Today, I am posting one untold story of a friend who is not an ex-seminarian but an ex-con, meaning - - he was able to endure the rigorous and equally religious purgation of seminary formation in and outside The Hill - - a priest who at one day after singing the lauds and genuflecting infront of the constantly grimacing and suffering Jesus Christ in His Cross, received a miraculous ping inside his faculty and his constantly troubled heart, bolted his congregation whose sit of power is the now newly renovated and totally revered Fathers’ Palace at the eastern side of The Hill.

Here it goes...

Everytime I saw those CPs or DigiCams flashing, I could feel something is jerking inside me. I am being taunted by a ghost of a stolen photo shot while I was pissing on the floor and at the same time feeding some imaginary ducks at the seminary dorm hallway. Holy Goose, if those pictures will surface today, I will be laughing my way to hell.

Did you ever see those pictures?

Nope. I was grinning.

The Hill and to hell, I was caught patrolling the hallway with my Nescafe Shake in hand doing some kungfu dances and with hik, hik and hik as lyric of my too late for the night vespers.

And so…

That Nescafe Shake was full of booze concocted to the hilt, to the strongest combination of Gilbey’s Gin and a cola, by our fourth year senior named Rico.

This is how it happened. You knew so well that our dormitory rooms were spacious enough for 8 seminarians. We could even play short tennis in between the two rows of those beds and lockers.

One night, after our ten o’clock lights-off – when those memorable blue-dim lights were on in lieu of those power-eating 40 watts fluorescents and when everybody were expected to be pretending falling into wet dreams- - we, eight of us in the room and I was then the youngest, waited for the Prefect, Padre Amore, for his routine check up. We pretended to be sleeping, of course.

And then, what?

After Padre Amore’s soles silenced, Rico slipped his hand below his bed and, viola, a pint of Nescafe Shake glinted on the dim light. He sipped the booze and crawled towards the next bed. I could not remember now who was the second but I was the third one who did the same thing. Hands slipped below the bed, we sipped and we crawled, backed to the bed, lied and pretended to be sleeping with complete props of blanket covering our bodies. We did that routine of ingenuity continuously until we downed one bottle of Gilbey’s Gin.

After one more bottle and countless hands slipping below the bed, sipping, crawling, lying and pretending to be asleep, the heck of neophyte of me triggered the urge of feeding the imaginary ducks. I scrambled for the latrine.

And there, there at the hallway, I eased myself. Sucks!

And then, out of nowhere, flashes of camera caught my eyes.

I’ve seen those pictures later on and I laughed at my stupidity.

Guilty? No way! But, the offense was getting a juvenile drunk with a 16 years old boy pretending to be a man and striving to become a priest.

I was that boy (LOL).

Attending a seminary where some gross misconducts were done does not impute any guilt or guilt at all. However, it could be worth noting that some men who are now leading the church undergone through a system in which standards of behavior were less rigorous than some outsiders’ expectations.

One more glaring and de facto effect of this brotherhood of the cloaks is seeing how these men - - who formed and nurtured their brotherhood through clandestine and juvenile nights of drunkenness and occasionally, depending on their testosteronic level, stole time from their outreach programs to watch ST flicks - - being so patient with and oftentimes protective of their brothers who later go astray.

And I vaulted the congregation to be free, again.

And I laughed and laughed my way to RR.

Those ghostly pictures were neatly stacked inside my seminary albums and I am the undertaker who has the power to unleash the ghost. But, I will never do that to my friend. I could be patient with and protective of him.

I was the one who was at the second bed (laugh).

I snapped those pictures twenty years ago when we were both freshmen.

Author: ADIgcalinos

The then newly-opened Robinson's Galleria was so tempting to be explored for a barrio (but not barriotic) boy who only had sari-sari and at times sira-sira (had to close for stacks of debts) stores back home in the boondocks of Mindanao as hang-outs.

But the most inviting part of that mall along Edsa and Ortigas was its cinema that was showing what was to be a seminarian's dream flick-ST films, which were very much in fashion at that time. Not that I, nor were they deprived of skin flicks because back in the province, we had seen films hundred times racier and hotter than those offered in some Cubao theaters or elsewhere.

But it must be different when you were on a restriction: the stakes are higher and the thrill simply unimaginable. This thought I shared with three of my fellow X-Men, who agreed to avail of our Sunday liberty and partake of the skin flick on the big screen. But we were plain curious about how much that starrer could arouse our sensualities as boys of the cloth. We were young boys, yes, but our young testicles were oozing with advanced testosterone levels, mind you.

