"The Mexican Dream" [.]

[fiefoe]

The middle section of the book was all about Amerindian beliefs and rituals so alien that it was quite an effort to stay tuned in.

• ... the coagulating strength of language against the anguish of death and the certainty of nothingness. Myths express life, despite the promise of destruction, or the weight of the inevitable. They are without any doubt the most durable monuments of men, in America as in the ancient world.
• For the Indians, gold was the metal of the gods par excellence-the Maya called it takin, the excrement of the sun.
• The legend adds that to extinguish the moon, one of the gods present at Teotihuacán threw a rabbit into its face, the mark of which can still be seen on the surface of that satellite.
• They would cut their ears to draw blood, with which they bedaubed their faces,.. the women made circles (or rings), while the men drew a straight line from the brow to the chin.
• For the Indians, blood and suffering sealed the common destiny of men, their total submission to the gods. Even their wars were sacred, for their battles, before they determined one nation's power over another, were waged to please the gods.
• ... from the south... the dangerous wind. Surrounded by winds and death, how could a man be free?
• That crowd of gods.. giving to every moment of the universe a beneficent or an evil direction, all of that was dizzying and admirable like a dual magic in the perceptible universe. It was the proximity of the supernatural which gave Amerindian thought its true power.
• What makes Mexico one of those privileged places of mystery, of legend, a place where the very moment of creation still seemed close when already, inexplicably, the other supreme moment, that of the destruction of that world, was about to occur?
• "The gods of Mexico," said Artaud, "are the gods of life prey to a loss of strength, to a vertigo of thought."
• The Indian divinities all had that double appearance, one human and carnal, the other supernatural and fleeting.
• Whereas other knowledge and other technology remained localized--gold, the discovery of bronze, pewter, the use of poisons, and the rules of architecture--the invention of the calendar spread over the North American continent as easily as did agricultural techniques.

Not forever on earth,
only a little while here.
Though it be jade it falls apart,
Though it be gold it wears away,
Though it be quetzal plumage it is torn asunder.
Not forever on earth,
only a little while here.

With flowers You write,
O giver of Life;
With songs You give color,
with songs You shade
those who must live on the earth.
Later You will destroy eagles and ocelots;
we live only in Your book of paintings,
here, on the earth.

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