one of the less than five items from the philippines on display now in the met is a rice deity, a bulul, from the northern highlands of the old country. what the met chose to showcase is shady looking with a highly abraded face and hardly a semblance of a mouth.
early today, while waiting for a friend who asked me to come see—for the third time—the over-the-top china costume extravaganza, i snuck in first to the met’s gallery of the arts of the indigenous peoples of Island Southeast Asia only to be crestfallen again. this rice guardian hardly registers.
in common coinage now back home, one is described as bulol when one stammers. this deity is just mute.