I could still remember the three ladies who made me perspire despite the ultra-cold AC and my heart beat faster: Cristina, Greta, and Rita. The three X-Men had the same trouble, only that they made more frequent trips to the RR where they must have poured out their 'sama ng loob,' with the lone flourescent lamp hanging overhead as their only witness .

After two hours, we left the place grinning, recounting the most titillating parts that mostly left stains on our undies, we found out later.

That's how we enjoyed and not just fantasized and looked at sexual freedom in the context of sexual repression. Some X-Men brought their sensualities to the next level, but I restrained myself for fear of ST + D. Hitching should not have been a problem but my fear prevailed. My conscience was not sick, and I had and still have a clear sense of what is good or bad for me. I chose to be safe. Besides, I fully trusted and made use of my creative imagination with little help from the ever reliable Ms. Palmy.

Guilty? Not a hint. We were being truthful. The recklessness of youth in us resolved to introduce ourselves in advance to the world of sensuality before age or death catches on us, leaving us desiring and despairing to do things we could not possibly do anymore, things that we could not do within the walled confines of The Hill, of things forbidden by Padre Pio because he was the only one licensed to do it with the blessing of his padre de amore. Mama mia!

I wished I could bring the tres marias to meet the tres padres, but I knew they knew better than importing flesh traders to The Hill. Amen.

First published at CAPRICORN...not for the faint-hearted

When I was young, dreaming was free.

And dreaming to become a priest was the grandest dream for us children of the soil, yes, for us who seldom given the chance to genuflect in front of the holy saints, for us who found solace from the joys of kissing the holy hands of the one we called Apo Padi, from the one who gave us the blessing that God loves us so much. During my childhood days, I could count on my fingers the times I attended–without paying attention, though– the holy mass.

Nevertheless, I could not blame my parents for not hearing masses because we were so far from the center of civilization. We lived at the outback–if I could steal the word from the American wild Wild West novels. I found solace only, and satisfied myself, on top of an aroo tree perched on a top of promontory–the hill we called Signay– the highest part of our land or even, maybe, the highest part of our barrio, looking down to where the town was, imagining the bustling street and even envying the good life down there. The pealing of the church’s bells could not even reach the place I belonged. All I could hear were the sounds of VICTORY or PANTRANCO revving while negotiating the uphill at Bobonot.

Today, still, I could feel the sounds of solace of those gritting engines, third only to the songs of birds and whistles of aroo trees which lulled me oftentimes toward numerous and wonderful summer dreams. O, I forgot to mention the amazing emmak of our cows and the powerful garraigi of our horses. See, the outback, eh?

And the dream began, awakened. A comforting dream, after all. This dream, I thought, was my only way to emancipation.

I did not dream to becoming a doctor because I hated the syringe. The needle was dreadful, then. I never dreamed of becoming a lawyer because I did not know what was a lawyer until later when my oldest uncle, from my mother’s side, become lawyer. I still hate the strictness of a lawyer as owner of the law.

I never dreamed of becoming a farmer and own vast lands and numbers of cattle. What a folly, I was, eh! I hated the bite of the sun on my skin, my brownish-black skin that never dreamed of becoming white, huh. I hated wiping the sweats that wells from my face while riding my horse galloping and racing against some of our welwel cows towards some burubor, an oasis of greenish, mossy water, we seldom saw in between rangkis. Ha! That was my childhood’s farmer life. Now, I regretted why I hated those good, old lives.

I had one other dream. I wanted to become a Veterinary Doctor. At least, the needle was for the cows, I thought. My late Apong Lakay had a herd of cattle numbering to almost a hundred heads under his auspices. Apong Lakay owned some but mostly was owned by some wealthy families in town. Until one day, when they put some cows in the cuadra, and they did the artificial insemination, we called that sumpit. I was there and I saw what they did. The veterinarian put his arm inside the cow and when the arm was out, I saw the dung over it. I squirmed, ew. I will never be that doctor. Never.

I never realized that he used gloves at that time, he he he.

The one remaining dream–to become a priest–was a comfortable one. I could have cars, a comfortable house and I could collect money everytime I said mass. People will call me, Apo.

Oh, I just remember this thing now, I should have been with some beautiful women. Oh, that I eyebrows! Some priests do have beautiful women at their convents, don’t they? These women are doing services for the good of their community–Green!—accompanying their father so he will not be lonely.

