Death and the Residentially Challenged
Dia de los Muertos en the San Francisco Mission is death at its best.
Last night, my roommates and I walked down to 24th and Bryant, where we felt the procession nearing before we saw it. The streets were pulsing with an innate bass, and the smell of Latin American incense was filling the air. Men, women, children, and pets were painted with white faces and black stitched-up ghostly grins, bearing tall memorial candles and arranging altars. The effect was startling and earthy, as if the barrier between sky and ground was reduced to the smoke spiraling off the candles, and a truer, deeper side to life was brought out in death's face.
There were several drum corps, a few Irish bands with banjos and fiddles, and one performing arts middle school dance troupe. Many women filed by in period costumes with bustiers painted black, halos of holiday lights in their hair, pushing strollers full of photos and memorabilia of lost loved ones.
It was a more heartfelt Halloween, a spiritual mixture of eulogies and symphonies. We wandered over to Garfield Park, where a number of elaborate altars were displayed, some of them hanging off trees or constructed on the sides of playgrounds. Perhaps the most moving was a long, low table set about a foot off the ground, where about a dozen people sat, praying, offering food and photographs. I wanted to take a picture, but it seemed sacrilegious, as if I were walking into a family crypt to steal bones. It was a different kind of Thanksgiving, one devoted to family, spouses, and friends. I overheard a little girl talking to her parents' friend:
"Who is your candle for?" she asked.
"People who have AIDS," he replied.
And suddenly it brought me back down to a darker reality of San Francisco, and its whole-hearted attempts to provide enough for its residents. Our election is this Tuesday, and when my roommate Heather was reading local ballot measures, she stumbled across a man named Grasshopper who is running for mayor. He described himself as "residentially challenged" for several years. His belief was that he had seen enough of San Francisco's problems versus its overwhelming possibilities, and in a way I have to agree with him. Homeless people make up a great percentage of this city, and their lifestyles must reflect the environment in which they inhabit. I work in the Financial District, and live in a different neighborhood, and yet I still feel a palpable difference when biking home. What must they see in this city?
Who would they be lighting their candles for?
Perhaps they are the perfect embodiment of this limbo between earth and sky, day and night, life and death. Cliche as it may sound, el Dia de los Muertos has brought out a more honest, organic vibe, and it isn't just the incense or the music. Every day in this city heightens my senses a little more, and I'm grateful.
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