This third story about dancing has taken quite a long time—since last September. In the course of realizing the inspiration, I had to manage my move to a new house—and the transfer of my collection of 50 varieties of iris to the new yard. Not to mention wrapping up the Snake and Flint trecenas of the Aztec Calendar and a few blogs on miscellaneous subjects (dance, lunar bunny, and science fiction). If nothing else, that shows I’m a persistent cuss…
Ecstatic Dancer
This third piece of fiction is another old man’s fantasy about ecstatic dancing and encounters with young folks of his ilk. Entitled “Bo Peep’s Sheep,” it’s perhaps a little utopian but draws on the scary aspects of being a youngster nowadays.
Enjoy, and here’s hoping I can manage the next story rather more quickly. Wait for it!
Significantly, in the Aztec calendar March 6, 2024, was the day Ome Acatl (Two Reed) and my 115th birthday in that ceremonial cycle of 260-day years. In our western calendar, I’ve recently celebrated my 81st birthday, wrapping up nine cycles of nine Gregorian years and starting in on my tenth cycle. The nine include a first inchoate period of childhood and eight discrete personas. For lack of a better description, I’m calling this new ninth persona the venerable iconographer, researcher, and/or historical theorist. We’ll just have to wait and see how that pans out.
This ninth Id-Entity will naturally continue my life-long focus on dance—ever since 1952 at the pudgy age of ten dancing in squares. My life of twinkling toes in many ethnic styles is amply discussed elsewhere. For at least 50 years, I’ve danced (mostly by myself) in an array of gay bars—the only place usually to find good dance rhythms—and in 2018, I discovered ecstatic dance. One moves as moved by the music, and the resulting ecstasy can be of a very spiritual nature, or at the very least psychically exhilarating.
Understandably, after decades obsessed with Aztec mythology and iconography, in my dance ecstasy I quite naturally began to personify Aztec deities. For the summer of 2022, I got inspired to dance as Xochipilli, the Flower Prince. Here he is from my Icon #18 drawn in 2020, one of the few icon-details from my YE GODS! coloring book and exhibition that I personally colored. By the way, the monkey is because the Prince is the patron of the day Monkey in the calendar, and the parrot-headdress is emblematic of this god of fertility, crops, flowers, arts, festivity and pleasure (including dance—and sex!).
However, by August that year, I found myself dancing happily as Huehuecoyotl, the Old Coyote (See Icon #6 from 2015), the principal god of dance—and again sex (though for me this activity has been merely hypothetical for number of decades). In the drawing, he dances with rattle and scepter, and his regalia displays his patronage of feather-workers. I particularly love the wavy sound symbols of his howling but regret giving him that inappropriate tail. It’s too naturalistic and actually not at all iconographically authentic. This shape-shifting god was great fun to dance (and howl).
By early the next year, 2023, I started dancing ecstatically as Macuilxochitl (Five Flower), another god of dance and music and a famous manifestation of Xochipilli (a divine being called a nagual). Here he poses in a cameo detail from the 2020 Icon #18. His regalia is standard-issue divine finery, and instead of the hands on his loin-flaps, in traditional iconography, he should have a hand painted over his mouth. Odd fashion, but I didn’t have to wear any of this in our dance for the next several months.
By later last year, I began to realize that I myself was a nagual descendant of Huehuecoyotl—a new old-man deity ironically named Pilzincoyotl (Young Coyote). I began manifesting this divine Pilzincoyotl with rattle and fan in a drawing of an Aztec dancer. But as time went by, our divine lineage was revealed to me: a composite nagual of Xochipilli and Huehuecoyotl, born of a cross-species romantic liaison, on April 26, 1942, with the ceremonial day-name Ome Acatl (Two Reed). With that same day-name, Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, is our powerful patron-godfather (See Icon #19).
Now, please understand that naguals only mature after living a full cycle of 52 solar years. So, we became a full-fledged nagual in 1994—just as I went back to a regular regimen of dancing. Our formal divination was by Tezcatlipoca on the day Ce Ollin (One Movement) in that year, ordaining us a deified spirit of dance. A half-cycle (26 years) later in 2020—just before the Pandemic—we were canonized as an official deity of dance with the rank of Quetzalcoyotl. Worshippers should address us as Ollintecuhtli, Lord of Motion, (esp. Earthquakes—when the earth itself dances), but you can just call us Quake.
Just last month, I finally completed my drawing of Pilzincoyotl, a self-portrait in neo-Aztec style. I should explain that at our ordination, we were also dubbed a deity of the rainbow, Cozamalotecuhtli. The fluttering curlicues are the sounds of the music for our divine dance.
Pilzincoyotl (Ce Ollin) Dancing in the Flower World
Please don’t think these are psychotic delusions. They’re not delusions but illusions, sur-realities. (Besides, reality itself is simply a construct of illusions.) Actually, my illusions of divinity may be psychotic, but they’re perfectly harmless. I don’t need anyone else to worship or believe in me. Just knowing I’m a god is plenty good enough. Precious few folks realize that they’re in fact deities.
