While parents like to see their children participating in this parade, it helps their children to see their parents next to them on the parade route. When the parade comes to a stop, waiting for something ahead to clear up, families hug each other, adjust their costumes, and wave at spectators along the street.
The adults dancing today do it because they want to. Their energy expended is palpable. You can see them breathing hard as they spin, twirl, lock hands and kick up their feet in old time folk dances. They put their hands on their hips and look down at their feet, catch their breath while they can.
Dancing, their movements are precise, yet flowing, and the old time costumes are colorful, proper, and hand sewn, some passed down through families..
It is a shame that what used to be common is now worn and brought out only once a year, for a parade.
Returning to the past is like trying to stuff a Genie back into a bottle.
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It warms adult’s hearts to see children doing dances they did themselves when they were little.
There is always concern by one generation that the following generation is going to hell,but traditions do get passed down and kept alive.
These children are wearing traditional clothes from the past, but, at home, these days, they are all about choosing their own clothes, friends, and attitudes, much to their parent’s chagrin.
This celebration makes me feel years younger than I think I am.
Watching kids reminds me there is still plenty of life for adults to discover too, even after they think they know everything about everything.
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The Christmas Parade on December 24th is the full Monte.
It is an all day affair with the parade route being prepared at seven in the morning and the end of the parade passing Calderone Park at seven in the evening. It is music, floats, dancers, walkers, Christmas religious scenes, traditional Ecuadorian dress, people watching, cars, horses, vendors selling food and drink, photographers, drones, flags, security, television cameras, children climbing over fences, sleeping babies.
Each neighborhood in and around Cuenca has an entry in the parade. There are smaller neighborhood parades leading up to this massive event, but this is the Mother of all Parades.
It is part religious, part ceremony, part showmanship, part outrageous. When you get this many people together there is no end to diversions and entertainment..
Closing streets and letting people dress up and parade without penalty is Cuenca’s Christmas present to itself.
There is a lively street art scene in Cuenca.
One can google Cuenca Street Art and find examples I haven’t met yet.
At an intersection where traffic moves from the Rio Tomebamba into the Historical District there are two skeletons on an exterior wall of a building cavorting amid a glorious cactus patch. The scene is reminiscent of ” Day of the Dead ” in New Mexico, a yearly Mexican celebration that sees skeletons come out and remind people of their mortality.You can bet the person on the other side of the glass in that anthropology museum, in front of you, didn’t know they were going to be an object of display when they joined the spirit world.
These two skeletons look full of life and the inscription above both reads ” Salud a la Vida. ” On one end of the art work is the artist’s first name signature ,” Juli 2015. ”
Just over the top of these skeleton’s grinning heads, in Plaza Otorongo below us, you can see a blown up Santa doll waving at street traffic and strolling tourists.
In a weird way, celebrating Santa is as weird as celebrating skeletons.
Fantasies and nightmares both come from deep places.
Gilberto is trying a new reed. Sue is playing clarinet instead of soprano sax. A different bass player is sitting in. It is Wednesday, the middle of the week.
At showtime, it doesn’t matter how many hours you practice, how much theory you know, how many times you have played a song.
Live jazz is irrevocable. You can’t erase what you play, You are the bottom line.
When the light turns green you play.
When a song is over, it is over, except for a few bars that resonate in hearts that causes people to whistle your melody as they walk home in the dark.
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