A Canopy of Dragon Tails

I’m pretty sure we’re still in the middle of Galungun here. It is a 10-day holiday (festival? ceremony?) which was explained to me at first as “Our Christmas.” For an entire week before this ceremony was to begin, all over town you would see people decorating a full bamboo pole to create a penjor. The amount of creativity and love that people put into this large stick and the ornate offerings was truly beautiful to me. Some went up faster than others. But nobody seemed stressed if they were behind their neighbors. Things happen when they happen here. Bali time. 

Once all of the penjors are up, they create a beautiful canopy over the street. I asked every Balinese person I met to explain the meaning of the bamboo and the details of this huge time of year. (Actually, it happens twice a year because the ceremony calendar is a six-month one.) The best description I got was that it celebrates positive winning over negative. (Love it.) Bamboo rods are displayed in front of every home or business. The rods symbolize a dragon’s tail because dragons are protection from negative. Ha. The only positive dragon I ever knew was Puff, the magic one.

I have also read that it is the symbol of a mountain here (Mt Agung) and also a symbol of gratitude for agricultural produce. That would make sense... Most of the decorations are made of palm leaves, corn on the cob, etc. People use what is local to them. 

Positive winning over negative? Gratitude for agriculture? I'll take it!

Once the day arrived, I kept coming up with my own parallels in order to try and understand what was happening. Maybe not the best way to appreciate it, but I couldn't stop. If it’s our Christmas, these bamboo rods are the trees. But instead of buying decorations and putting them on a tree that sits in homes, they are all handmade. And they sit outside of the home. They are both beautiful on their own and enhanced by the others.

The day the ceremony began, I was reminded of Yom Kippur. There was a lot of praying going on and everyone was in white. The day seemed to slow down and it was quiet outside. After praying and having ceremony, the idea was to just spend time with family. Everyone returns to their own village (so Ubud got pretty empty and quiet) and most businesses shut down. Each family sacrifices a pig on this day and they eat it over the next ten days. 

And then it quickly turned into Halloween, (maybe Halloween on Bourbon street in New Orleans, but with music that is difficult to hear)… Groups of children would walk around playing drums and symbols, two kids always wearing a costume of a beast. Instead of candy, they held out a can for donations. On day one, I was excited to see the kids and tried to capture it on film. Day two I danced a bit to the music when they came by and thought it was cute. But by the next day (and the next and the next), after hearing the banging on the drums and symbols for an hour straight outside my window while I tried to nap – I was ready to destroy those friggin' instruments nobody seemed to know how to play.

But now, as I sit outside my room on the third floor, the canopy of dragon tails in the sky is a site I will never forget. 

 

Making a penjor

The finished product at sunset