The Toe Bone and the Tooth An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times Leaving Home to Come Home by Martin Prechtel

The Toe Bone and the Tooth An Ancient Mayan Story Relived in Modern Times Leaving Home to Come Home Reviews

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  Michelle

  I've read a lot of books so I get excited when I stumble upon an author who blows the lid off narrative style Just when I think nothing new can be done a master story teller like Martin Prechtel shows up with a book woven together so tightly and intricately that my head spins I forget where I am and somehow it all comes full circle This is such a cool book Much is based on the author's real life which is hard to believe but true It's an adventure and I loved it
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  Jason Stewart

  This third tale in Martin Prechtel's autobiographical stories of life in the Guatemalan Mayan village of Santiago Atitlan is a story of homecoming woven intricately within between and around the ancient Mayan teaching myth of the Toe Bone and the Tooth It is an epic tale of how he was torn from his integral place in the heart of a living thriving indigenous culture and tossed back into his native United States to protect his wife his children and the gifts of knowledge that were entrusted to him by the people with whom he lived for 10 years in Atitlan For those willing to provide a good workout to less active parts of their brain they will be rewarded with a sumptuous tale that teaches much about life and about what life is asking of us Don't take exception to the intricacies and circuitousness of Prechtel's writing style stick with it and let the writing do the work of excavating a refleshingly vibrant understanding that isn't held hostage by the verb to be and its inherently static binary thinking let it lead you to places where language is truly living and jumping as Martin Prechtel so beautifully writes in the introduction of his book Unlikely Peace at Cuchumauic I felt that when one wrote the writing itself should be what one wrote The words were not components of a dead vehicle but live matter Language written had to be language that in its speaking became in the manner the words were written the very thing that would otherwise be written about One did not write about a horse; one wrote a horse into view and then as the horse charge off the page into the grassy pastures of the reader's soul one had to stand back make room or be trampledThe tales he tells are from an oral culture that would never write down anything so precious as one of it's most valuable teaching myths because to do so would mean that it would be imprisoned by the words on the page and would never be free to run around in the grassy pastures of our souls So Martin Prechtel's decision to find a way to bend English to do the bidding of spinning a tale as rich as this has been an ongoing journey since his first book Secrets of the Talking Jaguar What these tales offer is a furtive glimpse into an almost unimaginable world of what life could be like for us and has been like for many people over the world These are stories of depth and connection and meaning making that connect the living with the dead and the seen with the unseen It's a tale for the hardy and the adventurous and for those whose souls have always known that life held than the bland gray faced world of corporate consumerism
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  Hope

  I love Pretchel's tales of his life with the indigenous Tzutujil Mayan in Guatemala I've since heard not surprisingly that he is a very controversial figure So be it His story embellished biased whatever is a great lovely adventure filled with magic shamanism and spirit Beautiful I've read all his books and wish there were a dozen
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  Christy

  I rated and reviewed this book on LibraryThing
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  Nathalie

  I'm reading this feast of beauty for maybe the 5th time now
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  Mariana

  A little hard to get into but otherwise a great spiritual journey
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  Adam

  I didn't finish this book The Mayan story part was very interesting but the writer needs a lot of work The man loves commas and lists of things It is a poorly written book
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  The Tick

  Fascinating My only uibble is that the writing style could get pretty convoluted sometimes