The jungle leaves its noise under layers of grimy stones and dead vines. Thick air muffles the insect wings, bird calls, and my footsteps. The parrots watch as I pick through the silent ruins. Occasionally I speak in desperation to hear a noise, but it sounds like the movement of fish underwater. I step carefully, terrified I may fall into one of the iridescent puddles and wake up in a world 10,000 years from this place. These portals sprinkle the ground like child’s glitter. History books claim that the conquistadores had never made it here, but they are wrong.
The portals reflect the past, like a faded film projected on glass. I watch.
Their machetes sliced through the jungle vines and they marched ahead to find their fictitious cities of gold. The natives did not bother to issue warnings about the shining temples on the horizon. Once inside, the Goddess drank the men’s screams and tears like nectar shaken from a flower. The men She passed over staggered into these watery portals. Like bees and caterpillars, men were only minuscule creatures to be forgotten, swords and helmets clattering to the stone floors and rusting into fragments soon buried by centuries of creeping vines and lemur bones.
I am so grateful to have seen this holy place. But please, don’t let it devour me. I promise I was just leaving.
***
Musical Inspiration: Loop Guru — “The Third Chamber, Part IV.” This is a perfect meditation song, and also very danceable. The prolific Loop Guru and their strange tribal experimental stuff! I don’t like everything they did, but this song grabbed me the instant I heard it.
