Morion Picture Book 2: Of Plumed Morions & Ermine Capes

Morion Poem

Moryon bungi,
May tae sa binti.

1.
Cresting his Roman helmet,
Sprouting all over
His breastplate, skirt, and cape:
The plumage
Of a thousand fighting cocks.

But the face is all:
Cruelty, guilt, and Grand Guignol,
& thus the power
To scare or suffer mockery,
The grimace of pain.

2.
If one eye is closed, it is
A privilege—
To wear the face of the one
Who poked his spear
Into the Holy Breast

& receive the healing spurt
Of faith—the Centurion’s
Mask reserved
For atoning accountants, engineers,
Mayors, philanderers.

For lesser folk with lesser
Sins or favors—
The out-of-job, the childless,
The returning OFW—the ordinary
Face of infantry will do.

3.
But all is equal in the chance
For show: ermine and nylon fur
Recall a winter campaign,
Throwbacks & anachronisms
From various versions of Armageddon:

Gasmasks from Vietnam or Verdun,
Leather & metal from “Gladiator”
Or “300,” plastic AK47s or RPGs,
Parades on foot, cavalcade
Of calesas converted to chariots.

4.
Under the Lenten sun, on dusty
Fair grounds in Marinduque,
Our motley masque of history gathers
And marvels at itself—the far-flung
Roots of our belief and curiosity:

Longinus appears with his gleaming
Coterie; the crowd falls silent
Or scrambles for a view: the pagan
Rite of blood & sacrifice
Will once more give us a risen god.

We bow our heads, atoning
Or asking for favors, or shoot our
Cameras, oblivious of our own
Unresurrected gods, the unholy
Ghosts of ourselves behind our masks.


NOTE: "Gap-toothed Morion / There's shit on your leg."


Marne L. Kilates
October 30, 2007

Moriones!

It is not for mortification (in the Catholic sense) that I write, on this Holy Thursday (and Good Friday as I post this), but to recall, and actually enjoy the memory of a great interesting trip to one of the “Holy Week places” in the Philippines. And that, of course, is Marinduque, the island province directly south of the isthmus of Quezon, where the province joins the Bikol Region, on the Batangas Bay. And you go there for the famous Moriones Festival.




The epic Ro-Ro ride to Marinduque island


If you’re a landlubber from Manila, you get to it by a rather long bus route from Cubao to Lucena, the major city in Quezon, roll on (in the same bus) to ferry for one-and-a-half hour ride from Dalahikan pier, and roll off at the island’s Mogpog port, and ride again for about 40 minutes, pass by the abandoned mountains of waste of the notorious Marcopper mine, and get down at the capital town of Boac. All this in little less than 12 hours, if it were not Holy Week. Because, if it were, the whole Philippine Christendom would be wanting to go there, not counting the droves of secular tourists, and there are not enough buses between Cubao and Lucena, ferries between Dalahikan and Mogpog. And because it is Holy Week (it was Good Friday last year when we made our trip, on National Artist’s Rio Alma’s tight schedule of soaking in Philippine places for a new poetry book), the bus and ferry ride would be nothing short of Dr. Shivago’s epic Siberian trip.

The citizens of Jerusalem in Boac, Marinduque

Now, the well-off and well-heeled Filipino would probably go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to join Franciscan monks on the Via Crucis, or if it were the time for it, attend the once-in-ten-years pageant at Oberammergau. The middle class would cool down in Baguio, or stand the heat to witness the Crucifixion and flagellation rituals in Pampanga or neighboring provinces, and the hoi polloi would go to the neighborhood Pabasa (reading-chanting of the Pasyon ng Hesukristong Mahal), do the Visita Iglesia, or gawk at a senaculo or Passion Play played by the local pious or neighborhood toughies. I am not well off (but I try conserve my heels), though closer to the hoi polloi, and was both lucky and surprised to be engaged once more to take photos for Rio’s book project. The other photographer friends begged out of the once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I dropped everything to join Rio, wife Lyn and son Agno, and witness Marinduque’s Moriones. And, I waited a year to blog this!






(left and down) A morion helmet from an Armor website; Magellan wearing a morion from F.V.Coching; Legazpi laid down his morion to toast Sikatuna with wine spiked with their blood, while his soldiers keep theirs on; an accurately marked Marinduque morion

The object after which the Festival is named is the 16th century helmet called morion. In the archetypal picture of the Spanish conquistador in the Filipino mind, it is the distinctive hat of the Kastila, a plumed or bare metal spherical head, and with it a leather (or is it metal?) cuirass on his chest, a saber or cutlass at the hip, and striped yellow-and-black bloomers and Robin Hood tights. Or, it is the barely visible plumed helmet that Legazpi lays down on the table before toasting Sikatuna in Juan Luna’s Pacto de Sangre. In my mind I like to think of F.V. Conching’s comic-book inking of Magellan making a lunge with his cutlass and Lapulapu evading with his ornate tabak before giving the final blow.

