Monday, October 31, 2005
Calaveras de Calabasas My jack-o-lantern this year, made from a too small pumpkin, too small to throw through stone hoops in a ball game. In the Mayan book Popul Vuh, the hero twins, who are the sons of twins, find themselves born in the underworld after their mother, Blood Woman, was impregnated by spittle and chased out of the upper world. The twins, Hunahpu and Xblanque, are clever enough not to lose against the lords of the underworld at a ball game, so they are sent to six different houses for six nights of challenges. The lords were determined to defeat them just as they had their father, Hun Hunahpu. They are sent to the Dark House, where they outsmart the lords with the help of a lightning bug. The next night they are sent to the Razor House filled with knives which they feed with the flesh of animals so they aren't fed on themselves. Then came the Cold House, where they seal off the drafts and survive the ice-center chill. In the Jaguar House, they gather bones and feed them to the jaguars so their own bones are spared. Next, the Fire House, where the twins manage to be merely simmered in a vat of water, not boiled to death. Finally they enter the Bat House, and it is here where their cleverness is not enough. Hunahpu is decapitated by a bat and his head is taken to the ball court to be used in the next game between the lords of the underworld. Since this is myth, Hunahpu is not dead though he is in the land of death and disease and he is headless. Animals come to aid him. Possum keeps the light away by painting the dawn while the others turn a calabasa, a pumpkin, into a head for the headless twin. The animals and the twins go to the ball court where Rabbit distracts the lords. He points them across the field and while they look, Hunahpu and his brother switch the calabasa-turned-head and the head-turned-ball, righting Hunahpu finally. The game begins again, quickly, and in an instant Xblanque kicks the calabasa, breaks it into countless pieces, and in doing defeats the lords of death and disease. It's not possible to cheat death, not even when you are twins born of Blood Woman in the underworld of the age before people, so they are challenged again and they answer the challenge by placing themselves on the fire. Their bones are ground and thrown into the river, where they reincarnate into catfish, and then into wanderers who hold the magic to bring back to life all that they have destroyed. It's curious, isn't it, this cross-cultural desire to correct the most uncorrectable injury, the loss of one's head. Perhaps it is not about denying death, but about losing one's mind, a metaphor for a temporary lack of sanity such as that brought upon by grief, and the necessity to make yourself sane again and therefore right in the world. Or perhaps it is what it is, a story of death and sacrifice and trickery and resurrection and destruction and loyalty, a story not so different than those that pepper our days at the beginning of the 21st century. I first learned this story and other Mayan stories from S. As a mesoamerican archaeologist, he has had to study the creation stories and ancient books of the Mexica, the Zapotec, and the Maya. He can read the code of the Dresden Codex (at least what has been deciphered so far; many, many glyphs have not been yet), and found a pattern in the Venus Table that no one had before. Venus is the one who is resurrected. Five patterns of travel that star makes, tracked throughout time by civilizations across the world, including the Babylonians who had their trinity of the sun and moon and Venus, a trinity not so different from that other one we all know about according to some archaeoastronomers. Venus comes and goes, appears to never be steady. The five patterns are predictable, but it takes time and patience to find them and track them. It is one star yet seems to be more than one. It appears to die and come back to life, the dream of every person who's ever loved and lost.  Jack Skelington, the Pumpkin King, from one of S's favorite films, The Nightmare Before Christmas. 
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Santa Muerte, Saint Death Santa Muerte/Saint Death When she gives gifts, it is said that she makes no distinction between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, and neither does Death, life's mercurial mistress who dangles our dumb hearts around her neck, a collection of blood red jewels. Her face is a Guadalupe X- ray: cheeks raised, mandible spread in a constant, wicked smile. I assure you she is moonish, unstable. Even after her struggle with the night she appears aloof. She may be La Chingada, the raped; or perhaps La Llorona, the crying one; but certainly she is not La Madre, the one and only Mother. Her womb is a cobweb, littered with empty cocoons. One night I saw her on the edge of a broken-down river where no water flowed. Overhead, a murder of crows flew. Their feathers fell with every wing-tapped breath, made the sky moonless. c Kate Ingold, November 2004, New Orleans.
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Last update: 11/1/05; 5:28:53 PM .
