Reading & Rain
Since I was a kid, reading has not only been a form of entertainment, but also
shelter… I am from Cuernavaca, a city that is believed to be protected by the rain. For some reason, it seems that it only rains at night. Which is convenient for someone who works in an office but not for a kid who’s afraid of the rain.
Whenever the rain started, I gathered my stuffed animals together, sort of a support group… and we waited for the storm to pass. Rain, for me, was a coven, or a group of devils, creating mayhem. Jumping on houses,
running around, poking roofs with their pointy tails.
Until I read about how Aztecs portrayed the rain, turns out, for Aztecs, Tlaloc is not the god of rain, because a god would snap his fingers and, just like that: rain. Tlaloc is a “téotl”. People erroneously translate this Aztec word as “god”, which is close but not quite correct, Tlaloc IS the rain.
He poured himself into a fountain, Tlaloques (Tlaloc’s helpers) showed up, they picked up Tlaloc in jars, and armed themselves with staffs, They threw the jars up high, …and then, they would break the jars with the staffs
they carried with them. The noise of the jars being hit and broken makes
the sound of thunder, and the process helps the rain to be spread around the world.Tlaloc, literally means: Nectar of the earth. For me, reading washed away the demons.
