A Story for the People
Who are you?
The evening before our closing circle, Lauren sent us off to dialogue with our beings. I couldn’t stay overnight with the rest of the group, so I returned to the familiar chaos of my home, tending my daughter, getting her to sleep. As usually happens, by the time the household was settled, I was too tired to do anything. I went to bed with the lingering echoes of this being, hoping she might tell me more in my dreams.
At 5 AM I bolted up in bed.
That’s who you are!
I snuck out of the bedroom, threw open my laptop and tried to remember where I had saved the story that had dropped into me two years earlier while I was lying in a MRI tunnel listening to the trills and clanging of the machine. The story had arrived so clear and crisp into my awareness that as soon as my scan was over, I raced to a café where I typed everything out over breakfast burritos and coffee.
Hello again.
My body recognized the sensory signature of this being behind the mask.
You are the story.
Today, in the wake of the Super New Moon in Aries and the dramatic dance of the celestial bodies this week, I offer this story again, now delivered anew with the goddess of the mask.
Just to set the scene a bit, this is a different kind of writing than I usually share here on Substack. This comes from my collection of soul stories, which are tellings that don’t map onto ordinary reality. This telling comes through a familiar duo in my medicine world: Nana Coyo is an old crone spirit I often sense here in my Sonoran Desert home. Her name is derived from the Mexica moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui. Lázaro is a presence who often comes to talk to me about the wounded masculine seeking the care of a healing crone. They have a lot to say, these two, and they deeply love each other.
And with no further ado…
The Corn Comes Down from the Stars: A Story for the People
Nana Coyo never sleeps on the night before the day of remembering. As soon as the sun has dropped with certainty behind the western mountains, she arranges herself on a folding chair outside in her backyard. She places her feet on a hot water bottle and wraps a rebozo around her shoulders. At her side is the thermos of steaming atole with piloncillo and chocolate for wakefulness. There is nowhere she’d rather be.
This year, the cycles of Earth and Cosmos arrange for the Moon to be wearing her darkest cloak. Nana Coyo hums and mutters. She sings as the sky reveals what people nowadays call secret knowledge. Nana Coyo knows better; these are simply memories retained. This is what she tells her adoptive son Lázaro.
When Lázaro was younger, he’d furrow his brow and complain about Nana Coyo and her odd ways of explaining things.
“Why can’t you just talk like a normal person?” he’d say.
She would laugh and tug at his ear.
“Te estoy entrenando a los oídos, hijo mío. One day you will know how to listen.”
Now that Lázaro’s hair is greying and Nana Coyo is practically old enough to join the stars, he feels a longing in his bones to sit outside with her. He walks out into the dark. He can barely make out Nana Coyo’s silhouette against the blackness of the night. He follows the sound of her voice, a trail of vocalizations beyond any language he recognizes. Clicks and trills. Hoots and whistles. Murmurs like the wings of hummingbirds. As his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees her huddled figure outlined by starlight.
Without a word, Lázaro sets up his folding chair next to Nana Coyo. She pats his knee. He feels a smile in the warmth of her hand, and she pours him a cup of atole. He breathes in the smells of roasted corn ground into flour, boiled in water, and whisked into a frothy beverage. As he raises the cup to his mouth, he can almost taste the hints of cinnamon and chocolate, but Nana Coyo’s bony fingers gently intervene, pulling back his cup before he can take a sip.
“Antes de todo, una pruebadita para Madrecita.”
As if she is assisting a child, Nana Coyo holds Lázaro’s hands in her own. She guides them down to the ground, where she tips the cup and spills out a taste of atole onto the cool desert floor beneath their feet.
She whispers to the ground and sighs with satisfaction.
“Ahora sí, mi amor. Drink up.”
And he does.
They sit for hours. Nana Coyo sings. She stretches her legs. She claps her hands. She stomps her feet. She settles into a chorus of sounds that only tall grasses know how to make in the wind.
Together, they drink the atole.
Without even intending it, Lázaro turns over his consciousness to the dark sky. He forgets that he is awake, staring into the starry abyss, with only the smell of corn and the tug of gravity to remind him that he is still a terrestrial creature. At some point during the night, he realizes that he can understand the meanings of the strange sounds being spoken by Nana Coyo. He surrenders to the warming spread of awareness through his body.
The Corn Mothers came to us long ago. They seeded themselves into us, generation after generation. Beings as big as the stars became morsels of nourishment. In Madre Maíz, they came as clusters of constellations, all the colors of light, the energy of nuclear fusion—the glow of blue, yellow, red, orange, white, and every glimmer in between. They joined with the stones and made their way into our bones, our cells, the spiraling ladders of the fabric of our being. They fed us with the food of remembering because they knew a different kind of darkness would descend on the land. It is not the blackness of the night but the disease of forgetfulness. They knew there would come a day when we would eat and never be satiated. Ravenous, we would devour everything in our path, as if we had no memories.
Nana Coyo pours the last of the atole into Lázaro’s cup.
The Mothers are as close to you as your body. On this night before the day of remembering, drink and eat, mi amor. See them adorned in starlight and radiating with power. Receive their ripened bellies. Be filled by them.
With that Nano Coyo cups Lázaro’s head in her hands. She turns his gaze toward the Eastern sky. Against the mountains, the horizon begins to define itself as the night softens. A shard of light pierces through the worlds and illuminates the shoulders of the mountains.
In that moment, Lázaro’s heart cleaves open. His body spills to the ground. In heaving sobs, he wraps himself around Nana Coyo’s feet. He cries like a baby.
When he eventually comes to stillness, Nana Coyo pulls out her left foot and gently rests it on the small of his back. She applies the slightest pressure and rocks him gently. He breathes in deeply, as if reacquainting himself with air.
They rest this way, the two of them—together at the precipice between worlds.
They greet the day of remembering.
Last night, I wear the mask for the first time, gazing out from behind her dark splendor. I light the candle and offer the smoke of the copal to the night. I rattle and read the story of Lázaro and Nana Coyo aloud to the cosmos. I record it, but the audio isn’t great and doesn’t seem to want to be shared. Nonetheless, here is an image of us together. There is a sense in me that this Blue-Seeded Mother will be joining with Corn Mother in her basket. Who knows where our journeys will take us.
The Corn comes down from the Stars, and She grows up from the Earth.
As above, so below.
May the Corn Mothers remind us who we are as a People.
In these times, may it be so.
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