After taking a break to complete the Grass trecena illustrations and blog, I’ve managed to wrap up my second short story about the dance in this old dame yet, incorporating the valuable comments of an old friend who’s a respected writer in her own right. She thinks, as do I, that I’m crossing some lines in the usual treatment of the relationship between the (much) older and the newest generation.
In fact, these aren’t stories about me, but sheer fictions about young folks I supposedly encounter in my ecstatic dance evenings (usually at least twice a week). This second story is entitled “Better Buy a Dozen,” about the old man offering grandfatherly advice to a young fellow who doesn’t know what kind of guy he should think of himself as.
Since I have no image specific for this story, I think I’d best simply use the old picture of Five Flower dancing again–like a logo for the short-story series I’m planning on the theme of the Old Man Dancing. He comes from my re-creation of the Codex Borgia Flower trecena:
Aztec God Five Flower Dancing Ecstatically (and Singing)
This June 2022 being Gay Pride Month, I’m inspired to think about myself, to coin a new, easily deciphered adjective, as an “elgibaitique” writer. (And an antique one at that.) Apart from a few legitimately nonfiction books, my writing has been in a decidedly gay vein, an old queen reminiscing about his scandalous youth before we gays became an accepted part of society, if we have indeed done so yet.
Now that I’ve memorialized the dramatic first half of my life, I’m not inclined to belabor the mundane second half, no matter its fascinating mature experiences. Instead, I’ve been feeling the urge to write fiction and have been chewing on some grandiose historical ideas that I may not be able to accomplish. Nevertheless, I’ll probably give them a try someday.
To stretch my imaginative, creative muscles, I’ve taken a shot at a short story—my first short fiction since “Traveling Men” over 30 years ago. Obeying the old maxim to “write what you know about,” I set it amongst real details of my ageing queen’s current monastic life and invented events that could easily but most certainly won’t happen. That’s a wide-open field for taletelling. This story called “Whatever Works” springs from one of my few remaining social activities, ecstatic dance.
Aztec God Five Flower Dancing Ecstatically (and Singing)
For many decades, gay bars were the best and often only venue for socializing and cutting rugs. Now that we’ve supposedly been absorbed into broader society, those gay institutions don’t exist anymore. Like everyone else, gay folks must rely on distanced electronic media for socializing. Now my only outlet for the ecstasy of dance is in world music and modern rhythms, shoeless, wordless, unchoreographed, and uninhibited. The crowds are wild mixes of ages, genders, inclinations, attitudes, and dance styles, paying no attention to the idiosyncratic moves of others. I wish I’d discovered ecstatic dance sixty years ago, but in fact, that’s what I was doing as a solitary teenager—dancing all by myself in our living room to American Bandstand on the TV.
We don’t know who she is, where she comes from, or why, but when Joy asks you to dance, never say no. Let her lead your body and mind into her perfect world. I’ve just come home from two hours dancing with her, and it was well worth the two years of waiting. So long in solitary confinement, albeit in the ivory tower of my penthouse, my old face hidden from friend and foe, nowhere fun to go… I could easily deal with making my own meals and soon came to prefer them to eating out. It’s not the lifting of the mask mandate that brought Joy to my dance, but the simple opportunity to dance again.
She’s had little reason for Joy to visit me these plague years, and Lord knows, there’s nothing to invite her over considering the present world situation with democracy and Ukraine under attack. Perhaps Joy dropped in on me because tomorrow is Mardi Gras! Vive Mardi Gras!
Last night, I spent a splendid while in her trance (influenced by my current obsession with things Aztec), when I felt myself a nagual (embodiment) of Five Flower, the god of music, dance, games, singing, and lots of other cool things. Here’s what he looks like in Codex Borgia dancing (on left) for Huehuecoyotl, the Old Coyote, the great god of Fun. Vive Mardi Gras!
Five Flower Dancing for Huehuecoyotl
Usually, I’ve felt myself an incarnation of Dionysus (Bacchus), and I think I’ve done a rather divine job of the imposture over the many decades of my history. Hey! I’ve just realized that Joy is probably the daughter of Terpsichore, the Greek Muse of Dance. Vive Mardi Gras!
In case you’re not familiar with my gay life or my treasured avocation, my motto is “There’s Dance in the Old Dame Yet!” I guess you could say I started dancing 70 years ago: first as a plump 10-year-old (miserable) square-dancer, and by 13, I was rocking round the clock, so to speak. My teens were ruled by American Bandstand. I won’t bore you with the many dancing styles that led up to these later years of ecstatic dance. But Joy seems to like the way this old man dances, and she really cut a rug with me yesterday evening. Vive Mardi Gras!
Richard Balthazar 