It was Friday afternoon, and I, my pessimistic friend, and a guy in black had arranged the day before to meet in the great Hippie-van after school. Unfortunately, on the very day, One Hour was murdered at the library by Moi and we had forgotten to inform the schoolbodies of our absence, and so it was past 4 when we set off for the festival with a Mr. Missionary driving.
And so we drove, and the car trip lasted until dinner plus a bathroom break at this lovely food court, where we chose to eat at a certain 21
st Century Chicken because they were the only restaurant not yelling “Discount!” to these English-speaking customers.
My chicken was lovely and spicy, but my nihilistic friend got a wrap consisting of coleslaw, shreds of old meat, a tortilla (and it shows why they weren’t so ambitious to sell themselves, I suppose).
Alas, not enough to feed the two of us; we bought two coffee rolls at a donut store before we left.
As we drove into the night now, my friend told me about his nihilistic self-loathing, world-loathing over the white static hum of the engine, but when we began to talk about suicide and the Hippie-van stopped its rumble for a stoplight, my friend got a little worried Mr. Missionary would overhear us, and so we moved to the very back.
During the whole talk, I was very much (valde, valde, valde) concerned I wasn’t so good a counselor after all, because I kept telling him how badly I wanted to punch him in the face every time he mentioned his lack of desire to find any more meaning in life. But I don’t regret it at all, because I do want to quite badly. You fucking douchebag, you’re a waste of a life if you don’t get up and search, you hear? If it makes you feel any better, I still love you, and I think I’ll like you no matter how screwed up you are, I assured him, and I’m sure God will as well, but quit obsessing over how sucky you, and you’re only as sucky as whatever you want.
See, he doesn’t agree with me there—the secret to happiness, he doesn’t get it. You’re defined by your intentions, I think, and if you think otherwise, you’ll never love you, destroy you, fuck you over completely. And he’s so blind to his amazing musical talent, and his appreciation for people, and his invincibility!, and fuck all his faults, and fuck that I might not think he’s too amazing all the time. See, I’ll lie if that’s what it takes for him to start that search again, to not be a waste of a life…
See, we’re both narcissistic and don’t always care so much about other people, both think the world is so screwed-up-ly and antagonistically shitty, but he’s so lacking in that Hope, that screw-it-all invincible spirit, that “Never say die until you know why you exist!” and I only wish he’d realize…
And then I suggested I wasn’t really such a good counselor, compared to my girlfriend or Mr. Oceanic Citrus, and he agreed with me, so I was quite hurt and I shut up, and I suppose he said my self-sabotaging and depression cheered him a bit for some time.
Fucking giver-upper.
And then as we drove along black highways, Mr. Missionary Man explained a bit about the festival.
It began in China, he said, in a bay town the old deity loved to visit. And I suppose this god was well-intentioned, but these annual visits were quite the source of chagrin among the residents, and so the Taoist priests there would beg of him to never come back to the city, and after prayers, would send him to sea on a cash-filled boat. Unfortunately, these jinxed junks often landed in the city of Kenting. In the very beginning, the horrified residents would drown the vessels in gifts of gold and money before sending them along again, but it wasn’t long before they had a whole fleet of these colorful ghost ships floating into harbor. And so in the end, they decided to burn the ships, money and all, as an offering to Mister Plague God.
When we reached the town, it was 8-9ish.
The otherworldly festival spirits had entered the realm of mortal men when we stepped off the hippie-van and into the great Kenting; incense wafted through lantern-lined streets and god-demons stood by every other other doorway, their stony smirks eternally fixated on every passerby. The Plague God looked sinister; his face was completely black and his beard came down in thick, black, tentacled strands.
And we stopped by Mr. Missionary’s house and made a prayer to the Christian God before we headed for the shrine, and I was given a pack of banana bread to protect until tomorrow morning. And sometime while we were there, we noticed an unpleasant smell near Mr. Nihilist, who figured it was coming from his unwashed crotch and kept trying to get us to smell it, and Mr. Black did. And after we got a bunch of cameras, we stopped for a bit at the hardware store to buy some film, and then headed for the shrine.
And the Shrine! It was loud, It was bright, It was spectacular! And I mean, of course it was demonic, and I really tried my hardest not to enjoy it all (honest), but oh! The everything!
The giant drums and clashing cymbals and ghosty chants, they were hypnotic! Dancing neon lights lined the edges of anything and everything!
The entrance to the shrine was gold, a chillion meters high, with magnificently carved dragons and phoenixes that watched from their high heavens the unearthly train of god-booths,
And periodically, red lanterns floated up into the air, a string of firecrackers in tow,
and they banged and powed, and then they would fly up and up and up for maybe a whole five minutes until you couldn’t see them at all.
And as we stood at the plaza, we promised to meet back here at maybe 10, but I was afraid with all the hundreds and hundreds of people, I would get lost, and I probably would, and so I followed Mr. Nihilistic Depression around while he was filming, trying my hardest not to appear in the actual film (though I did end up making 3 or 10 unintentional cameo appearances). And now we departed, made our way up the temple, and now Mr. Nihilist got dangerously close to all the forbidden places, and Mr. Always-wears-black and his camera had found their way on top of some statue, and sometime before 10, a Chinese man started speaking to us in English, but Mr. Nihilist found him annoying, so we quickly said bye.
By 10 or so, our legs were really hurting, and we decided to meet up at the plaza entrance, the four of us.
The fireworks had started at this time, and I really did want to see them, but the three other guys were all very tired, so I ran off by myself after a girl who had a shirt that said “SEX” to get a closer look. “Where can I get to sex?”
