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BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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Friday, October 6, 2017
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III. FESTIVAL

Three nights of summer, around the April moon

from the depths, arises the creature of myths;

the island paradise dresses up in a combination

of Halloween and Mardi Gras.

*

The boat approached Isla PulangPasayan, a small island with a good stretch of pink sand beaches, very rustic, except for the pier now busy with activities and tourists.

Frolicking throngs, kibitzers flooding the beachfront, the narrow streets.

Streamers, billboards, posters, all around the island, all over the pier, relentlessly hospitable.

WELCOME to the BAKUNAWA FESTIVAL…

…from the people of Isla PulangPasayan.

*

The boat docked, filled with excitement.

The passengers got off.

Matt assisted the mother and child, the old woman with big bags of groceries.

They thought he was an angel, the last gentleman.

*

He thought, I want to be perceived as a nice guy. I have a compulsion to be nice.

Guitar strapped across his back, knapsack on his side, he got off last.

Nice men always get off last.

*

The pier was a dizzying place.

Everything around him swirled with color and sound, people moving about in costumes, squeezing their way through the crowds.

Laughter, chatter, and music were in the air.

Matt beamed with pride as he stared at the giant billboard—a stylized drawing of a big blue-green monster, the Bakunawa, great mythical sea serpent of the Hiligaynon folklore.

*

Beneath the magnificent creature’s feet, red shrimp and lobsters; and clinging to its tentacles and limbs, tiny women in white dresses.

Above the drawing of the beast, printed in bold:

BAKUNAWA FESTIVAL

and below, in italics:

“There’s nothing like it in the world!”

in overkill quotation marks.

*

Matt felt mighty proud.

If he could burst now, he’d be an explosion of light.

Luces! Fireworks!

Somebody in his family had made her mark, in a grand posterity kind of way.

*

His grandmother Mercedes, in a way, invented the Bakunawa Festival as Isla PulangPasayan’s very own island festival.

It is one of the Philippines’ best crowd-drawing tourist attractions, a Halloween-and-Mardi Gras combo right in the middle of summer. (To be continued/PN)
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