten. Probably one here in NM. Maybe Florida? But identical! Same gauge nail and wire, same wire-end and loop length and orientation.

(Twice being coincidence, what’s thrice? Magic? Spontaneously Generated Art (SGA)? Otherwise, what arcane rural or ritual need might give rise to identical artifacts in such widely disparate locations? I’m talking identical! In my book, finding those three nails bearing aloft their signifires like torches amounted to a minor miracle, or at least a miraculous event.)

Nevertheless, someone bought the tri-incidental (or is that transcendental?) Signifires from my first show. I treasure the poor photo for the messages its two fires still convey.

Strident (sold)

Strident: Here’s another piece of SGA, more proof that Art, like Beauty, is in the seeing. What I see in this inscrutably functional found object, in helpful combination with its multi-layered title of course, is Art on a par with that of Giacometti. I can justifiably claim such excellence because I didn’t make it. I merely came serendipitously along, saw its Art lying in the weeds, and called its name. That late world-famous sculptor probably wouldn’t have minded the impertinent comparison. A discerning Santa Fe collector bought it from my second show.

While we’re on the topic of SGA (Spontaneously Generated Art), I want to pull a couple pieces out of the gallery to show what I mean about seeing the Art in things you find by the roadside of life. In both bent and mutilated found objects I saw their inherent Art, a transformation they had spontaneously achieved through an unknown, but clearly violent, history. SGA, if I may presume to define it, is initially a creation of human hands, but then it is transformed by time and elements, i.e., by cause and effect, or more crassly chance, into something that somebody, often me, sees as SGA. Remember, Art’s in the eye of the beholder, and seeing it creates it.

Rainbow Man

Rainbow Man: Lying in the dust of a path, the Rainbow Man waved to me, and I instantly recognized his Zuni attitude. His curly head now bows over a clump of cactus on my balcony. I don’t know what to make of him. Do you?

Predator

Predator: I’ll try and sneak this into SGA, since I only added that tiny prey dangling from its beak. It’s meant merely as a grace note on the Art espied in this metal something mangled by mysterious forces, which I found rusting in the middle of a field. The avian predator is visible from several angles and is particularly effective perched on a rock. As one of the more primordial elements of reality, predation still has terrible meaning in our dog-eat-dog world. It’s both inevitable and inescapable, the process by which all life lives. On permanent loan, that’s how this raptor is installed in the backyard of a neighborly friend.

That was rather fun rummaging through my amazing sightings of Spontaneously Generated Art. Maybe I’ll devote another blog to it sometime when I feel like blathering again.

January 6, 2016

Coyote Art and Stone Sculpture

After all the work these past several months finishing and posting two literary pieces (the novella BAT IN A WHIRLWIND and my gay memoir THERE WAS A SHIP), completing and posting my next Aztec icon (ITZPAPALOTL, the Obsidian Butterfly) for the accumulating coloring book YE GODS!, surviving fairly merry holidays, and starting a happy, hopeful new year, I’m now taking a breather of sorts. However, constitutionally incapable of totally disengaging, I’ve shifted writing gears and in my idle time started in on a sci-fi epic inspiration from my box of intriguing ideas.

In the unaccustomed leisure of the past week, I’ve also played in some of my other artistic frivolities, like manipulating photographs. At some point I’ll be able to post some improved shots in my photo gallery. Check out the current stuff anyway. In the past few days I’ve photographed some more of my collection of others’ art for a future blog post, probably quite soon. In digging around, I stumbled on a couple interesting sculptural items of my own proud handiwork to add to my sculpture gallery.

First, I’ve got to confess very contritely to doing something that most artists in Santa Fe won’t admit to doing—as too trite and commercial: Coyote Art. But I won’t recant. Recently, I brazenly posted my Aztec icon of HUEHUECOYOTL, the Old Coyote, which I dare say far transcends the trite and commercial. But this wasn’t my first offense.

Way back when I was simply a Mature Gay Professional (maybe 1991), a dear lady I worked with asked me to design a commemorative pin for her installation as the Grand Worthy Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star. Even for gratis, I call that a splendidly official commission. She wanted a coyote. I shamelessly framed it in New Mexico with an obligatory moon:

Coyote Pin

Later on, when I was becoming a Grandfatherly Gay Character (around 1996), I wore out a lot of files and chisels on a sculpture that was dictated by the medium itself. It was a stone with a thin stratum of lighter stone into which I gnawed out an intaglio of the Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio, more or less per the Squier survey as it appears in my old book REMEMBER NATIVE AMERICA. There’s something about its emphatic reality that I really appreciate:

Serpent Mound intaglio

So, although I claim to be a sculptor of found object assemblages, in fact I’ve done a few things in good, old-fashioned stone, though some of those are also assemblages. These are already shown in my sculpture gallery, but let me highlight them here.

Canyon Viejo

Canyon Viejo is a split piece of stone in a bowl of sand that makes for a miniature Zen sculpture of a cliff-dwelling in homage to Canyon de Chelly.

Creeping Creature and Calf

Creeping Creature and Calf is two eccentric fragments of stone found in widely separate locations that called out to me that they are family.

Crouching Creature with Cub

Crouching Creature with Cub is another pair of strange pieces of stone that are clearly related.

Lair of the Bear

Lair of the Bear assembles a few ursine and otherwise anomalous stones found in many locations over the years to create a mythical environment.

As maybe you can tell, I think art is where you find it.

Richard Balthazar

there's dance in the old dame yet!