At 11, me and Mr. Nihilistic Depression exited the shrine via the golden gate with maybe 150 NT.
The concession stands outside the shrine sold prizes and foods of all sorts, and I really did want to buy some blue devil horns (looks great with pink hair) and perhaps a baby pig (yes! that’s right!) or two, but he was really against it for some reason and said something about never trusting me with money. In the end, we bought only stupid watermelon milk and stupid watermelon juice, both kind of gross, and had a little argument over who gets to drink the juice (the better one), because neither of us wanted to be selfish.
12 saw the beginning of the festival. Men with huge flags came to hit pots and swordfight with the flags, and it was all a little weird and boring and lasted for about an hour.
Afterwards, we went to the concessions and Mr. Missionary bought me some fried squid. After some walking, we sat down on the curb in front of a ghost money shop and ate quail eggs and peoplewatched. A misspelled marijuana shirt, a “Bitch” shirt, then some.
At 1, they began tying ropes to the boat. It took a really long time.
At maybe 2, they finished. We followed the men as they dragged the boat through the streets, I and Mr. Missionary. Mr. Nihilist and Black had gotten front-row seats (stands?) in the whole procession; we were pushed to the very back.
As we walked through the crowdy, mumbly-tumbly streets, the houses sinistra et dextra seemed to have their own little firepot for burning ghost-money, maybe their own little god-booth glowing incarnadine somewhere in the shadows, and hanging on the anti-threshold a each had a few lanterns, and the whole way was paved by colorful lanterns, and a spray of ash brought about by the fireworks every 100 meters or so seasoned our hair with ginormous artificial dandruffs, and somewhere along the way, I saw a 7-Eleven, cold, brightly-lit, almost empty, and I did want to forget about the whole crowd business and buy something cold, because in Taiwan, it’s quite hot at 2:30, even in the autumn.
But we did survive the trip, and at about 3, the boat beached on the shore of the bay. I and Mr. Missionary, we couldn’t see a thing amongst the crowds, so we climbed onto a hill of ghost-money (which I don’t suppose we were supposed to do, but other people started copying us, so we didn’t feel too awkward). Then, to our great dismay, they started moving all the ghost money under the ship.
We were forced to relocate yet again.
Trapped in a crowd beneath the ship again at 3:30; the whole world seemed to be filled with an ungodly incense-fog, and it was impossible to tell where the black ocean ended and the black infinity universe started, and the ship sat silent at the edge of this River Styx.
4:00 saw our tired visit to a drink stand to buy some oranges that were liquefied, rind and all, into a cup. It left sort of a bitter-spicy aftertaste, but my dry tongue didn’t mind so much. We sat down under some trees to rest for a bit. Quite a bunch of old people had stopped by those parts and fallen asleep. We called Mr. Black and he said something about being on a roof. We set off to try to find him.
5:00 found us under a crowded bamboo shed Mr. Black had somehow gotten onto the roof of. I do admire him for that. By this time, they were raising the sails. I left Mr. Missionary to get a better view, but halfway down the beach, I had to kneel down to rest, and I noticed Orion was in the sky. There were lights on the other side of the bay, like a sort of plutonian city on the far shore of the river Styx.
5:30 was spent under a beach wondering if I could fall asleep if I closed my eyes for just a bit, because everything was done anyway. The kids on the shore were all joking about “I kiss you” and “I fuck you.” A series of fireworks were shot from the boat at this time (by drunk men, I suppose), one landing on the ground and raining brightly-colored embers all over the panicked audience, though I assume they all survived. At this time, Mr. Nihilist reported seeing the possibly inebriated men trying out a blowtorch near the fireworks. And a few more firework launches ensued before the fire started in the front of the boat. Sometime later, a few firecrackers were launched near the back, setting that on fire as well. And now the skies weren’t so dark anymore, and the sun was almost up.
And we stood there for some time under the Autumn sky, all very quiet, and we watched the boat burn. Then we headed up the black sand beaches to meet up with Mr. Black. Later that morning, Mr. Nihilist was discovered (at long last!) amongst the exhausted crowd, and he told me about his wet socks and sandy feet and the rising tide and the heat of the fire.
And then crazy stuff happened.
An explosion, a collapsing chillion-foot mast, and a fire tornado all seem much less impressive when you’re tired.
After a few more pictures and Mr. N and B running dangerously close to the fire and laughing about the heat, we headed back to Mr. Missionary’s car on the far entrance of the shrine. On the way, we bought some Victory Ice Cream to commemorate our night, and I called a toast with Mr. Nihilist, but it was all really lame, and we were all too tired for enthusiasm. Then we said a few words to some Americans we had been seeing all night—one of the guys was a translator, the other a freelance writer. We didn’t get the earring guy’s job, or the ladies’.
And the streets suddenly quieted when we hit a corner, and a bird laughed “A-ha-ha-ha-ha” and another one did, “A-ha-ha-ha-ha” at another pitch, and I tried copying them and asked my friend what was so funny after all, but he said birds don’t have a sense of humor.
And then we drove home.
When we arrived back at Mr. Missionary’s house, it was maybe 6:30. We lay in bed for a while, Nihilist talking about how both I and Mr. Black were really just sines, and he was a cosine, and he needed to solve it. I said something about the smell between his legs and started laughing uncontrollably and Mr. Black joined me. After the peals of laughter came to an abrupt stop, we were all strangely quiet.
I don’t remember when we fell asleep.
We woke up at 11, and Mr. Nihilist took a bath. Afterwards, he had us smell his clothes, and they all smelled of smoke.
It wasn’t him, after all.
Larungan.
