{"id":1453,"date":"2012-02-03T20:24:17","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T01:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1453"},"modified":"2012-02-03T20:24:17","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T01:24:17","slug":"the-sea-goddess-birthday-feb-2nd-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=1453","title":{"rendered":"The Sea Goddess’ Birthday, Feb 2nd, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend and I went along the coast a little to the beach where a great deal\u00a0 is said to happen on Imianja’s birthday – and so it proved.\u00a0 After midnight we spent an interesting hour plus, wandering among groups\u00a0 large and small, on the sand,\u00a0most of their participants\u00a0costumed in\u00a0roomy satin gear with head caps or tied bandannas mostly white, too.\u00a0 A couple of also had figures dressed in yellow, red and blue, and I hope soon to talk with someone who can explain a significance I sensed and some of the things I am curious about.\u00a0 My friend Sally commented how calm and\u00a0 focused people were.\u00a0 There was a lot of soft drum beating, and frequently tiny little bells ringing in\u00a0 some kind of ritual over the boats that people had built and brought to the beach to be loaded with the goddess’ birthday gifts before being floated out to sea.\u00a0 In addition to things I have often seen on the beach and written about\u00a0– fruit, vegetables, pop corn, blue and white flowers, ribbons, beads, silvery glittery things, there were often mirrors ( she is known to be vain) small bottles of perfume,\u00a0 meringues, and lots and lots of candles, blue or white.\u00a0 Preparations we saw included honey being either added to the boat or poured over what had been placed in there.\u00a0 We heard group members checking to make sure this and that item had been added – someone had definitely put in a small amount of money – in one of the boats I spied a cheap watch.\u00a0 Wonder if it was going, and if it still is.\u00a0\u00a0 Most boats were made of styrofoam sheeting sealed with blue tape.\u00a0 Some were elaborately edged and trimmed with tiny blue beads or fabric trim.\u00a0 You can see some of these things in the photos I took for which the following is the link:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/Alison.Schwabe\/February2nd2012BirthdayOfSeaGoddessImianja?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCO_13qviudKTiAE&feat=directlink<\/a><\/p>\n

So I got to bed after 1-30.\u00a0 I woke and went down to the local Carrasco beach a few hours later, at 7am, and goodness, the beach was strewn with wreckage from the\u00a0night’s activvity.\u00a0 I can’t tell you how many dead chickens were spread out along the beach, most of them headless (we saw none anywhere on the other beach the night before) \u00a0 No one in their right mind will go swimming in this bay for at least a week, maybe more, stomach churning!\u00a0 I took photos of wreckage sites, and a disturbing thing was the amount of plastic – which of course includes the ubiquitous styrofoam.\u00a0 I truly wish all plastic was rapidly biodegradable – there was a lot of it around.\u00a0 I met a neighbour walking his dog and he made it clear how angry it all made him,\u00a0 saying something like ‘it’s all phony anyway – this stuff belongs in brasil – they’re just stupidly copying it here.\u00a0 I hate it’.\u00a0 He has a point about the plastic, and the myriad of candles, but whether he’s correct about the validity of this, um, belief system, which has swelled in recent years, I’m not so sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway enjoy the photos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend and I went along the coast a little to the beach where a great deal\u00a0 is said to happen on Imianja’s birthday – and so it proved.\u00a0 After midnight we spent an interesting hour plus, wandering among groups\u00a0 large and small, on the sand,\u00a0most of their participants\u00a0costumed in\u00a0roomy satin gear with head caps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-nr","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}