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"TheBallGame.0.notes"

words

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ancient rumors a baseball bat

maize symbolizes rebirth the ballgame was the first team sport losers sacrificed struggle between day and night (((ball == sun, moon, or stars; rings == sunrise, sunset)) Courts were considered to be portals to the Maya underworld and were built in low-lying areas or at the foot of great vertical constructions. By the time of the Spanish Conquest, rubber was being exported from tropical zones to all over Mesoamerica. Solid rubber balls were burned in front of images of deities and inside pyramids and shrines. In addition to the symbolic equations already mentioned such as the ball representing cosmological movement the rubber balls were symbolic of fertility as both the Aztecs and the Maya equated the latex that flowed from inside of the tree with blood and semen. People evidently bet everything they owned and even staked themselves, ending up as slaves. A loser's (or winner's) skull might be used as the core around which a new rubber ball would be made.

The cacao fruit is symbolic of a human heart because it is similarly divided into chambers. The beverage produced from cacao beans is dark and thick like blood, and is consumed in ritual practices. From another point of view, cacao beans are used as currency. It is thought that sacrifices performed following a ritual ballgame were attempts by rulers to appease the gods and ensure fertility and economic abundance.





Srivan brushed away the dirt, the mass composed of decomposed growth of thousands and hundreds of years--it was grit, but moist, sampling it between his fingers--somewhere, here, there was a passageway. That was what the rumors said, anyway.

Sometimes, with rumors, you struck dirt. And sometimes, just sometimes, that dirt happened to be the remains of or the covering of ancient artifacts.







A bird fluttered through the trees, off after some insect she assumed--but she imagined it was Quetzalcoatl himself, thousands of years old--immortal if mostly forgotten--watching over her, protecting the find.

Srivan wondered what Quetzalcoatl would think of this world, with its fast food, movies, cars--really, what of the modern world would he most focus on?

Her attention was jerked back to the stone in front of her when her still-sensitive fingers found signs of engraving. She peered closely, but

[[she finds signs, she decodes signs, she enters forbidden passageway, bird follows her in

trapped in the ball--the rubber keeps the skull from decomposing--the ritual was interrupted, mass grave, umm, ... shit fuck shit

skull/ball turns golem, Srivan must somehow realize, must kill bird which then lets the soul into the skull

fruiting mulberry, eh?

panama rubber tree





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