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Walking with the King - Mexico
by Sean Gary | Date >
2007-04-22 | Country : Mexico | City : La Manzanilla
| Area : Pacific coast |
| The dog was a mutt, really just a mongrel, much like Quetzal himself. God only knows the last time either of them had seen anything remotely resembling soap. Their origins were mysterious. They’d teamed up somewhere around Bocas de Iguanas where the dog had started following him or maybe he’d started following the dog, who knows. It might have been a mangy animal but it had balls the size of grapefruits and a strong dislike for crocodiles. It was a little surreal to watch thirty pounds of scraggily black fur barking in the face of a nine-foot crocodile as it lay it there mouth agape hissing back a few feet away. The crocodiles were in a psyudo zoo with questionable fencing located in the lagoon between the beach and the small town. There were twenty crocodiles or so out of the water and laying on the sand and the dog was running around from one to the next barking at all of them. They didn’t seem very interested in the dog, as they did nothing but hiss back at him. Apparently they never developed much of taste for canine or maybe they just weren’t hungry. I looked over at Quetzal and he seemed amused by the bizarre scene and I wondered what sort of cosmic circumstances and alignments had come together to put me at this specific place and point in time. I called him Quetzal because he never told me his real name if he even had one. He was delusional at best and schizophrenic at worst. He believed that he was Quetzalcoatl, the King of legend, reborn. Quetzalcoatl is the plumed feathered serpent worshiped as a god by some Mesoamerican people. The mythical bearded King of Tula who’d left by sea and promised to return. Cortez had been lucky enough to arrive during the specific year in a reoccurring cycle of years that the King had prophesied his return. Montezuma had made the mistake of believing that Cortez was the King of legend and it cost him his life and helped to contribute to the end of the Aztec/Mexica Empire. This was all wrong according to Quetzal; Montezuma had picked the wrong cycle. His long-term plans were somewhat hazy but he was sure of his destination and his destiny. Apparently there was a very special time upcoming when the solar, lunar and other astronomical alignments were just right and he would have to be in a very specific place to take advantage of the conditions. That place was Palenque, more specifically the top of tower in the palace. He was going to sneak into the ruins through the jungle during the night armed with copious amounts of psychoactive mushrooms go up the stairs into the highest chamber in the tower and eat all of the mushrooms after which he would commune with the Gods and they’d send a spaceship to pick him up and take him to his rightful place among them. The difficulties of navigating the jungle at night didn’t concern him, as this was preordained. This was his destiny. When we parted ways I’d told him that maybe I’d see him around someday. He replied, “not likely.” Exactly, I thought, not f’ing likely. |
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