The 18th of April was Good Friday. In the Phillipines of my youth, you had to be very quiet and very sombre during Good Friday. It was a day of penance, a day to remember the sacrifice of Christ for humanity.

For a child, it was day of mystery. I went to church and saw these old women praying at stations, kneeling for the whole day at the church without a sound. All I can see were their lips moving, mumbling. The women always covered their hair with a "belo". I am currently in search for the belo in order to create images from my childhood of religion. If you have any belo from your grandmama, contact me!!!

The images of Christ were huge to a child. Invariably, they were always European in image -- aquiline nose, fair skin, and long brown hair. If God really made man in his image, then Europe really did a number on the image of Christ.

There was something grotesque about praying to a statue. I kept wondering about who changes Christ's clothes during the different parts of the year. Whoever did it saw God naked. How embarassing for God. He must be saying, "Damn, it's Easter season again. Yup, sure enough, here's Tatang Barong with his newly washed clothes....Take it easy Tatang, I might be a statue, but I am delicate like a flower....Not bad....Velvet. I dress better than his children."

The other main stay of Good Friday is of course the pabasa. Generally, it is a tradition of reading about the story of Christ's death. I guess it is a Tagalog tradition because I some from Pangasinan have never heard of it. I was lucky enough to attend one this past 18th. It was wonderful!

There is a magic to a pabasa. There is the intonation and melody. There is the singing. There is the give an take between different readers. The leader is followed closely by everyone else. But if someone is unhappy with how things are going, there could be a rebellion in the music or intonation. But even then, the melody is repeated over and over with pasyon! That is the key. Passion. It is the passion of the story of Christ's life. It must be repeated with passion. With feeling. With sentiment. With humor. After all, the pasyon must reflect the Filipino daily life which is full of feeling, passion and humor.

It took me a while to get the rhythm down. But pretty soon, I was singing albeit I was using a very low volume. My friend's father became part of this one group of men who participated in the pasyon while I was looking on. They had the spirit of the pasyon in them. Considering they were all over 60 years old, I was quite surprised by their humor and their singing. In some ways, it is not surprising because they have been doing it for their whole life. But, in another way, their singing spoke of their dedication.

Their singing is like the rapids in a river. Everyone else's singing is like the river merrily coursing on its way to the ocean. But soon enough, here are the rapids. Huge boulders block the water. There is a fall of ten to fifteen feet. The channel narrows into the huge boulders. The water rushes past speeds up to meet and overcome the obstacle. Their voice were lilting, teasing and showing off. "Oh, you can extend your one syllable to two measures? We can extend one syllable into three measures."

But of course, this is a karinderia. So what about the food? Well, there is no meat in the pabasa because you must sacrifice just like Christ sacrificed. But the good thing is that fish is not classified as meat. There was a huge baked salmon in the party. I think it had some parsley and salt and pepper. There was also some fried fish. I did not delve into that one because I did not want to deal with the bones. To compensate for not eating the fried fish, I instead delved into the fried ukoy which is made up of small shrimps and scraped squash which is then deep fried. Umm, YUM. Not good for your triglycerides though.

And can we celebrate rice as a dessert item? Good lord, there was rice dessert everywhere. Kutsinta is the consummate standard. How can you not have kutsinta and still call it a party. It is squishy but imminently biteable. Then we have the palitaw. And the ube covered in coconut shavings. Can you feel your blood sugar reaching 200 or the dreaded 300 level? Well, how about the suman? Surely, you can dip it into some more sugar just to make it taste just right.

I guess I'll start getting notes so that I get to name everything that I try out. Hmm, maybe I will do that.

Sige, sa susunod, we'll discuss Kalderetang Easter.

INGAT!