The Marinduque morion departs from the actual object and is both sacralized and profaned in the folk Passion pageant and festival. The Morion becomes a person with a mask depicting the face of the Roman centurion Longinus (Longhino). The Morion costume imitates and improvises on the Roman soldier’s. The mask’s countenance is the essence of viciousness, only to underline the conversion of the Roman soldier formerly blind in one eye, which is cured (is opened and sees the light) as he delivers the point of his spear on the Holy Side and blood gushes out and spatters his blind eye. Every Morion has a panata (sacred promise) to participate yearly in the festival until a divine favor is granted—a job, a baby for a childless couple, success in business, protection for a trip abroad, good luck before joining the diaspora.

Perhaps like the whole of Filipino culture and the post-colonial experience, the Moriones Festival is marked by color, pageantry, hybridization and bricolage. The individual Morion must prepare long beforehand his costume, or cobble up what’s available to him. The sophistication or manner of improvising the costume reflects the Morion’s status in life, and playing Longinus and wearing the mask in one blind eye is a special privilege. The mask itself, of varying designs and sometimes marked “Marinduque” on the visor, is preferably made of jackfruit wood and lasts a lifetime, many masks having been handed down through generations. Gasan town near Boac specializes in making the masks, and while other towns make their own masks (and stage their own Morion pageant), Gasan is the preferred source of the authentic and durable Morion mask.

The Morion is both a fearful and comical figure. The thick beard on strong jaws, the bared teeth, the eyebrows coming together, and holes in the eyeballs (for the man behind the mask), both grotesque and ornamental, are all meant to scare, but does not exempt him from ridicule. We actually heard being chanted, as we saw our first Morion, the children chasing or running away from him as he threatened to chase them in turn: Morion bungi, may tae sa binti! (Gap-toothed Morion, you got shit on your leg!)

NEXT PAGE: A Morion Picture Book

poets'picturebook Issue 12 for posting March 31

Arts Month in our part of the world officially ended on Leap Year Day last February…

but a whirl of art events continues despite or even because of what’s happening all around

1. Living on Loring

Last posting, about a serendipitous find in the Net of pictures by Maxim Popykin that reminded me of a trip to Russia twelve years ago, we also featured here the announcement for the art exhibit and event “Living on Loring.” Galleria Duemila is uniquely—or even typically—located. Just about next door to this patch of gentility and haven for the arts is a “huddled mass of shanties,” as Romina Diaz describes them. She is the photographer daughter of Silvana (nee Ancelloti) and Ramon Diaz who own the gallery. And she is the level-headed, socially-aware fine arts student who shuttles between Italy and Manila, who apparently cannot ignore the face of loneliness and squalor living nearby.

Around the old genteel enclave of Loring (where the residences of Manila’s old rich were located more or less before or just after the last War and until Edsa Extension cut through the area to connect to Roxas Boulevard), is the unignorable din of the city: the MRT commuter train station on the intersection of Taft Avenue and Edsa, and their obstreperous traffic—of vehicles, commuters, and God knows whatever else. Romina and siblings grew up among these, and she and the children of the other end of Loring Street would inevitably cross paths.

It is perhaps emblematic that Romina is called Ate (Big Sister) by the neighborhood girls, that she used to be walked by them to her bus stop or fetched by them at night during earlier school days. And that on the first night we got acquainted with her mother, on Lina Llaguno Ciani’s opening (the previous exhibit which ended February 29), as we lingered for last beers, they had to be excused because one of the kids of the neighborhood had got bitten by a dog and they had to take him to the hospital. And the days before as I prepared for a poetry reading for Lina’s show, I witnessed one of the sessions of the intensive photography workshop Romina conducted for the “Wild Cat” girls of Loring.



Thus “Living on Loring, Art for Social Change” came about. The photographic installations by the Wild Cat Girls of Loring Street, composed mainly of their photographs and portraits of the shanty life, were assembled together with LBC cartons and Balikbyan boxes. They also wrote journals and letters to their loved ones, or simply expressed their innermost thoughts on paper, all of which became their painted declarations on one part of the surrounding walls of the compound.

