DROP THAT SHEEP!

Petaluma or Bethesda this ain't.

After a week that saw yours truly go completely insane and Apple's stock price fall by more than half (not related!), I seem to have achieved a sort of equilibrium, due at least in part to my witnessing the bizarre rituals of the Feast of San Geronimo at Taos Pueblo on Saturday. If I told you that I waited all afternoon to watch a mostly naked black-and-white striped sacred clown climb a 60-foot pole to retrieve a dead sheep, would you understand?

Those of you who keep up with such things know that Friday, Sept. 29 was the Day of the Archangels and Monday, Oct. 2, is the Day of the Angels. In our little corner of the world, these celebrations usher in the "season of the dead," according to local folklorist and educator Larry Torres. In between the two comes the Feast of San Geronimo (Saint Jerome) on Sept. 30, celebrated in a very special way by the Indians of the Taos Pueblo. This is such a big deal for the local population that the day before is usually a school holiday ("Taos Pueblo Day"). But archangels? San Geronimo? "Season of the dead"?? Like I said, we're not in Kansas anymore, something a visit to the Pueblo will always confirm, no matter what time of year it is.

The Feast of San Geronimo is an occasion for huge throngs to visit the Pueblo. This being New Mexico, that means Hispanos, Anglos, Indians, and tourists of course (you can always tell the city people and outsiders: they're the ones sitting in their closed cars on a typical 70-degree, 10 percent humidity day with the AC on). The thousand-year-old settlement is jammed to the vigas with Indian craftspeople, food booths, and the kind of crowd you won't see anywhere else, all milling about together in the dust. You'll see every type and style you ever dreamed existed: Road Warriors on Acid, Frontier Hookers, Middle-Aged Mayans, Sage Monkeys, Designer Gauchos, Santa Fe Slummers, Mountain Men, Low Riders, even a few real cowboys. There also have to be more caravan queens with dusty naked navels and wild West wannabes with jewel-encrusted ponytails here than anywhere on earth. (God help me, I do love it.) The tourists are easy to spot because they usually forget to wear hats or carry water, and if they're wearing sandals they always have very clean toes! Mix these in the hot sun with an even larger crowd of ferociously proud Norteño and Native American familes from all over the Southwest and you have quite a party. No alcohol, though, and no cameras, either (both strictly forbidden).

Besides the opportunity to eat all the fry bread and buy all the jewelry and fetishes they want, what everyone comes to see are the "koshares," or sacred clowns. These figures, all males of assorted ages, make their appearance in the middle of the afternoon, wearing colorful loincloths and little else except for woven straw fright wigs and body paint consisting of broad, horizontal, head-to-toe black and white stripes. For me they represent the primal, unseen energy of All That Is, and as such these guys are liable to do anything! This year they emerged from the top of a pueblo building whooping and hollering, then proceeded to tear apart an adjacent aspen bough-festooned ramada. Various ones went among the crowd and made presents of the branches to women and dignitaries, then grabbed babies and youths for dunking in the ice-cold Rio del Pueblo that runs through the "plaza," a sloping, open area of bare dirt.

"Wait a minute, 'grabbed babies'?!"

Absolutely. I saw several get snatched, dunked good and proper, and returned dripping wet to their mothers. It's actually a great honor and a blessing to be so treated, because the dunking by a sacred clown is said to confer drownproofing. And it isn't just kids! Anyone making eye contact with the shouting, swaggering koshares is likely to be shaken out of his complacency one way or the other. (Last year I saw a clown take a plateful of barbecued lamb away from an uptight lady Texas tourist, eat half of it right in front of her, then give the rest away!) It's a spontaneous "break your mindset" form of holy therapy or theater, something that reminds me of the antics of the more renowned Zen Buddhist teachers or the Marx Brothers at their best. (They may be funny, but their aim is not to make you laugh. . .)

The afternoon's main activities are centered around a truly huge ponderosa pine pole erected in the center of the plaza. This monster is smooth and clean (no bark), about three feet thick at the base, and tapers very little all the way to the sawed-off flat top at least 50-60 feet high. Near the top, suspended from two short, thick perpendicular cross poles, are several large colorful bundles with long trailing fabric streamers. . .and a dead sheep! Several thick hemp ropes of the sort you may have dreaded in gym class (only much longer) hang from these also, reaching all the way to the ground and then some.

A thousand or so people sit or stand in a wide circle around this pole, forming a central arena in which the koshares "perform" for an hour or two by hanging from ropes, beating on drums, dancing, and seeming to do whatever comes into their heads. For long periods of time they may sit around and do nothing, then one or more may run into the crowd and grab someone. I saw several Indian spectators pulled into the circle and made to toss a watermelon back and forth, while others were pressed into an involuntary game of jump-rope. No one is hurt by any of this, but few escape with dignity intact (precisely the point, of course). Next comes a long, drawn-out drama in which different koshares attempt to climb the pole by hauling on a rope while grasping the pole between their legs. This is either hilarious or dramatic, depending on the individual koshare, the apparently uncoordinated drama taking forever in white-man's time. Eventually, after receiving a blessing or permission from one of the nearby elders (if I'm not mistaken), one of them succeeds in making it all the way up. Very scary too, I might add! The man we saw sat on the very top of the pole and rocked it back and forth, then stood up and whooped while wiggling his butt at the crowd. He next climbed down a few feet to one of the cross poles, sat, and cut a large melon into chunks. These he dropped to the other clowns, who made a game out of trying to catch them with their loincloths. When he turned his attention to the other objects hanging from the pole, the mood shifted perceptibly:

Working very slowly and deliberately, the sacred clown cut loose the colorful bundles and lowered them individually to the ground. Each one was picked up by a different koshare, carried over to where a group of pueblo elders was seated, and placed on the ground in front of them. Next he lowered a large bundle of fry bread and what looked like a melon or gourdful of water, which was also presented to the elders. (By now it was obvious that these were gifts and offerings, the makings of a feast). Finally the man on top cut loose the sheep. This was lowered carefully and touched first by the youngest clown, who was hoisted up to reach it. When the sheep was on the ground, one of the older koshares hoisted it onto his shoulder, walked over to the elders, and placed it with the rest of the goods. Sixty feet up in the air, the man on the pole again stood up to whoop and wave at the crowd, then slid quickly all the way down to much applause.

I could tell you much, much more. For example, we saw a raven fly overhead at the exact moment when the koshares lowered the first bundle. This is the kind of thing you either notice or you don't, though if you've hung around here long enough, you probably do -- and was it really a raven? For another thing, the disruptive behavior of the clowns was surely improvised, yet there was constant ritual within the play, including a definite sequence in the climbing of the pole and the handling of the offerings. Furthermore, the absence of cameras had a way of making everyone a participant instead of an observer (something more easily felt than imagined). And on and on.

Make of this what you will, but experiencing another world with both feet on the ground can be very enlightening and therapeutic. Instead of reading Mac writing and stock analyses this week, why don't we all just relax and leave our preconceptions back at the rez? ("B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-h!")

You know the one I mean. :-)

John H. Farr edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has some JPEG-laden weirdness going on at an fun project called Zoozone News (if you're lucky you'll find a different photo of New Mexico there every day).

To be notified whenever the column is updated, just send a message titled "Subscribe FSN" to this address.