Xochicalco

In xochicalco 2006

So there I am in xochicalco inside the observatory cave and it’s the summer solstice and everyone’s waiting for the sun to come down the carefully constructed thousand year old chimney and you just know this is supposed to be some kind of truly profound spiritual experience or scientific one anyway depending on which way you lean minimally there’s the movingly great knowledge of the mesoamericans only it’s going all dh lawrence inscrutable indian on me what with the guy up there it’s only minutes before on the pyramid of the plumed serpent only about 200 metres away and he’s telling his friend both of them got up in the new de rigueur tropical exploration get up that his friend just has to acknowledge the incan influence on this city and I want to reach over to shake his shoulder to say that’s like acknowledging ghengis khan’s influence on stonehenge you’re only out by a couple thousand miles if not years only I don’t I don’t say anything of course I don’t I just look out to try to let my mind circle with the vultures out across the wet green mid rainy season valley where was once a great city only I can’t let it go either so instead of profound or even lazy circles even in this cave i’m getting noise

noise lots of memory noise and you may not know the photo’s from xochicalco either but just about the most common graphic for quetzalcoatl is taken from that pyramid I was just sitting on with it’s wonderful twisty live with the tongue sticking out look one head at least right by the stairs in the front so maybe a visit from lawrence or at least lawrence thinking is just to be expected there’s some say he was even here long enough to visit the cave name it a place of sacrifice despite its obvious astronomical intentions get inspiration for some of his wildest inhumanindianeyed stories so you can see why I want to think in academic terms it’s like counting sheep

trying to remember if the snake on the pyramid has two heads or one after all quetzalcoatl isn’t just the plumed serpent he’s the plumed twin anytime you’re in mexico and you hear that qu’hubo cuate hey how’s it going my bro’ my bud my twin that cuate’s from coatl so you can think of him that way qu’hubo cuate for the quetzalcuate c’mon and shake a tail feather my bro’ my bud my twin then go back to coatl the root in nahuatl for this one of the most important of the we created this world creator deities wandering around making humans and setting up the mother earth to give of her flesh and blood and that sort of thing and worshipped around xochicalco often enough on ant hills no less so let’s do a libation for the cuachalatasthe ants that helped the old twinsnake bring corn to humans still this quetzalcoatl’s not dh’s or for that matter pinchbeck’s young priest at all definitely not

this creator god’s no oh so very green quetzalcoatl namesake the human prince with the scraggly beard who did that i shall return thing that got all the english king arthur fans going and all the rest of the second comers too besides his starring role in starting that legend about how inscrutable or not the way old dh said again and again and again believe me i’ve counted still the indians of the americas were easily oh so easily duped

cortes for quetzalcoatl manhattan for twenty-four dollars or was it twelve you know the drill the stories you grew up with them as much as i did no matter how young you may be they’re still there in still used text books creep into ongoing illustrations lend excitement to academic discourse crash through the bush as silent as young white guys with drums yes they’ve got us surrounded and it will take a lot more than my dad trying to counter them in the kitchen trying to fight his way to an identity through all this inscrutable easily duped stuff while my mother tells him it’s all gone anyway there are no more indians why do you keep this up who cares where the choctaw came from who built the pyramids on the mississippi if they were your ancestors or little green men from outer space it’s all gone anyway gone ha ha we fooled you gone so who really cares you can give them quetzalcoatl too if they want him he’d be worth a few bucks in his jesus costume

only my dad kept on saying it kept on looking collecting data talking it out walking the streets of brooklyn or manhattan or the long diorama filled corridors of the museum of natural history until even now i can hear him saying it as the cave walls start to shimmer with diorama images of plaster indians for all i know their skeletons hidden in the basements below and even the academic discourse in my mind is being taken over by his stories while the sunlight slowly descends that chimney to refract multicoloured light onto the walls from scarves and tiny statues and the clothes of babies held up in its light and no no it’s getting far too difficult it hurts too much to clear my mind even in this sacred space

so that i look around me in desperation hear the voices in so many languages feel the breath of those around me as if the cave is breathing and think a mantra a mantra i need a mantra and just as i think that sure enough somewhere in the cave there’s someone starts off with that by now universal ommmm ommmm and what does it matter where it’s from it’s lovely and echoing low and then high and why not i think why not why not ommmmm ommmmmm let’s do it ommmmm ommmmmm maybe i’ll even make it ometeotl make it specific to here back to the nahuatl of this valley i hear all around me ometeotl for the first divinity the creator god goddess ometecuhtli omecihuatl the first twin the lordlady motherfather two who generates all the transformations all the twinnings all the rest of the gods the quetzalcuate so ommmm eteotl ommmmm eteotl and there i am i’m doing it ommmmmm ommmmm ommmmm eteotl yes yes i am i think i am i think i am i’m just about to clear my mind only repetition brings instead huffing and puffing the little train that could i think i can i think i can huffing across the plain take this all take this all and suddenly there is no play of light glimmering all around and even if i can still feel people the smell has changed no more cilantro and pulque and tortillas the corn is popped now and there’s chewing gum and there’s just one screen one scene and i can only get as far as o

and yes i’m back in the movie theatre with my grade four class and yes i know my father is from oklahoma but what is it what is it in those wagons full of white families lined up ready to claim all the land they can get around in a day o o ohoh that does not free my mind but silences it like a blow that will not let me transform or transcend what is it that i know like an expanding maroon red balloon in the belly that they don’t what is it that when the song gets to the words i know i belong to the land and the land i belong to is grand what is it i see in their faces avid in their eyes that is not in mine why are they in this moment no longer my cuates my bro’s my buds my twins what is it in that choctaw word oklahoma ohoh oklahoma that even still in this cave can overcome ommmm and ometeotl to make me feel i’m the one who does not belong