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| her thick eyelids closed beneath the wilderness of her crown twisted, ornate; almost invisible in the lapidary baroque of time's stone wheel, in a trance of bee-smoke, buzzing and numb, bent over and kneeling, the Lady pulls a thorn-studded rope through a hole in her tongue. We turn and look, respectfully repulsed, fascinated as the blood drips, in bits of stonework, is collected and smeared on a scroll of bark paper in the stinking closeness of the stone-clad room, in short lines and spots, like the lines of a poem  |
one can almost read if one looks close. On the second panel, we see the bloodied bark burn. Out of its smoke and tongue of blood, a long snake writhes, unfolds and writhes and fills the chamber with its crooked thigh, and slits its mouth open, showing a vision of the future…. But that has not come down to us. What filled her eyes we can only guess from these panels of limestone from the eighth century, found in Chiapas - a type of stela, whose manufacture from limestone and wood fire,  |
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