I clung with this dream amidst the anxiety I read from my Auntie Simpling’s Malaya magazine to where I stared the black and white pictures of children–skinny, bony, bighead, hungry and starving children of Negros. I clung with this dream even the good old man they called Ninoy lying lifeless at the tarmac with spread arms and white attire like a fallen dove from the unforgiving wanton children’s slings, smacked unceremoniously in front of its home, just before the door of its nest, it may called home.

I know the dream was burning. But, I never budged to shout the slogan: Tama Na! Sobra Na! Palitan Na! It stayed there in me even until I started painting walls–first on our high school’s walls–of ‘Katarungan Para kay Betty!”–words of bloody and painfully red calls for justice.

Of course, like any other vain, uneasy teens, I also dreamed of having a good love life, he he. I contented myself reading the Pilipino, Wakasan, Love life, Kenkoy Comics because good, beautiful and alluring young ladies belonged to the town’s affluent families and so, that was, I thought. I learned life from Kenkoy, from Bosyo and Tekya and a good science from Planet op de Eps.

Of course, my life and my dream were never complete if I did not read the beloved Bannawag–the beloved Bannawag from which I learned my first ABC–before I learned anything else from the ABAKADA and Tiririt. I widened my limited life’s horizon by reading the Rangtay ti Bullalayaw, Mutya, Mr. MVP and Ineng, and the great Macario and Muyac of Simbaluca of Kapitan Romul in Fighting Pogi Series.

Radio dramas also helped nurtured my dream. I liked the bests of Uncle Pete, the old Edilberta and the mid-morning drama of Kimat ti Amianan. These drama and stories kept my dream burning like wild fires.

I hated dreaming the hard but comfortable rich life. I did not want to be like Flordeluna who was maltreated by powerful rich people whom she called her family. I like Annaliza but poor people die young, I thought. At the outback, we owned the second TV in our barrio–the old reliable, black and white, cabinet-type Hitachi. Today, my mother used it as cabinet. I was useful, after all.

While clinging with my dream, I become a sacristan–but only during high school days because I have no money and time to attend masses during Sundays—in between leading my fellow high schoolers cut classes and joined the rallyists. And, of course, of becoming extras to movies being shoot in location at our beloved Dasol to earn extra allowance for our discreet Tanduay session during preparation of leaflets.

And the great part was this. When the time came of securing my good moral character certificate—I hate this because how could anybody give certificate of good moral character to anybody—my high school administrator could not be swayed to give me the certificate I needed to enter the seminary.

They said: Komunista, agseminarista? So be it.

And I entered the seminary sans the old and demanded “good moral character”. See.

My next post will be “Road to Perdition, err, Redemption”.

Recommended Readings:

James H. Cone's A Dream or a Nightmare

Burning.

Murder.

Stenches of charred bodies.

Burned souls.

Called souls were many but few were chosen to partake with sumptuous meals.

Flames laughed. And smokes challenged all saints in heavens. Flames danced and swayed with the wind - - and the ledda all around but not with the heights of priestly walls - - and smokes darted their might to the place of thy kingdom come bringing all along the screams of burned souls to heavens or hells, nobody ever knew.

And beyond the heights and mights of that priestly walls, the drapes stood still, and faithful enough, guarding the called who call themselves semens and also the owners of holy cloaks who called themselves Prefects, all of them were preoccupied of their dreams in limbo or somewhere else, dreaming of the good promised days of redemption of happy life, some or all of them never knew what was hell like, the dreams of doing something holier than the ordinary, of becoming guardians of the infirms, the poor and the sick. And just beyond the walls, one soul cringed, cried, burned and charcoaled out of reach.

I was one of the semens - - I hate to remember it now. And I dreamed that night about sex.

Then, just before the roosters crowed for the third time, screams betrayed the silences of The Hill. One body lost its soul. Rather, the soul was purged from the body.

And when the lights shone on the dreamy faces of the walled-wanton lives, the truth was revealed, blackened beyond recognition, charred truth. Awed by the scene and by the sudden revelation, one priest run for the merciful water.

The bottled water in hand–we call that water, holy–he held the bottle with his index finger and the thumb, looked at the body with sacramental thoughts, more of condolences than of venerations, he sighed and closed his eyes as if summoning all his strengths and transferred those to the body, and in depth breath of repentance, he raised his sight and called the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and drenched the charred body to salvation. Unknown to the called, the soul was towed by the smoke to heavens or hells, no one ever knew. The absolution was too late.

