in the guise of an easter greeting

this is really an attempt to contribute to (and confuse?) larry's theory on the body.

i remember how, as kids, we were careful not to get even a scratch during viernes santo and sabado de gloria, because the oldies believed that the wounds one gets on these days do not heal for an entire year. so we would wait all saturday night, hold vigil, until the clock strikes twelve, signaling the lord's resurrection, and life returning to normal. at exactly twelve midnight, we'd jump as high as we could so we would grow taller, and they would pinch our noses so we wouldn't be 'pango' when we grow up. of course, there are many other possible readings of these strange and questionable pagan-colonial practices. the point is: barthes is right on all accounts. it is all about the body. and we need to return to the body. isn't this the essence of the resurrection? it is christ's body that rises from the dead. the body is a necessary site of this great miracle, this fantastic operation. in the resurrection narratives, christ had to regain enough physical, bodily strength to push and slide open the heavy stone that was used to secure his tomb. he had to walk, not float, to where his friends were hiding, and he had to opens his palms to show the wounds, the holes that were created by the nails that were hammered into them. it is his entire body, not just his spirit, that rises up to the heavens and disappears from the earth. isn't this why we have to remind ourselves every year about his death and his resurrection? why we have to look at his bruised, half-naked body, hanging on the cross? this is to remind us, not only of christ's suffering, but specifically of the suffering his body was subjected to. (oops, mali ba? don't hurl those stones at me just yet. i can see father gogo rolling his eyes).

in this week's "annal's of war" in the new yorker, there is an interpretive news feature, titled "exposure", on the soldiers involved in the abu ghraib scandal, particularly on the one who took the photographs and posed with the pyramid of naked bodies. the essay ends, however, with an insight on the body, and on that particular photograph which has become iconic of the war against the war on terror. toward the end, the whole article manages to tie itself up with the western practice of venerating the body, christ's body on the cross, specifically. it makes a statement on how the body is really a site where we play out our desires, or something to that effect (mas maayo iyang pagkasuwat, lar, naturally), and how it is a reminder of just what we need to see, and all that we cannot afford to look at.

happy easter, everyone!