All Souls...

Sigh. The All Souls procession steps off in about an hour and I have failed to convince either family member currently in town to go with me, so I sit back and hope Homer's going and will post lots of pictures.

I drove past Holy Hope Cemetery this afternoon and saw many Mexican families celebrating All Souls' Day with festive tables set up at their loved ones' gravesites, pink tablecloths and ribbons and balloons and a few hibachis smoking happily away. This definitely ranks up there with the finest traditions I have encountered here and there around the world, and seems like a deeply satisfying way to deal with the reality that people eventually die while others are left behind. Get together once a year to celebrate lives and share good food and set a place for the deceased, even if they can't chew quite as well as they used to. It's the thought that counts, and the thought kicks ass. Why cry when you can have a nice picnic instead?

Next year I suspect I will be going to the procession, accompanied or unaccompanied, it won't matter. The sun is rapidly setting on my three surviving grandparents after very long and (I hope, for them) rewarding lives. There will be no picnic in the graveyard--that sort of thing is not exactly understood in small town southern Illinois--and if it is not next year it will be the next, for something bittersweet but as celebratory as it can be.

Lovely weather tonight. I hope it's magical for everyone who goes.

All Souls, Again

First, a confession. I did not put up my altar in the library plaza on Saturday, mainly because when I got down there it looked like it would be one of maybe three or four altars. That and what I was afraid looked like childish exuberance in my design cracked my personal embarrassment threshold, so like a woo I strolled around the plaza a few times among the myriad urban hunter-gatherers and then fled.

I wasn't going to leave Tom hanging, though, so I went ahead and constructed the altar in my back yard under a rising full moon.

Tom Gerencher, English Department, St. Joseph's High School, South Bend, Indiana

I decided it looked pretty okay after all. The original ban pay toilets sign hung on his classroom wall over the left side of the chalkboard. I stared at it every day. The tiny blackboards in the foreground contain Five Qualities of Great Literature and Seven Support Techniques for Essay Writing, all burned into my brain. Later that night I went to the Icecats game, where the usual pregame bangin' eighties metal music was replaced, briefly, with Beatles tunes. I took it as a sign that he liked my altar and was happy to be honored in a cozy backyard spot under the silver moon.

Maybe next year I will recruit a contingent of friends to build a flotilla of altars so no one's is left conspicuously alone. Um, I think I'll save the stack of faux wood books for next year, if anyone would like to join me. Anyway.

The Boy and I stopped at Grill for a pre-procession dinner (spinach ravioli in herbed pink sauce for me) and then wandered over in front of Hotel Congress to wait. Surreal sight #1 of the night was watching three otherwise prim 60-ish ladies sway and groove to the fuckfuckMOTHERFUCKERFUCKTHATFUCKFUCK rap music blasting out of a Club Congress soundcheck.

Then came the procession itself, which is a half-mile long exercise in surreality. The beginning is always almost overwhelming to me, with the first giant puppets followed by a crush of black-clad people in skeleton makeup surging curb to curb, drums and incense and bells, people dancing, people waving skulls, coming and coming.

This person had a little mini-me skeleton marionette with skull maracas.

There were many wonderful giant puppets. This one spun round and round.

Plenty of political statements as well, including coffins labeled "Bill of Rights" and "Constitution." These nice people handed out leaflets reminding us to vote.

This is rapidly becoming my favorite community event. It's amazing being in a space with so many people simply letting go and putting themselves so totally into it.

All Souls

One of Tucson's niftier traditions is the All Souls Procession, a sort of free-form parade and cathartic spectacle held each year round about All Souls' Day, a community event for people to celebrate the lives of loved ones who have passed on. This year it's happening on November 5. The evening before is the Personal Altar Vigil, in which people can build small altars in the library plaza downtown and stroll amongst them all night long. I am making one in honor of my old teacher. Look for it; it will be the one built out of books.

I am also contemplating a small side altar commemorating the death of habeas corpus, although I suppose that would make for a nice float in the parade the next night. The Constitution, wrapped in a shroud, perhaps set on fire with the torch shanghaied from the Statue of Liberty.