When I was a young boy Stevie Wonder's soundtrack to the film "The Secret Life of Plants" mesmerized me. I discovered the book it was based on, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, around age 20 and my world was turned upside down. I finally discovered the beauty of the plant kingdom and had faith in their consciousness (for lack of a better word). This song is an homage to Mr. Wonder, Tompkins, and Bird and it is a story that takes place in a setting first described to me in another of Tompkins' non-fiction works, "Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids."
Xochimilco is translated from the Aztec Nahautl language as "Place Where Flowers Grow." Here a chinampa, or floating garden, dreams of an axolotl because they have inhabited the same space at different times. The axolotl also dreams of the chinampa. They have the same home. Do you believe you leave behind any sort of anything when you leave a place you have called home? Maybe it's that same little piece of the garden that called out to the little piece of the axolotl.
lyrics
Axolotl:
"The lake where flowers grow, I know
There's nowhere else that I can go
If swimming isn't it, then two is three
A great god once came here to hide,
The "Adam" of my mother's side
And so my brothers look so much like me.
But there's a place my dreams can see
I swear that it's a memory
A floating garden, patchwork paradise
Where the water meets the air
There could have been a garden there
don't understand it but the thought's so nice."
Farmers, your visions and your plans are learning how to stand
So far away from land
Canals connect
Float fruit directly to your hungry outstretched hands
Petals, don't be afraid to fall
You're feathers, all in all
The slowest cannonball
The water's wet
Dive in, I bet, the lake of the moon sings all that you draw
Chinampa:
"But there's a future in my dreams
Under my seeds, below sun beams
A salamander with no need for lungs
Although we live in the same lake,
Time can give and time can take
We're never the same distance from the sun."
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