Shouldered dropped, drooped, and heavied by the lost of one soul, the semens and the Prefects winked and said goodbyes to the body of a soul sentenced by burning flames, a soul of blackened flesh beyond recognition and in cognito, gone to different places at the same time, left by the muses of poetics and wonders of languages. Gone and alas, incommunicado from the grasps of all known-living worlds. And exiled to the worlds only the believers knew. They asked for repentance and prayed to God that He may receive the creature to His fold and give it an unending happy life.

It was hard to say ‘you damn fool, be thankful. The worst is over, isn’t it?’

But, on second thought, the end of its kind was not as expected, far from what was imagined and nothing to what was conceived as holier which was supposed to be, and far from what the mind could grasped. Having poetics today was inimical and philosophizing was out of places, moreso to the meaning of sermon to be heard or to the existence of gospel being preached. Nothingness should be the call of the day.

Or, maybe, it was better to miss the scheduled holy mass, for nothing was holier than to contemplate to what had happened, to what was happening to the joyful days of the living, now dead unceremoniously, mercilessly burned and displayed beyond recognition, as offering to the new day. God may forgive His called ones missing the words of wisdom at this day. But, not today. Not with this seminary.

But, what was the used of lingering to one’s charred body of an unknown person to a semen dreaming of holy days with the sickly and poor and not with the dead? God will left all souls to heavens, anyway.

Or, maybe, it was easier to linger on one’s pain than to imagine oneself experiencing the agony the charred body had gone through this early hours. Sympathy was a virtue but turning your back to the causes of sufferings, the sufferings that the semens professed and confessed to ease upon all who carries the burdens of their crosses, that is, carrying all crosses to himself all crosses of the burdened, was apathy.

And the holy bell could be more comfortable and it sounds more comforting. Indifferences to peoples’ pains were palatable while kneeling, genuflecting and astutely preaching the comforting words of the Gospels, mum to the noises of discomfort of the worlds outside the walled sanctuary, numbing all pains that already creeping up to the ends of all arteries and veins, may it be full of cholesterol or not, that this eerie scene brought so early in the morning.

The sounds of solace, indeed, were needed in these trying times.

The bell rang the third time and it was time for the daily, routinely chanting of lauds and the giving of halleluiah to heaven with the intention to include the lost life in the petitions.

I was there. As a decoration of the circumstances, I did not know. And I hate that!

The ironies for that day were vividly stated by Padre Pio (not his real name, of course), who we fondly called kalbo, in his sermon. He said: ‘After that experience we just encountered this early morning, of seeing the charred body of one lost soul, after savouring the stenches of death, the dead, not anymore the dying, the sickly and the poor, and better still, after feeling the sharpness of burned flesh for those who had the innards of touching the body, with the greatest intentions of comforting the dumped corpse, may these be touches full of contritions, venerations and/or condolences, God showed us the true world, the world of pains and sufferings we were called for to serve. I saw your dreamy faces turned pale and blue, full of shocks and angsts, of despairs and admonitions.

‘I asked you now. To whom we direct our admonitions? To whom do we blame for the circumstances that just ended a good and youthful life, I presumed, who, like you, hours before he found himself in flamed, was full of dreams and aspirations? Is it not disturbing that just few steps from our doorsteps and few meters from our headboards, there he was and died without help? Indeed, there was a discomforting revelation that evil worked its best while many were fast asleep and dreaming, out of guard. Enemies strike when it is less expected. So, be on guard. Or, we, may put it this way, always be prepared for any eventuality.’

Padre Pio paused and let his words flowed–plowed their dreams with viciousness–among the seminarians who at that time fighting the sleepiness and sloppiness they always brought inside the chapel and with complete disregard of the needed wakefulness to hear the gist–even the jest–of the sermon. Some were at attention but with glassy eyes, with tears of controlled yawns, and pretending to be awaked. Some shifted the weights of their bodies and swaggered their uneasiness to the truth in the sermon like bitter pills being put to their mouths. The silences of the faithful and the hoarse voice of the priest haunted the saints who were present at the altar. And, bounced back to the pews occupied by the called.

The semens hoped that the father should end his long speech and his rhetorics in dissecting the scene they all knew a while ago, and looked forward to the sumptuous breakfast being prepared at the refectory, a meal of fried dried fish we called tuyo and sautéed pechay which we hated so much as unpalatable menu. The meal was hopefully sumptuous because it was only the menu being served, and thus, we got no choice.

