Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit

Silko notes that she does not and cannot use outlines to write, instead writing by intuition. In 1980, she was fascinated by the Mayan people, who invented the concept of the numeral zero and had sophisticated astronomy, specifically concerning their beliefs about time, which they viewed as a living being with an identity that did not die but returned cyclically. As such, they believed the future could be predicted and kept beautiful codices that were burned by Spanish bishop Diego de Landa. Only fragments of the codices remain, and are now housed in Madrid, Dresden, and Paris.

Silko is fascinated by the idea of nonlinear time, as it correlates to the old-time beliefs in rounded time. Dead ancestors have merely been relocated to Cliff House, where all times exist side-by-side for eternity. Without western methods of timekeeping, time becomes cyclical, and the process of ageing becomes merely a process of change. Silko offers that the Mayan almanacs predicted the exact day of Cortes’ arrival, which scientists call a coincidence. Similarly, Native Americans predicted the Europeans, and also predict that they will disappear.

Silko next recounts visiting a friend who received a wrong-number call from someone trying to contact a television psychic.