Alebrijes (spirit animals)
On love, transformation, and eating a different part of the pig.
Thanks for joining me here at WanderFinder. I’ll keep this brief, but if you’d like to subscribe, I’d love to have you.
And please do pass this post along to friends if you think they’d enjoy. Thanks!
I wound up in Normandy the same way my mother wound up in North Carolina. You meet a guy, relinquish a tiny bit of control, and the next thing you know, you're eating a different part of the pig.
— David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Once, I fell in love and stopped eating pigs altogether, or at least at home. My then-husband kept a Kosher kitchen, which was entirely new to me, as I grew up in a place where a classic football cheer featured a local pork sausage.
I think the quotation applies to lots of love situations, though, not just romantic ones.
The next thing you know, you’re in love with adult scrabble competitions or hand gliding or your kid’s passion for robotics. The next thing you know, you’re up on a mountain in Alaska or writing a pen pal in Tibet. You’re eating another part of the pig, or you’re not eating any pig at all.
I’m getting divorced — not for pig-eating-related reasons — and Teddy, the guy I’ve been seeing lately, is going to Burning Man.1 I’ve never particularly wanted to go to Burning Man, but he’s going with a crew that will build these spirit animal art cars2 and now I’m spending my time writing ever more frantic-sounding lists:
All the duct tape
All the bags (ziplock and garbage)
All the dry ice
But the spirit animals themselves, they are about finding healing and peace. They are about transformation.
We are in unprecedented times, needing more than ever to transcend our culture from a path toward self destruction to one of regeneration. By connecting to nature, and ancient indigenous customs celebrating nature, we can reconnect to our primal relationships to regeneration, through renewal, rebirth and ascension.
In Mexican culture, fantastical spirit animals (alebrijes) come to life to guide people along the journey of this renewal and rebirth.
In our immersive art experience at Burning Man, a herd of alebrijes set out on their journey across playa, leading the souls of our ancestors along with the spirits within all of the burners that celebrate with them. Once this majestic parade arrives at their resting place, the alebrijes will open up and connect to each other.
Within the alebrijes, the living souls will have the unique opportunity to take a journey through eight magical levels of the afterlife, preparing them for the final and ninth level, where they will meet the gods of the afterlife and are awarded eternal rest.
I don’t speak Spanish and didn’t want to ask for translations all the time, so I ended up talking with the Rat Lady, the woman who runs the Mobility Camp.
Truly, I have sent emails that start with the greeting, “Dear Rat Lady.” And they have been enthusiastically received.
As part of my volunteer work at Burning Man — if you camp as part of a group you’re almost always going to volunteer in some way, it’s part of the ethos of Burning Man — I’ll be leading tours of the art for people with limited mobility. Don’t tell them this but long extended tours of the art via some of the few motorized vehicles allowed at Burning Man sounds ideal to me.
A person who attends Burning Man is responsible for (almost) all of their needs, either individually or, if they attend with a group, as a group. (They can buy ice once there but not water.)
Everything that’s carried in must be carried out. (Except pee and poop, which are taken care of via continuously emptied Port-o-Potties.)
All of this fine grain examination of what’s required to deposit my body in the Nevada desert at the end of August and hope not only for survival but even for moments of joy has me doing deep dives into the environmental impacts of humans writ large, and I’m clearly not the only one. Due to Burning Man forums, I’m skimming new-to-me tomes like Topsoil and Civilization:
This classic survey of world history should never have been allowed to fall out of print. It demonstrates how every civilization from Mesopotamia to Rome has destroyed its agricultural resource base and thus destroyed itself. The book also looks at modern-day Europe and the United States with considerable uncertainty about the sustainability of our own system.
I’m also considering acquiring the Humanure Handbook.
A different part of the pig indeed. I can feel parts of me shifting, changing — is that a new patch of fur? A long whisker or a wing? What creature am I now?
Maybe that’s the thrust of love, that metamorphosis into an altered form, a new taste, a different language, a fresh self.
The friends I saw out in California and then again in New York earlier this year, Anne and Tyler, are bereaved of their wonderful white dog, Buster.
I fell in love with Buster after spending a little time with him too, and so have also — to a much more minor degree — felt his absence in the universe.
As I have recently learned from the alebrijes website, to traverse the afterlife, you must have either a white or a red dog to accompany you. It’s quite a journey — four years of hiking through snow and having arrows thrown at you and so on before you reach your place of peace.
According to their ancient mythology, when someone died, they had to go through a journey of nine levels to arrive at Mictlān. The process, which lasted for four years, was full of obstacles.
The objective was to arrive at the underworld, with Mictlantecuhtli and Mictecacihuatl, gods of death. In this way, the soul of the departed would achieve eternal rest.
The first stage of the way consists in crossing the Apanohuaia river with the help of a dog, either white or vermilion, called Xoloitzcuintle. Its color was the only way to see in a place full of darkness.
It’s a comfort to me to think of Anne and Tyler, a long long time from now, on their journeys with the cheerful, tiny, loving, almost comically loyal Buster. I know he’ll bring them home to peace. I hope all of us have a spirit animal who can bring us home to peace.
I’d love to hear about any transformative animals in your life, and hope you have a wanderful week.
Burning Man’s theme this year, as it turns out, is Anamalia. The street names were just declared and they’re all crypids. It’s apparently a Burning Man tradition to steal the street signs. Tom, if at all possible I’m grabbing Bigfoot for you & Grootslang for myself.
What beautiful art cars! I wish I were going, but once was enough. I’m not a Burner. Just a tourist. Goodbye to the sweet pup Buster, what an adorable psychopomp he would be.