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Flour cakes my face and ants fly through the air on tiny comets of dirt. I’m wearing an aviation uniform whose label reads “Top Gun: Patron Saint of the Skies.” I am neither a pilot nor a baker nor a gardener. I must be on Mars. Or perhaps a scene from a fairytale gone beserk, I think. The crowd around me is dressed up in every type of costume you can imagine, as if the kaleidescopal contents of a time machine have spilled out onto the streets of the tiny pueblo of Laza in northwestern Spain. But nowhere can I hear Spanish—the language I’d expect to hear on the streets of any given Spanish town. Instead, the strange vowels (to an English or Spanish ear) and softer consonants of Galician echo between the stuccoed orange and yellow buildings. A jolly fellow dressed as a rat plays the lively gaita—Galician bagpipes—and a group of women who have decided to be mountain goats for the day dance the muiñeira alongside him, short tails following their movements with each turn of the music. Another set of friends, all in anteater costumes, sings haunting harmonies in Galician along to the lilting tune of the gaita. Off to the side, a cluster of teenage mantis shrimp bob their heads to the music and drink a strange neon green liqueur called xastré as an exhausted-looking donkey trots past the whole ensemble, carrying more revelers in mud-covered wetsuits. I move through the golden light of the day as if reading a magical realism novel, wondering: This can’t be real? The crowd files into Laza’s main square. The dream continues: old men dressed as dapper band members wave trumpets and canes about, calling to their friends at neighboring bars and on occassion bashing trumpet and brass cymbal together to get their compañeiros’ attention. Heading toward the center, I pass a strolling group of genies, replete with light-up cloud pants emanating from a magic plastic lamp quite creatively glued onto each genie’s right foot. Bustling bartenders in one establishment have dedicated their costume efforts to match as mummified Egyptians; different bartenders across the street have painted themselves as various Marvel superheroes—Captain America, Deadpool, etc. Each new creature I see recalculates my definition of creativity and of costuming. Galician Entroido is Amerian Halloween on steriods. And we’re all here gathered in the center of Laza, a communal “waiting” for the sun to set. As the sun crouches beneath the horizon, the bells on costumes of frightening-looking peliqueiros startle us all as they emerge from the creeping crepuscular hour: these characters, grinning with the cartoonishly-clear paint of their masks, brandish whips to part the crowds of costumed beings. They’re harbingers of the next phase of twilight. In the wake of the peliqueiros come rippling waves of dirt and vinegar-soaked ants. The crowd shrieks with rabid joy as a giant red paper-mâche ant dances, puppet-like, above the crowd, accompanying his displaced brethren currently in flight and in our hair. Clumps of dirt and ants pelt our heads and we brush biting ants from our limbs, shaking ourselves free from stray insects creeping into our sleeves and socks. Before we can breathe, the dirt storm changes: I open my mouth to exclaim something and instead my words are met by the smack of chalky flour across my face. I am expecting a more earthy, insect-y flavor. I lick the white powder from my lips and laugh. It’s a laugh of enchantment from the montage of the day: the melancholy tune of the Galician bagpipes, the green liqueur poured liberally by smiling superheroes, the eerie otherness that comes across a group of people when they’re dressed as mythical creatures from the make-believe of the tales we read as children. I realize that it’s in our communal, bacchic loss of identity that, paradoxically, all foreignness is forgotten. The sun has left us for more sensible activities and in its place are white clouds of flour—fariña. The entire town, powdered in flour and costumed in every combination of color imaginable, rejoices as one.