temple mayor

And so the Mexican Chia Pet™ is born by adorning hundreds of carved skulls along a tzompantli, a rack of skulls, this rack in stone but others in real human skulls, fitting them out tufted with chia tops.

By the wrath of Huitzilopochtli, who knows his city to be colorful, lively, noisy, redolent and interesting.

See? He takes umbrage with the whole characterization.

It is more than that. This is the spot. The spot where the whole city was founded. The precise spot where an unusual omen was seen to fulfill a prophesy regarding the establishment of a city for a wandering tribe of ne'er do well marauding killers and looters. It was time to settle. An unusual thing to predict as omen but not so terribly uncommon in nature. Eagles have to stand somewhere in the desert to tear up a snake that they caught and a cactus is good a place as any. Nevertheless this is the spot where long ago an eagle stood on a cactus while eating a snake, and that is what the priests, dreadful fellows, bathing is against their religion, said that is what you'd see when you'd know it for certain.  So it is important.

But it wasn't so much a desert as a swamp.

Details.

One of several islands in a swamp.

And it was a rat, not a snake.

And it was an owl, not an eagle.

And it was a log, not a cactus.

Details.

Over time, after the Aztecs, as the city grew the swamp shrank until it disappeared completely except for its softer under layer making problems for structures built on it.

Temple mayor is where the mayor lives.

Not really. It's how you pronounce "major" en español. The main temple was a pyramid, not this rack of skulls.

The rack of skulls chiseled in stone is no idle iconography either. They represent actual skulls. If anything the four sides together, and the limitation of stone are an understatement even if the whole planter were filled with skulls.

An outfit like ISIS is at this level of human organization. Lower, actually, they haven't built a city by stacking a quarry of rocks nor managed straight avenues nor canals, but they are at the level of tzompantli.

It just occurred to me that Obama is a natural speaker of Nahuatl. He's got that "tz" combination nailed, seen also in the word Huitzilopochtli.

Whenever I read how advanced the empires of Central and South America in glowing terms, they at their height, how precise they were with their stone-fitting, how advanced their mathematics and their astronomy, compared with Europe at the time in their so-called Dark Ages, then I am forced to compare Europeans building cathedrals at that same time in competition with each other throughout Europe, one after another, to see how tall they can go and how open with colored glass that read as biblical text.

It's not that clever to pile rocks and to stargaze.

When you climb around them, say, at Chitzen Itza, a logical place due to its proximity to Cancun, on them and through them, then you see for yourself how short everybody is.

And I mean short.

You keep expecting representatives of the Lollypop Guild and the Lullaby League to demurely appear from behind rocks. And while you are walking along from the ceremonial pyramid area across the road to the astrological area and notice the rubble strewn all around along the path, the pieces of buildings and random structures, chunks of carved stones, blocks with carvings of people and faces and creatures and words, you're thinking, "That would make an excellent coffee table." And, "That would look good in an alcove." And, "I can see that with a pin light on it inside museum presentation." And, "This would look good matted and framed." And, "I can do something with this." And, "That would certainly make a unique headboard."

Chunks are laying scattered all over the place.

There isn't enough manpower to organize it all. It's not possible. Their best efforts fall well short. You see attempts at organization all over the whole grounds, chunks arranged by type in rows, all swamped by the amount of rubble laying around.

So you might as well take some.

Make something useful out it like an attractive and unique patio planter. It needn't be anything so dreadful as a skull.

Look around. There is a lot to go through. It could be something attractive. It could be a lizard or a scorpion or a snake.