Zozobra!!

This is a little bit of last years Zozobra, just for illustration.

Tonight I attended one of my favorite Santa Fe traditions: the burning of Zozobra, aka old man gloom. Supposedly he is the bringer of all things gloomy and bad, and when you burn him, those things go away. But it never actually works for me, so I generally just go to watch the fireworks and see people I know. This year, my friend Pete came with me. It was his first Zozobra (he's from Montana), so I thought it'd be really exciting for him. Unfortunately, this year's Zozobra was really different than usual. For one, most of my friends are gone, so we didn't really see anyone I know. Zozobra is like a huge social event, and you always walk around and find people who you haven't seen since 5th grade, or who you dated for a week in highschool. But this time there was no one except for this guy who sort of works at the same place I do, but he was really drunk and didn't recognize me. Anyway, the most prominant difference was that this year it rained. A lot. It's been raining a ton (for New Mexico) all summer, and it rained consistantly all day. So we were all cold and wet the whole time. Luckily, it stopped raining about 15 minutes before they actually burned him, so it wasn't too bad. Anyway, since we were all freezing the whole time, the little ceremony before the actual burning (the dancers running around, the people in their tight costumes with torches, etc.) seemed to take FOREVER...but eventually they burned him. There was smoke everywhere because he was damp and the wind was blowing towards the crowd. Then there were ashes falling from the sky. Overall, it was fun, but not as fun as usual. Oh well. Maybe next year. So what does this have to do with my OCS trip or art? Well, I totally forgot to bring my camera to this event, so I guess the answer is....nothing.