Saturday, January 21, 2006

Standing on Ceremony

This time the fireworks sounded closer than usual, so I was curious enough to look out of the window.

There is a favourite spot for drawing white circles and having smokey noisy ceremonies - and today there is another white circle there. A little stack of straw was tied up ready to be lit.

But the noise that had drawn me to the window came from further over where there was a group of people letting off fireworks and standing with their hands over their ears.

I am not sure if they were sheltering from the continuing drizzle, or just trying to get as far away as possible from the smoke, noise, and cloud of scraps of red paper.

Then they were each handed incense sticks, and the little bonfire was lit.

Each person leant over the fire to throw in some tiny scraps of paper, maybe to light the incense sticks and then they lifted one leg as if stepping right over the fire and continued on around it to the doorway.

It seemed a little strange at a time like this for a workman to have left his ladder in the doorway just where people needed to get through. But as I watched each person walk carefully along the ladder, standing on the rungs and not between them, and then the last person picked up the ladder and took it in with him, I realised the ladder was all part of the ceremony too.

I would love to know what it all means. Anyone?

No comments: