All Souls

Tucson, while a surly city on the one hand, has some seriously redeeming attributes. One of them is the All Souls Procession that winds through city streets the first Sunday in November. Do not make the mistake of thinking Halloween here. The ASP is sacred, a tribute to the dead, more Tim Burton than M. Night Shyamalan.

I was in bad emotional shape a few years ago and joined my friends David and Chris in honoring their son of sixteen years who committed suicide in their back yard. 

At the beginning of the procession I wondered just what it was I was doing here with all the monstrous skulls, skeletons, flowers, drummers, dancers, freaks, and fellow mortals. There was an urn, a ten-foot tall caldron that would be burned at the end of the procession, in front of where I stood waiting for the long walk to begin. A priestess of the urn approached me and asked “ Would you like to remember someone by writing their name on this paper and placing it in the urn? It’s a way to let go while connecting to your grief.” 

More out of conformity than real intention, I wrote down my mother’s name, and immediately felt stricken with sadness.  

Within minutes the procession began.

I walked and surrendered to the chaos. 

Then David passed me a drum that his son used to play. I like to drum, but had an injured hand, a deep laceration from a stupid mountain bike stunt. I had it bandaged with a glove over it. 

I pointed to my hand and David just said, “use the sticks. You won’t need to play it with your hand.”

So I took the drum and began to feel the pulse of the crowd. Buhm ba buhm buhm. I picked it up, played with a little ganas and started to feel the blood pump through my chest. Some very lithe and slinky young women painted as skeletons with exposed and curvaceous midriffs began to belly dance to the beat.

The are times when carnality and spirit mingle to create something that has elements of both, but is something else entirely. These dancers embodied Earthly delights, but celebrated letting those go while embracing that which endures. Paradox again. Love this life knowing that it will not last.

I laid into the beat and got lost, or got found, depending on how you look at things. 

The parade, my stride, the flying hands on the sticks, adrenaline, oxytocin all came together to define a “zone” of experience that transcended the sum of the circumstantial parts. I covered miles in that state.

I did not notice the blood pouring out of my glove until we crossed the stage at the end of the procession. It had overflowed the bandages, soaked through my glove, and spilled onto the drumsticks and drum head.

David noticed and said, “Don’t worry about it. I like it. I reminds me of my son. He used to drum so hard he left nothing out.” 

No amount of contrition on my part could sway him, and no amount of scrubbing could clean the head of the stain. 

One of the images associated with Day of the Dead is a heart wrapped in thorns with blood dripping off the beating heart, the corazon espinado. It is a kind of Southwest stigmata.

I can’t claim supernatural influence on my hand, but the bleeding stopped immediately after the procession, and the wound healed abnormally fast.

I don’t know where she is or even if she is, but somewhere I think my mother would not be surprised by that or by much of anything that blends this world with the next.