Same old, same old

The year is a week old, and perhaps by now the tree has been dismantled, the decorations packed, the parol taken down. There are those who still remember Three Kings as being on Jan. 6, the official end of the Yuletide season. I think these days some folks keep the decor up until Chinese New Year, which this year is not until Feb. 16.

We’ve been enjoying lighter traffic the past week, a perk for those of us who worked through the holidays. But with classes having resumed and vacationers back in town, it’s sadly back to the same old trapik!

So is anything new? Well, the MRT broke down again in the first few days of the year. Unfortunately, TRAIN did not break down, so expect higher prices – of fuel and consequently other things. And oh, no more unli soft drinks at establishments that used to offer that.

We have been warned that traffic in the metropolis will get worse with the start of some major infrastructure projects, and to counter this the powers-that-be are proposing some harebrained schemes like regulating how dark car tints can be so traffic enforcers can see how many persons are in the car as part of the HOV scheme. But tell me – how dark is dark?

Haayyy. Guess it seems like nothing much has changed.

* * *

We were discussing the upcoming (on Tuesday) Traslacion or Feast of the Black Nazarene, and my colleague Juaniyo Arcellana recalled an article written some years ago by Greg Brilliantes, multi-awarded essayist and short fictionist (his collection, “The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories” was required reading in lit class). The next day he gave me a photocopy of the article, included in his book of essays “Looking for Jose Rizal in Madrid: Journeys, Latitudes, Perspectives, Destinations” (UP Press, 2004).

What a wonderful read! The words flow so effortlessly, but you can be sure they were deliberate and well-chosen. Simply titled “Quiapo!” the subject matter is, of course, compelling, at least – or especially – to those of us for whom Quiapo was the center of the city, at a time when there was no “metro” to enlarge the boundaries of what we knew as Manila.

We did our marketing in Quiapo (Quinta Market, which got a P150-million upgrade last year, so it is now a far, far cry from the wet – literally – market that it was back then), bought fresh flowers there (before Dangwa became the place to go for all things floral), tried but always failed to get a look at the potions and anting-antings of supposedly proven efficacy and whispered potency sold by old ladies in flowered dusters on the sidewalk by the church.  

The church was, of course, where the Black Nazarene resided, the cavernous interior reverberating with its mysterious power and riveting presence. As kids we were told stories of how powerful the image was, thus the fervent, almost fanatical, devotion it inspired. That devotion is best manifested in the procession held every Jan. 9. Of late the feast covers not just that day but starts a couple of days before, with a procession of replicas and an overnight vigil at Rizal Park. It may be different from what Brilliantes brilliantly describes in his essay (written in 1978), but it was as powerful then, 40 years ago, as now.

We owe much thanks to the venerable writer’s wife Lourdes and his daughter Patricia for facilitating permission to reprint an excerpt from the essay as this week’s cover story. This just reaffirms the truth that good writing is not bound by time and never, ever goes out of style.