All Souls Procession

I've talked about Bookmans and LuluBell's shop, but the All Souls Procession is by far by favorite thing in Tucson and something everyone should attend while living in the Old Pueblo.

Since I plan on sticking with society for my run on Earth, Tucson's All Souls Procession is the closest I will ever come to the Burning Man Festival - and that's good enough for me.

Basically it's every crazy and wanna-be-crazy person in Tucson, in costume partying through the streets. At last year's procession, my friend and I saw a person shooting up in the streets, so my expectations were high for the '07 celebration.

How crazy you ask?

There were several people mourning loved ones - whether it was humans or animals - understandable and not that crazy. One woman was screaming throughout the parade "Where's my Pené?" She was holding up a paper and almost crying in search of her "Pené."

She came up to me and then asked if I had seen her "Pené," a white comb she had lost a year ago at "this very procession." Crazy.

I told her I hadn't seen it, before I offered my apologies and prayers that she would soon find her precious comb. The weirdest part of all this is that she appeared fairly Anglo, but all her screams were in Spanish. I guess the comb only spoke Spanish.

The goal of the parade according to the website is to, "experience grieving, reverence, release, opening, joy, and closure with thousands of other participants in a safe environment, at the level you wish to participate."

It was founded in 1990 by a woman who decided to best way to remember her father was with an insane street parade, according to the site.

The picture at the top shows a burning urn, which was the grand finale of tonight's parade. The urn was filled with these prayer forms, for people to mourn whatever and whoever.

I'll let the pictures do the rest of the blogging.

A weird-ass penguin.

Crazy animal skeleton-thing.

Remember that weird stick-juggling game that was really fucking lame in second grade? Well it's pretty much life-and-death for this guy. I have never seen anyone more focussed in my life until I saw this guy and his glowing, neon stick.

This man had a huge snake in the middle of the crowd. That didn't bother me. However I bugged the fuck out when I realized the dude had sliced his tongue to match his snake's. That's going to disturb me for at least a month.

This took place during the finale, this ghost (best pic I could get) floated in the sky, suspended from huge balloons and still tied to the ground. After staring at it for 30 minutes I realized there was a person inside it, eventually the person ripped the whole angel-get-up off and then did crazy acrobatic tricks in the air until the urn burning. (better pic I stole)

My friend the Beit Machine and some wild Mickey.

A really trill take on politics.

My friend Seth and I with some huge furry dog.

The whole night I was rocking a green bandanna my friend gave me (next year it will be on with face paint and costumes). My friend comes from a small town in Rhode Island named Chepachet, where the regional dance is called "bloaking." This was my attempt at it.

Here are some other pics of the urn from other people's flickr account, one of which had this line: "While the urn was burning, I chanted silently, 'May s/he, I/we be free of suffering, anxiety, fear, and dis-ease. May s/he, I/we experience joy and expansive well-being.'"