800 year old Aztec pyramid found

Another pyramid found in Mexico City! (Link to original article; link to screenprint of article)
Mexican archeologists found the ruins, which are about 36 feet (11 metres) high, in the central Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political centre for the Aztec elite....The pyramid, found last month as part of an investigation begun in August, could have been built in 1100 or 1200, signalling the Aztecs began to develop their civilization in the mountains of central Mexico earlier than believed....The archeologists also have detected a sculpture that could be of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or of the god of the sky and earth Tezcatlipoca.
Whoo-hoo!
But notice that only a British news source reported on this. Nothing from America. Know why? Because everyone in America hates Mexicans, and what are Aztecs but old, dead Mexicans?
(Thanks to my friend Chule Balam for sending me the story!)

grief & religion & the sanctity of life

I find it interesting that Christians, who believe in everlasting life with Jesus in Heaven, are the ones who scream loudest when someone is taken off life support (think of that poor woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo), or dies an early death or is murdered or aborted or commits suicide, or in any way has their life cut short. They go on and on about the sanctity of all life. (But they eat meat and wear leather. . . not that I'm a vegan or anything; it's just a point to ponder.) But if this world is so horrible and full of sin and sinners and devil worshiping pagan heathens (like me), and Heaven is so great, you'd think they'd all be taking the cultist way out and killing themselves left and right to get to Heaven quicker. (Hmm, kind of like suicide bombing terrorists?)
You would think that atheists, who believe in no afterlife at all, would be terrified to die and to have anyone they loved die. Seeing someone you love go out like a candle flame, never again to exist in any form anywhere but your memory? That's terrifying, isn't it? So much more so than thinking your loved one will be in Heaven hanging out with Jesus and maybe growing a set of angel wings and hovering over you like a cosmic umbrella until you die and join him/her.
But the atheists I know don't fear death. Most of the pagans don't either--whether they believe in reincarnation or home or the Elsewhere Bar (see my Alzheimer's blog for more on that)--whatever happens will happen, right? And probably it won't be bad.
I think, secretly, all these militant bible-thumpers are terrified of going to hell. I am not afraid of hell because I understand that hell and the christian devil were invented by man, not god. There is no red guy with horns and a pitchfork and cloven hooves waiting to burn me forever in a vat of fire. But the bible-thumpers believe that there is, and if they believe that, they can worry that they will end up there. And thus they have to be afraid that others they care about might end up there too, and therefore they have to fight for every scrap of life, no matter how degraded it is (I'm thinking of my father's final weeks in his own private hell of 104 fevers and organ failure and ongoing brain damage)--surely it must be better to them for someone to be trapped in a defective body, in pain, than to be burned forever?
I just can't think that way. Thank the gods.
Yes, I am sad that my dad died because he's not with me anymore. I can't hear his stupid jokes or get his help buying a new car or bringing home a load of bricks in his pickup for my Circle. But his end was horrifying and I wished it to be over. When I see the goofy obituary picture I have hanging by my desk at work, I smile and try to remember him that way, not as a thin, starving, fevered shell of himself, unable to communicate on any level, except moan in pain. Even going out like a candle flame is better than that.
12.19.14.17.0 4 Ahau 8 Kankin burner

Synesthesia

I've known for quite some time that I have synesthesia because smells have colors. It is a condition where some of your senses either switch places or overlap. Cool, but no big deal.
I recently answered a question on synesthesia on Askville, and someone had a link to www.synesthete.org where you can take a test to see if you've got synesthesia or not. I knew I had the smell thing and I figured why not take the test and get registered.
And to my surprise, I have TWO kinds. Seeing time in spirals is a type of synesthesia! (If you've ever read my essay on how I found my way to the Tzolkin, I talk about seeing time in a spiral. I thought everyone did. )
So here is the test (top graphic) and underneath it is a diagram of how I see the year, screenprinted from the program I used to make it for the test.
My viewpoint is always around the end of November. So when it's summer, and I close my eyes and think of the year, my viewpoint isn't in June. It's still November.
Now I wonder if this condition is what makes me obsessed with time and the Tzolkin. Maybe the ancient Maya all had it too, and that's why time and calendars and tracking them were so important. But with my 100% European blood, how can I be a throwback?
12.19.14.16.14 2 Kankin 11 Ix Happy Yule! Happy Solstice!

Father dream

This morning I had a dream that I went a high school reunion. I had to travel to get there (I have the impression it was in France, a place I have no interest in visiting and whose language I don't speak.) For some reason my father was with me. He was maybe at the stage he was a year ago--you could bring him places without worrying about a violent outburst. I brought him into this big room, where the meeting was. There were many long tables, like in a cafeteria, and not many people there. I found a place for my dad to sit and told him to stay put. He sat there meekly and looked around. I went off to do something. Find food? Sign in? I don't know. But someone came over to me and said my father wasn't welcome and I had to take him out. At first I thought it was because most of the people there for the reunion were women and my dad's not. But it was something else, but they wouldn't tell me. "You know why," they said, avoiding my eyes. "He can't be here," another stressed.
I was really upset by this. Not because I had to babysit my dad, but because I couldn't have him with me, and I couldn't really leave him somewhere else unattended. So I was out in the lobby area, where there were a lot of plants like how the Meriden Square used to be when I was little, and a friend of mine from high school, who I haven't talked to in probably 10 years or more, came up to me and started telling me I was hanging out with the wrong people. In the dream, I thought she meant some friends I've retained (or regained) since HS, but now that I'm awake I wonder if she meant my father? I was very angry at her. I said, "You haven't been my friend in 20 years, and now you dare to tell me who I can hang out with?"
I decided to just go home. Turns out this lounge area was also part of the airport (that's handy). But then I couldn't find my return tickets. My mind was completely blank. I couldn't remember if I'd taken the return tickets with me when I left home. The flight was boarding and I was checking every pocket of every back, searching for the paperwork and begging them to let me on the flight. I'm not sure my dad was with me anymore; I think he wasn't.
And then my husband woke me up because it was past 7 a.m.

---

This is one of those dreams where I can pull out elements of real life. My high school reunion (20 years) was the Friday before my dad died. I thought about crashing it (I wasn't paying $60 a person to go for the whole thing) but I wasn't in the mood. The one-time friend who was lecturing me in the dream was there, because someone else sent me pictures. I am going on vacation in 18 days (Chichen Itza, here I come) so anxiety about plane tickets is obvious as well.
And of course, my father is dead. And there he was in my dream, following me around happily, glad to see me and have my attention. But he wasn't welcome where I went. That's the part that puzzles me. At no point during the dream did my dad talk to me (in the last year or so he was alive, his aphasia was so bad he couldn't have a conversation anymore) or try to communicate in any way except to be agreeable about what I asked him to do.
If this was someone else's dream, I would say that the person's newly dead father's spirit had attached itself to the dreamer, but that it shouldn't be, and that person had to let the father go. Or that the dreamer was holding onto the father. But I let my father go--I even did ceremonies to break the ties because I worried that subconsciously I was holding him back from dying.
After my husband's maternal grandmother died (they had to pull the plug), he and his sister both dreamed that she kept calling them on the phone saying "why won't you talk to me?" and they both said, "you're dead, stop calling," and eventually the dreams stopped. If this had been that sort of dream, I'd understand it and probably wouldn't have posted it here. But what could this one be about? I'm watching over my dad, but he's not welcome where I go? That's what I pull out of this.
12.19.14.16.11 8 Chuen 19 Mac intention portal