When the Lights Come on in Uxmal

Leaving the Uxmal parking lot, I cross a small wooded area to enter the courtyard for the night's Spanish performance telling the story of the ruins.

Warm air breathes on my bare arms and legs. Tiny stars pierce the dark sky. A fat low moon creeps to the very top of the fortress as the music begins and spotlights play a seeking game within the courtyard and walls.

The music gains volume and lights rhythmically illuminate the quadrangle of stones while voices relate the ancient tale of this agricultural community attacked by a tribe from a remote drought-stricken area. Screams, hoof beats, cacophony of war mix in the dark and swirl outward...

Muted conversation breaks my trance and nudges me to return to the parking area. I wonder how I can romanticize a people who cheerfully beheaded others, sacrificed virgins by dropping them from great heights into deep pools of dark water and had such little regard for human life. Reality reasserts itself as I realize that after other civilizations disappeared, we continue the same things which contributed to their demise.

I also find a part of me begs to trust that chiefs, captains and other authority figures will have the integrity for proper and humane action when faced with a problem. Further processing provides the innate knowledge that each of us, within, is that authority and we must access it and learn to use it before we, too, become mere heads carved in walls or sacrifices to uncaring gods.

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Phantoms & Shadows is the prompt by Sunday Scribblings

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