And to put the whole thing together, Romina joined hands with other artists, notably her collaborator Ann Wizer and curator Angel Velasco Shaw, the cross-cultural artist, writer, and activist. Velaco Shaw’s bigger project, “Trade Routes: Converging Cultures–Southeast Asia and Asia America,” had made “Living on Loring / Who’s Sita?” its kick-off venue, at the start of the International Women’s Month.

On hand to attend the affair, apart from most of the children of the neighborhood, were numerous artist friends of the Gallery, among them fellow Bikolanos, the abstract master Gus Albor, social-realist/expressionist Dante Perez, Maya Muñoz, film director Butch Perez (who I was surprised to find was a reader of this blog), and the great Tiny Nuyda, my idol since I've been following Filipino art, whom I met for the first time, and publisher Karina Bolasco, and social worker Hope Abella. Hope marveled at the “lightness” of the affair while taking on such serious issues as women and teenage problems, the ramifications of poverty on the young who, it seemed, found some relief, a possible way out, by means of self-expression. And this time it was through the art of photography that Romina shared with them, which in the end helped them confront themselves, and not least, their surroundings.

Romina Diaz


Myself, who’s back into the starving artist mode, freelancing after exiting from the comfort zone of a day job, was simply amazed at the whole thing—this seemingly impossible cohesion or collision between the realm of art, its patrons and consumers (the comparably rarefied), and the realm of the improvised box of discarded wood and galvanized iron and hard things, and the so called public art sprouting in between. It was both edifying and discomfiting, as I remarked to my companions half facetiosusly, that it felt guilty to be bringing a full wine glass into the territory of the fish ball. Eventually, when I asked for a refill at the bar inside the compound, I was relieved to be given a cup of Styrofoam.

“Living on Loring” opened on March 8 and runs for the whole month. It was a “wild,” exuberant carnival afternoon, a street party of deep-fried fish balls, corn-on-the-cob, banana cue, ice cream, poetry reading by Romina’s friends, the group Romancing Venus, composed of my friends Ginny Mata (host), Annabel Bosch, Kookie Tuason and Karen Kunawicz. There was a series storytelling by various groups that was evidently enjoyed by the kids, the last being hosted by Kuya Bodjie (Pascua) of Batibot fame, and of course music by the Bahaghari Kalidrum and other performers.


CAPTIONS & CREDITS from top: Photos 1-3, Loring Street & kids, girls in their boxes, reading, courtesy of the Living on Loring blog at WordPress; the invitation/poster; one of the photo-and-Balikbayan box installations; Romina Diaz reading her poetry at MagNet, by Ginny Mata; the installation art pieces.

❜

From My Shelf:

Children of the Snarl

Streetwise at starfall they come,
Taunting the clumsy behemoths of the rush-hour,
The Children of the Snarl, unstartled
At the demented hunger of the highway,
Weaving a dance among eyes and fangs
Of myriad metal, prompted by their own hungers.

Merchants of poverty, dodgers of death,
They cheat mad chance in the flash of chrome,
In the glint of the fume-choked sun
Caught on the grime of the windshield glass,
In the storm-sunset on the fender-shine, offering
Flowers, appeasements for our own stale airs.

Our vision hurtles forward at morning
And dusk, borne by wheels tearing at space.
It hurtles between our faces in jeeps
Where we avoid each other’s gaze, somnambulant
Or asleep, with our sorrows and hurryings
Hidden, dressed and made up in haste.

There is no pause in the eyes that pursue
Their own appeasements. They peer at us,
We roll up our windows in vague defense,
Or concede buying a garland for our own icons
And talismans. Or choose a lottery ticket
For our chase of Ultimate Chance.

What link of flowers and lottery tickets
Joins us across the chasms of our classes?
What mindless mirth, hunger of eyes, insane dance
Of peddling small vices and poverty’s sweets
In the traffic of our haste convey us across
Craters in the asphalt, fissures in the concrete?

The lights time the rhythms of our chase.
The lurch and the wheel-skid summon their swarm
And us, Children of the Snarl: Slap of slippered
Feet, gnash of wheels worn smooth by pavements
Worn smooth by wheels, fume-storm in the crepuscular
Swelter of crushed petals and burning rubber.

And the rain season devours us, the headlights
Blind us: grit in the metal gutter, leaf-shard and
Insect-wing on the windscreen, stale air and perfume
From the aerosol spray. As dust, dirt and debris
And the day’s wrappers sail downstream, in the watery
Iridescences of the monsoon in the ditches.


Marne L. Kilates
from Children of the Snarl & Other Poems
Aklat Peskador, Manila (1986)