Dispatch Number 13

White Robe

Alone in the jungle eating a mango with chili powder sprinkled over it at the Lost Temple. At Palenque there are hundreds of un-excavated temples like this one throughout the jungle -most of them have been reduced to rock piles. The Lost Temple was cleared of vegetation and has remained remarkably intact. The last of the mango drips from my chin when a man in a white robe with matching white tennis shoes goes through a silent ritual -he touches the walls of the temple, hugs trees, rubs big rocks over his limbs, then stands with hands stretched out wide facing the forest.
Anything is sacred if you want it to be. Even this old limestone building sitting atop a rock pile. A great civilization built this city 1,400 to 1,900 years ago and the jungle reclaimed it completely -as people we only visit it on the most temporary of basis.

The Circle

In the middle of the grand plaza of Palenque white people are dressed in white robes with matching pants and shoes, they sit in a large circle under baking sun trying to find it again. Most of us sit under a large shade tree watching them. Big city people trying to find it again, this time in some modern interpretation of a Maya ritual. In their large circle they look both confused and stoic in their matching red bandannas.

I sit under the shade tree wondering how many carbon credits they used up to fly here. The leader, a Mayan man, also in a white robe leads them. From my comfortable spot under the tree I wonder if this group knows about the human sacrifice the Maya and Aztecs lived by in order to appease the gods of nature -to let the sun rise once more. Trying to find it again under the punishing sun in the midst of the jungle only to return to their burned out lives, to repeat their unnatural ways under the punishing glow of fluorescent lights. Stoic and confused among Maya ruins. Arrogant and aloof back home acting as if they dropped deep into the jungle for some special ritual when in fact they never left the road they came in on.

My mind wonders again...will there be a human sacrifice? How can you take only 'part' of a ceremony and expect to get anything? For lasting impact the whole ceremony should be performed, which most certainly would include a beheading or a human heart ripped out in whole form -then we would have a ceremony with lasting impact. Most of them will return home in 72 hours rejoining others in the misery of routine affected little by their ceremony under the sun, but will talk endlessly to their friends about the circle under the sun. Dead souls acting sanctimonious. Ready made spirituality. A guided tour to an imagined place.

The local tour guides talk to each other as they look on at the man in the white robe ringed by his acolytes wondering how they could start a small business offering the lost a way to find themselves. Anything is sacred if you want it to be.