Old Man Gloom

This year was the 80th anniversary of the burning of Zozobra, a large puppet (60 feet tall, I believe) that is supposed to carry away all the gloom from the previous year as it goes up in flames. Every year, the Kiwanis Club in Santa Fe coordinates the event, builds the paper puppet and then sets him on fire on a hill above a large park. Over the years, the display has become more and more elaborate with increasingly sophisticated fireworks and other pyrotechnics. There are little kids dressed in sheets that dance around before the fires are lit and are supposed to represent the gloom that's about to be torched... then there are various dancers including one dressed in red (the fire dancer) who comes out and symbolically sets Zozobra on fire. While all the dancing is taking place, the puppet moans and groans and flails his arms around and the crowd chants, "Burn him! Burn him!" "Que Viva La Fiesta!" "Que Viva" and other less friendly things like "Burn the Motherfucker". When I was in high school, my friends and I used to yell, "Burn the puppet!" to be funny. Looking back, it really doesn't seem that funny at all...
After all the chanting and dancing, fireworks go off and Zozobra starts on fire.

I realize that this all probably sounds a little bizarre... but growing up with it as part of my tradition, I didn't realize how strange it was. In fact, it didn't seem strange at all. When I was little, my family would have a picnic on the field before dark and then hang around to watch the burning. Then in high school I went every year. When college came along, I also went every year because my school didn't start until a week or two after Zozobra. A small group of friends was usually still in town and we'd get together and go watch. But before last Thursday, I hadn't been to Zozobra in a long time. I'm pretty sure that the last time I watched Old Man Gloom burn, I was with my friend Carl who was battling a cancerous tumor in his brain and, at that point, winning. That was the last time I really got to hang out with him. I saw him briefly that winter over Christmas and then, in the spring, he died. But that year at Zozobra, we were all so alive as we watched our glooms go up in smoke and I drove him home and a group of friends talked and played music and everything was right in the world.

This year -- which I believe is five years after the Zozobra I attended with Carl -- was Neil's inaugural trip to Zozobra. It was very exciting...perhaps more so for me than Neil since I'd been wanting to drag him to the crazy pagan ritual for years. I think he had fun...Other than a fight breaking out in the crowd near us (the police broke it up right away) and Neil saying at one point, "I don't know how you grew up here," (this comment might have been fueled by the abundance of scantily-clad girls and gangster-looking guys on the field with us) he seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed it too...at one point, when the crowd was at its craziest, I really missed Carl. I got that feeling I sometimes do when buried in a crowd, that all-alone feeling, even though I couldn't be further from alone...and I really missed my friend. But then I snapped out of it and started shouting and I held onto Neil a little tighter and let myself be swept up in the moment as Zozobra's mouth started spewing flames and he moaned and the crowd laughed and cheered as last year's gloom was incinerated, wiping the slate clean for the year to come.