Impressions of NYEPI day
Trip Start
Feb 12, 2008
1
9
15
Trip End
Apr 09, 2008
Seminyak,
Indonesia
Saturday, March 8, 2008
All sitting, waiting. Sitting on their crossed legs, eyes imbibing the guru and his chants. He shakes his considerable gut, an over-padded taxi driver in a lion's head. A dynamic changes. A woman screams. People around come to her side, her quivering, gyrating body acting like an electric cable gone wild. Two men catch her at both sides and guide her away from the crowd like bouncers at a rock concert. She continues to scream, head flies back, open mouth sucking in the oncoming evening air. More women scream and are taken away; an ambulance waits in a side gang, hovering like a hungry shark. Several men begin the religious fit, and are taken away by smiling bodyguards. The thick wet air of the afternoon turns sodden as night flows freely. It is damp but no rain appears on the night when the monsters come out.
***
Purple, winged, teeth of a dinosaur, fingernails like canoes, sharp and angry. Scythe-wielding death is creeping out of his coffin attacked in the stomach by a smaller demon dressed in the rags of an ancient mummy. Constructed by young men or families out of paper and glue and later painted and dressed in gaudy silks, these colourful Asian shreks present evil and danger to passing ghosts, letting the spirits know not to enter a faux hell. The huge godzillas are dragged from every street corner, small gangs off major roads, and tiny driveways of private dwellings to be fastened to rafts of bamboo and carried aloft by hordes of children, chanting their song of despair. The monsters meander snake-like down the main street sometimes stopping for a fight between two or to shake a lolling head as mace to the gods.
***
The day has passed and the flying ghosts of the air are tricked into believing the land is inhabited by creatures more dangerous than they; the festival is a success. The monoliths of the spirit world created by the human world continue their journey to the sea accompanied by the chanting of children, cymbals and firesticks; the snake makes its way to the beach where the creatures are put together for rest. Men, women and children encircle the paper beasts, their once-powerful presence now numbed by the fire that will destroy them. The firesticks approach, reach in, spark the light of life's essence, thrown into the melting teeth, nails and heads of the paper monsters.
