The rituals must be recorded.
This is an annotated mural reproduction of a carving
on Lintel 25, from structure 23, in Yaxchilan, Chiapas, Mexico,
from 725 AD.
The original carving was by an unknown Maya artist
nicknamed Cookie Cutter Master by scholars.
This installation was a collaboration
with Gabriel Garcia Roman.
And I took the picture.
This is from this residency on Governors Island, with LMCC.
The scholars tell me this is Lady K'abal Xook, wearing
the fat, rounded, cross-like emblem of her Lord, Shield
Jaguar, on her huipil, her dress, the cloth.
In this drawing of a 1,500-year doorway carving in what is now
Mexico, she is looking up at the vision of herself as a warrior
goddess.
The goddess version of her emerges
from the mouth of a snake, made from the smoke of her blood,
let from her tongue by a rope.
The bloody robe and the cloth burning in a bowl before her.
The vision serpent, smoke snake, Kʼawiil.
A scholar told me it is white-boned.
What scholars tell you is subject to change.
It is a ritual recorded upon the accession of Shield Jaguar
to the throne.
He is taking his place.
The lady honors it with this vision rite.
The sculptor scribe honors it with this carving.
The ritual must be recorded.
We might never know its full meaning.
I am mostly about the vision serpent because who wouldn't be?
Look at it in its gaping maw.
It has a double head.
I used to think the warrior was part of the snake,
but I wasn't looking well enough.
The scholarship means looking closer and closer,
re-seeing, getting a better vision to work from,
a sharper picture, a clearer drawing.
I am here to get closer.
How a vision is made, how an image is made,
how writing is made from image, how a story is made from sight,
how we've been telling this story for a long time,
we've been doing this forever, how we were some of the first
to do it.
I say we because I think I'm these people on the wall.
And I will believe I am their blood for as long as I bleed.
My blood burning on a rope, in the smoke, I see them as me.
I'm on bent knee, bent neck, in my huipil,
looking up at the warrior goddess version of me.
I bow backward before the spear I brandish.
I'm delirious from the blood leaving my tongue.