But, the father had no inkling to end his sermon and he continued: “It all happened under my nose, just beyond the seminary walls, just beyond the comfort we called holy lives, just as we philosophized the meaning of existence, quidity, and social justice. And just beyond our stupidity.”

Okay, that was stupidity all along. Listening to his rhetorics of salvations could not shoo away guilts that were slowly creeping and eating my thoughts of redemptions.

And still…

The sight burned its images in the abyss of my memories. And, it is still burning. The stenches of death were still stacked in the bridge of my nose and I could still smell it until today. The scene was still living in the back of my eyeballs so that I could still see it when I blinked against tears. The laughters of burning orange flames licking the priestly walls and engulfing at the same time the charred body that was crying in pain, in agony, and waiting for forgiveness of whatever sins it had. These imaginations are pulling me back to The Hill. Gadammit!

If only the occupants of the priestly sala felt the heat, the absolution was given as it falls due. And there were no other burned souls whose screams cracked dawns. But, nobody listened to the agony.

Now, they are coming back as Tales of The Hill.

One cannot go forward without looking back at the past, as many would say, may these be happy ones or sad ones. Pasts are always parts of the continuum of what we call life cycles, er, lifelines.

Life is circular because we have the abilities, tendencies to go back where we were, at least in our memories, tracing back the lines like counting past years in our faces, as we look ourselves staring at us in the mirror. It is like picking up the truths, meanings, of our once texted life experiences. But, the hardest of it all, in going back at life lanes, is the prejudice of separating the good ones from the best ones.

Life is also linear. No one could ever turn the time around. We will always end up counting the days, weeks, months and years–forget the hour–of our past lives, at least for now. At least for now, waiting the science fiction of time machine becomes a reality. Not in my lifetime, though, I am sure. All we could do is to trace the events and owned it as now–as lines tangled in a web of events, as pastels if we put pictures on it and as coded dots and numbers if we put these events entrenched at the virtual memories.

It never dawned on me that a nostalgic piece of mine which I dug from my file — heavy files that burdened me for so long, not coded and not saved on flash drives or disks, thus, heavy literally — which I blogged, tickled someone’s memories and caused words flowing in the cyber world - - virtual as it is no bound - - greater than a river. I fondly called this someone, Maestro. These files are, indeed, heavy literally. Files of folders, books, notes that I scooped and bundled in a box when I said goodbyes to now I called walled-wanton life in the seminary. The bus conductor robbed me a person’s fare when I brought them home, which I could not afford at that time. It caused my mother’s time of budgeting their hard earned money. At least that what cost me when I could not left behind my baggage of life.

And these are metaphorically and poetically heavy, too. The heavy files that I tagged along as I drifted to the then unknown future, now the present, were parts of the best old days. And these files will be added one more piece soon or maybe discarded soon, when this piece ended. At least, this one could be saved at the virtual world and I will not carry all along with me as I continue counting lines on my face.

Going back to the intended tale that I planned to put it here. The dream, or is it the prodding?

Do I dream of putting the cloak of holiness to become holier than the other? Or, do I dreamed of putting the cloak because I was conditioned by the dream of my family to become holier than the other family?

And so let the public may know.

And so the public may not judge.

And so God may forgive.

And so the frailes may jerk.

I could remember the beginning of it all, now.

It all begun when dreaming was still free, at least for us very young then who could reenact all that mind could grasp, grappled and conceived, freely without pretensions and inhibitions.

On every Tuesday or Friday, whenever my mother had money or my father gave my mother his salary — a mere seventy pesos every 15th day and 30th day of the month, a laborer’s pay — my mother was obliged or obligated to go to market and later brought home a bag full of supplies worth five pesos, we were towed to our neighbors, when neighbors were a kilometer away from our nipa hut in the middle of banana plantations - - we called this home, because nobody would tend for us while she was away. We were happy then, together with my younger sisters and a brother, to see few children’s faces to whom we knew as our second cousins. As soon as we set foot on their backyard, we began dreaming what we would like to be. We were soldiers killing the unlucky cousins who portrait the villains, may it be a Japanese or a criminal from the stories we heard from our grandfathers who never faltered to say stories of whoever people during dusks whenever he was with us. We were, oftentimes, all get killed. Nobody won until one of my cousins brought about the idea of anting-anting, the amulet of immortality. Of course, we aired our protests but he defended his antics to – aha, this was my grandfather told me, when the Japs came along killing whoever they want to kill, he just slept wearing the anting-anting and they left him unhurt. And so be it. He was not killed during our small war games. The sticks we used as guns will no longer do us good.

