Celebration of the Dead

Edge City

Celebration of the Dead

by Dennis Green

Sitting next to my easy chair/work station today is a bright blue cross covered with bright ceramic flowers, and at the very middle, where the crosspiece and main shaft intersect, a white porcelain skull decorated with a bright yellow flower on its forehead. One of my favorite Day of the Dead art objects celebrating the blessings of Death.

In Mexico, Mr. Bones is an object of humor and derision, an attitude of defiance but also a recognition that He brings about the “peace that passeth understanding.” In those parts of the world where life is still a struggle, its cessation is cause for celebration.

We have dozens of such objets d’arte around the house, most of them discovered at Milagros, a wonderful store run by two old friends in Sonoma, who closed shop about five years ago, but not before we gleaned some of their finest pieces. We have another one, a circular wall hanging about eight inches in diameter, with a Janus-like face at the center, on the left a bright, colorful Sun face, and on the right a ghastly, black and white skeletal moon face. But both are smiling. Around the perimeter of the sun side are a host of ceramic flowers and green leaves, around the moon face little unsmiling skulls.

The emphasis in this cultural phenomenon is similar to the Yin-Yang symbolism of the Far East, a recognition that the dark and the light sides of existence complement each other, complete each other, and are ultimately interchangeable. Without a birth there is no death, and there is no life without dying.

In the U.S., however, our monotheism seems to extend to a kind of monocular view of life, a sort of tunnel vision that tries to exclude the dark side. Certain sentiments — common in China and Japan — would be unthinkable coming from an American. An old Zen tale describing the Buddha coming upon a cliff overlooking a starving mother tiger and her cub, Gautama saying, “Everywhere I eat, and I am eaten,” and then throwing himself off the cliff to feed the tigers below, leaves many western listeners stricken, instead of joyful.

That tunnel vision extends to our cultural view of Nature, as something to be exploited for its resources. In our zeal to harvest, plow, build and pave, we have destroyed whole ecologies right here in North America, driving, for example, the great American prairie to near-extinction, including such species as prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets, along with the bison and wolves that once wandered its rolling landscape. Such a disregard for natural landscape takes an enormous blind spot indeed.

There are still Beckerheads in denial about climate change, because it’s just too damned inconvenient. Likewise, those who think we can just “Drill, Baby, Drill” our way out of this wouldn’t pass a sixth grade science test. Meanwhile, three percent of Chevron’s energy production is in renewables.

So on we go. We celebrate the death of the planet, ignore the death of U.S. troops in the Middle East, and grieve the passing of Granny when all the life support fails. We are so far removed from the natural order of things that our perspective of death is twisted, but so is the way we conduct our lives.

©2009 Dennis Green