I was thinking about the past, as I'm prone to do, and reading last February's reflections on leaving for San Bartolo from Antigua, an action I'm due to repeat tomorrow. That was effectively my last update from Guatemala in 2008, and for good reason because the ensuing months were dense and difficult to decipher, much less write about, but it occurs to me that I owe some words about Copan and Tikal. So to employ a tricky timescale appropriate to an (amateur) archaeologist, I'll go back before moving forward. That is, I'll pay it forward with an overly packed entry because this time around I know enough to say I can't say when I'll have the opportunity to write again.
Copan is a Maya site in western Honduras, and one of that country's main generators of GDP. There are many things about Copan that I could write on at length, but, as my archaeological perspective is compromised by my art historical sensibility, I'll limit myself to the coolest-looking.
Copan's unique (among the Maya) artistic heritage is due in largest part to this man (above, in the bkg; and abover, in the foreground): Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, sometimes referred to as "18 Rabbit" thanks to an early mistaken decipherment. UUK lived in the shadow of his father, which was considerable both because of the considerable territorial expansion accomplished by UUK's predecessor and the literal shadow cast by a monument his dad had symbolically erected on the top of large hill miles away from the site center. What UUK lacked in military prowess he more than made up for in aesthetic innovation, ushering in a completely new idiom of nearly 3-dimensional sculpture in the decades between his accession to the throne and his execution at the hands of neighboring rival site, Quirigua (see below), a glyphically-known act that effectively ended Copan's hegemonic control of the region.
Some glyphs on a weird monument
A two-headed turtle, half-living and half-dead, and appropriately enough bathed in light and shrouded in dark, respectively.
Copan's hieroglyphic stairway: the longest continual (albeit poorly preserved) Maya text that has yet been discovered
Some abstract gems from the Copan sculpture museum.
This building, called Rosalila, is another oddity in Maya archaeology: it was, like most Maya architecture, built over with successive phases of new temple construction, but was first covered with a comprehensive coating of plaster and then left entirely intact, ritually entombed within a new structure. Upon discovering it, archaeologists used razor blades to expose the vibrant colors beneath the plaster, then created a scale model in the Copan sculpture museum.
Some more strange sculptures, these from Quirigua, Copan's vassal turned conqueror. The last picture is K'ak Tiliw Chan Yopaat, the man who did UUK in and commemorated the deed by building the largest stela in the Maya area, complete with a text dipping into the deepest regions of mythic time (it records events said to have occurred billions of years ago).
A psychedelic view from the top of Tikal's Temple IV that my camera accidentally took back in 2007.
Tikal's history is too vast and hyped to do any justice to, and I'm already boring myself and probably you too, so here's some quick highlights:
Temple I
A long and particularly informative text
Worked bone
And the thing about time is it always terminates in today. So now after dipping into my and others' pasts I'll turn to the future. The future holds for me, as it did around this time last year, a trip into dense forest, but one I now at least partially know. If this meandering entry signifies anything, it's the fact that my conception of time is very cyclical, circular, though punctuated by linear leaps, tangential reasoning, a jumbled, semi-coherent geometry. Honestly I don't know why I think so much about the past, except that I like to recycle it into the future, which everyone does I guess but I attempt to do with a bit more self-consciousness. Maybe it's because I'm a reflective Cancer (though on the schizoid cusp with forward-thinking Leo). Nor can I explain my penchant for return, my seemingly infinite regress. My decision-making process is opaque to me, a palimpsest where will, coincidence, serendipity, fate, self-fulfilling prophecy, and a simultaneous desire for novelty and familiarity all coexist, coevolve, cancel each other out.
To avoid wasting many more words on the untranslatable (for me, at least) topic of my own cognitive functioning - and to beat one of my favorite tropes even deeper into the ground - I'll leave off with a contemporary and two ancient quotations that satisfactorily explain, in the way only oblique explanations can, why I'm doing what I'm doing at this moment in time:
2009 for the Cancer:
"You could be involved in some heavy research and digging on the job. Deep personal changes are ahead...Your attitude towards close relationships and partnering undergoes transformations. Depth of experience will be sought... Over the next few years, you will be ridding your life of superficiality in your close relationships. Lessons learned may not always be easy, but empowering in the end...Your biggest enemy now is resentment, which can act to eat away your confidence and healthy state of mind. In 2009, your eyes are opened to new experiences and belief systems...If you do get a chance to travel, which could come up quite unexpectedly, unusual, eye-opening experiences may be in store for you."
Dharmakīrti:
No one behind, no one ahead.
The path the ancients cleared has closed.
And the other path, everyone's path,
easy and wide, goes nowhere.
I am alone and find my way.
Bhartṛhari :
Why all these words and empty prattle?
Two worlds alone are worth a man's devotion.
The youth of beautiful women wearied by heavy breasts
And full of fresh wine's heady ardor for sport,
Or the forest...