Until one Tuesday, we confronted the grandfather who taught his grandchild of cheating us. He told us that an anting-anting is not effective when it is Friday and when it is not wore by the owner. He even told us that some anting-anting were the devil’s work and become useless when sprinkled with holy water. Aha! Happy of the knowledge, we devised a plan to win the war next game day.

It was Friday and we did the same routine of war games. Before we started the game, we stole the anting-anting, robbed, I should say, from the child owner during one of our ritual of gabbo, wrestling. I assumed the role of a priest who owned the holy water. I ran towards the caramba, an earthen jar full of water, and scooped a buyuboy full of what we called holy water and ran back again and drenched the anting-anting amidst the strong protestations of our cousins as if we were losing a true amulet. The anting-anting now has no power. We took our sticks and bratatatat and alas, we won today.

I learned the trick of portraying a priest from my older cousins. We stole the newly washed and hanged blanket of my auntie and I wrapped around my body like sinuman. They cut my hair and left a peso wide, the big Philippine Peso during martial law, cleaned part on top of my head. We called that ‘orden’ like ‘ordenan a lawalawa’. The power of a priest was then bestowed to me. The priest won the war.

My becoming a priest won us the war but I was not a winner for that day. I was spanked by my auntie and boxed by my cousin to whom we robbed the anting-anting and who lost the power of his kalasag. I went home with a black eye and a darkened thigh and a peso wide orden. We never did the trick again.

One of my girl cousins also portrayed as a Mother Superior, mimicking the antics of the then Franciscan Sister who taught us religion once a week at our elementary school as if religion was our salvation and belief was the memorization of prayers we repeat every now and then. We called her Mother Immaculata.

She – my cousin as Mother Superior– taught our younger girl cousins how to bake bread by using the soil as dough and our urine as water. We urinated on the soil and slowly, using our fingers, circling the dough, the hardened soil, and scooped it with our hands. We partake, in imagination, on the bread broken into pieces by the Mother Superior. Some of us become children of the family and one of us as Padre de Familia. And before, we ate the bread, I remembered that we need to pray, and I said: Alaenyo daytoy ket kanenyo a pakalaglagipanyo kaniak – take this and eat it in memory of me, complete of actions and slanged Ilokano. I remembered the words from the priest, a foreign priest with slanged Ilokano, who officiated our first communion.

And one summer had gone.

And rains come as we expected.

And suddenly, the rains never come. It stopped coming and we were happy with the long dried summer. We chanted: rain, rain go away and come again another day. The waiting become longer and rains never come another day.

Our grandfathers were worried. We were in for a drought. No one could plant rice. The bamboo flowered and my grandfather told me that gawat was coming.

And our grandmother, my mother and our aunts began to pray the rosary. We were again so happy. Praying rosary, we called that palualo, meant kankanen, linubian and pancit to us. And it meant, we could again play together during the one hour recitations of whatever petitions my grandmother were saying in between mysteries. All I could remember were the torre ni David, torre a balitok and the palpallatok ti bigbigat. Whoever this David was and wherever this torre a balitok was, I did not know. I learnt later that this palpallatok ti bigbigat was the morning star.

As soon as the praying ended with the magic word Amen and the ritual of ‘bless’, the kissing of the right hand or touching my forehead to the back of the right palm of all elders and elderly present, we satisfied ourselves with the presence of kankanen, linubian and pancit. After which, we kowtowed with the elders, in single file, praying again of many petitions in procession traversing all farm lots of the host family. Procession times, oftentimes, were during dusks. Maybe, to let the candle lights shine. All I know all along was that the candle lights showed our way because what was the use of lighted candles if it was not dark, after all. At least, that was I understood, then.

And one afternoon, when our family was the host, I was assigned to lead the procession holding in front of me the image of San Isidro de Labrador. And after the procession, I heard that someone said: Agbalin koma met a padi daytoy anakmo, Paring - - I wish that your son will become a priest, Paring. And among the men, who now begun also their ritual of giving due respect to Samiguel, I heard: Huh, kayatmo balong ket no kaponenda ti padi. Kitam ket awan asawana - - Do you like it son? Priest will be castrated. See, priest has no wife. That was they know at that time. Some priests have wives, don’t they?

And on the next day, rain came pouring in, ending the summer games and starting the season of toiling under the pounding rains.

And the dream began.