Awe is hard to experience when you are trying to take the marvelous for granted anyway.

Awe is hard to experience when you are lost in the woods looking for clear directional signals and you come across something like, say, a pearl necklace or a nice pair of suede shoes.

But this is weird, even for me. My flesh feels jittery over it.

Last year, 8/31/99 to be exact, a sentence came to me out of sleep. I didn't understand it and I thought it was strange, but I was practicing listening, so I wrote it down.

"There were messages from Alcestis almost every day, from her rat cellar under the eaves."

Tonight, reading more pre-Columbian stories in Mirror of the Marvelous (P. Mabille), I ran across a short passage from a myth of "The Heroes in Combat Against the Gods of Death." The passage contained very specific details from this sentence: a rat, the eaves, and messages. Pages 142 and 143. It came to me a little scrambled, but still...

Two brothers, Hunaphu and Xbalanque, captured a rat. "The rat proposed to them that he give them what had belonged to their fathers, that is the gloves, the armbands, and the rubber ball left hanging under the roof of the house." The brothers took the equipment and began playing their fathers' game of ball, the game that had so annoyed the Lords of Death that they killed their fathers over it. Of course, the Lords of Death heard the racket, and "sent emissaries to make the young men come down to the underworld within seven days. So with the arrival of the messengers the grandmother's heart was broken; however she told herself she must take the message to Hunaphu and Xbalanque at the ball court where they were playing."

There's more to the myth -- I particularly like the part about the Houses in the underworld, the House of Darkness, Rattling House, Jaguar House, House of Flame, House of Bats, and House of Knives. Something to use someday. My own house is House of Disorder featuring the Recalcitrant Vinyl Siding Project. (speaking of which I've been hearing more about fascia and soffits than ever before in my life, which must have something to do with this)

But getting back to the point, what's to be done about this rat and these eaves and these messages? No idea. I will read some more pre-Columbian mythology though. I like it.