PALENQUE DREAM

Important to climb this pyramid tomb, not certain why, pick my way up the stratified facade, dog nearly ten years dead follows on precarious paws. We rise through the "eight spheres of existence"–it is all enclosed, an ill-favored amber light washes down from rotted brick dome overhead. Dim sense of antiquity, hierarchy, "the impotent dead." A route across grey stone blocks, Zapotec zigzags carved in, like at Mitla–suddenly it's precipitously steep. At the final level I'm thwarted, can't get a grip to pull myself to the summit.

Just below, the shepherd dog's equally caught. Peter Lamborn Wilson–I see him seated reading a scripture under the little thatched summit hut–his maroon Shriner's fez picked up at a rummage sale, its ragged tassle–Muslim scholar holy food staining his khaki shirt, also probably got at a rummage sale. In panic I call to him, he hefts out of his seat, lays aside his vast leather Koran written in Mayan hieroglyphs, reaches a hand forward & pulls me towards...

Have you seen the green water-holes in the rock?