The plaza of the old village will have been awash in sound yesterday, moreso than the usual Sunday music: the solemn individual notes of a tolling bell.
It is not the sort of music usually associated with feast days, nor with celebration, yet in this instance, it is both, and more: Each peal, low and rumbling like the thunder that courses over the peaks, a single song for an ancestor or loved one now walked on.
On a day such as yesterday was (one very like today, in fact), when silvery white light spills over the ridgeline at dawn, turning the sky turquoise at midday, then glowing warm amber with the setting of the sun, sound and light join together in a once-yearly honor dance.
It is all of a piece, this occurrence, layers upon layers of history and tradition and identity and place. Crystalline autumn air carrying silver-gold light; turquoise sky and warm red earth of dusty plaza and the ancient homes that arise seemingly organically from it. A church fewer than two hundred years old in this iteration: a new structure compared to the homes themselves, topped with white bits of wood bisected at the center, the spiritual symbol of those who came uninvited, yet altered in shape and appearance into something indigenous. A housing for a once-foreign instrument of song, its towers flanking a central crenellation in the design of a more ancient sacred space.
The branches of the trees surrounding the church will be growing rapidly bare now, the sky a thinner shade of blue. Winter is not far off now; the mountains already sport snow-capped summits, and snow is forecast for those of us who live here at their feet later this week. Yesterday’s feast day marks the last such celebration before Quiet Season and the coming of the winter holidays. It’s fitting, that a feast at harvest time should likewise be one to honor the spirits of those no longer present.
Throughout the day of the Feast of All Souls, people enter the church to pray for those spirits. Access to the rope that hangs from the bell tower is free and unfettered, to permit them to toll the bell in honor of those loved ones who no longer walk clearly in this world, who no longer sing and dance in the plaza in corporeal form.
Some of them will have had honor dances during their lifetimes, those who have earned them and lived long enough to have had a chance to enjoy such respect. Others, called sooner than expected, will not have had a chance to earn them in life.
I like to think that each spirit gets its honor dance, in the end. It may not be visible to us in this world, but the spirits inhabit another, one in which other spirits reside in light and song alike. In this week, when the two combine amid the cold clear air of the plaza, the tolling of the bell and the silver-gold gaze of the sun, song and light whirl and stomp in a mystic spiral, a honor dance of and for the spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
