New Post 8/10/11

    Hi Folks, I'm not reading about Cortes right now but have begun reading the travel accounts of an archaeologist sightseeing in Southeast Mexico and Central America in 1854 and he's pretty hilarious and I'm also reading this amazing book that you can't check out of the library but I go back each day and read it bit by bit. It's called "2000 Years Of Mayan Literature" by Dennis Tedlock. He reproduces many of the glyphs side by side the translations of the works he presents and there's a lot of his commentary to wade through, too, but I find it helpful and I'm not sure I'd have the patience to sit with the originals as long without his commentary to help me. My understanding of the texts would also be more dry and less playful and idiosyncratic. There is one chapter in the book about a Mayan book that is entirely devoted to a chart representing the travels on the one hand of planets in the heavens and on another level humans on the earth and the whole thing looks like a 200 page boardgame. I'm really dying to get to that chapter, but when I flip ahead to it I can,t make heads or tails...The most important idea he presents is that Indio literature is ongoing and being written right now, even if thousands or millions of the older texts were burned up as heresy by the Catholic Church at one point. Even if that was a tremendous loss to modern Mayans, it doesn't mean they don't still have just as much history as anyone else. Or more. I think when I'm done with the book about the archaeologist I'm finally going to get around to reading Carlos Castaneda, even though Don Juan was Yaqui and not Mayan. I was reading Millman's book The Way of The Peaceful Warrior and I hated it. I am beginning to become almost as nutty about Mexican stuff as I can sometimes be about Ancient Greek stuff. And it's fun having strangers call me "Amigo" when they see I'm reading a book about Mexico. I get into these really mystical conversations, even with people who are presumably non-Mexican. Peace, Tim