greeting day of the dead

broke in day of the dead at a bar called Barracuda, drinking rounds of Indio beer and Minera mezcal, listening to a cover band play selections including The Wall, Pink Floyd, and Karma Police, Radiohead, in Spanish, watching Black Hawk Down on the tv above the bar, on mute, with Spanish subtitles. unsettling contrast -- the celebration of death around while for entertainment they play scene after scene of horrible, violent real death. 

coincidentally, NYT just had an interesting blog on death. I don't think you could say this about Mexico: 

There are two lessons here. The first, and most obvious one, is that death is terrifying. Here in the United States, we have the technology to defer death, so we often pretend it will never really happen to us. There is always another procedure, always a cure in sight if not in hand. But in our sober moments we recognize that we will indeed die, and that we have precious little control over when it will happen.

The harm of death goes to the heart of who we are as human beings. We are, in essence, forward-looking creatures. We create our lives prospectively. We build relationships, careers, and projects that are not solely of the moment but that have a future in our vision of them. One of the reasons Eastern philosophies have developed techniques to train us to be in the moment isthat that is not our natural state. We are pulled toward the future, and see the meaning of what we do now in its light.

Death extinguishes that light. And because we know that we will die, and yet we don’t know when, the darkness that is ultimately ahead of each of us is with us at every moment. There is, we might say, a tunnel at the end of this light. And since we are creatures of the future, the darkness of death offends us in our very being. We may come to terms with it when we grow old, but unless our lives have become a burden to us coming to terms is the best we can hope for.

When I get back to the States, I'm rewatching Six Feet Under. On another note, from my class "Conociendo a la muerte," I have a new favorite expression for the living - "los que todavía tenemos sangre," or "those of us who still have blood."