Sunday - April 08, 2007

In the teeth of the Tenebrous. 

Last Good Friday, a white-haired, devout woman being interviewed on TV said it was our duty to attend the Tenebre. I had no idea what it was. I knew about the washing of the feet, and the Bisita Iglesia, which we did as children. I remember Quiapo. Wikipedia says the Tenebrae ends with a strepitus (Latin for "great noise"), which is exactly what I remember of Quiapo. Hawkers, jeepney horns, the precipitation of devotions.

At home, there was only great silence. TV stations either went off the air or showed the Ten Commandments. It was the seventies. Cable TV was a pipe dream and the internet was a gleam in a military officer's eye. I had no one to call. I don't think we had a phone. We had a portrait of Our Lady of Perpetual Help mounted on a wooden frame, her benevolent gaze following me as I tiptoed in the silence to sneak an encyclopedia from the shelves beneath her. Usually it was a bright red Junior Encyclopedia, which had more pictures than the Micro or the Macro versions.

I could be solemn or somnolent, and I usually chose the latter.