La Lunatica

An obra maestra wrought out of earth, fire, water and wind lying idly in line with the planet’s equator. An archipelago of 7, 107 tropical islands lavishly blessed not only of flaura and fauna but also of trust-worthy auburn people. Haven of the geniuses! Home of the Masters of Arts! A maiden dancing gracefully unto the pacific beat. Philippines… a thing of beauty… THEN.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath… concentrate your imagination on the past. What did you smell? Is it the fragrance of the pure sampaguita slowly mounting the busy, humid walls of the church? Oh, the profundity! Now try to shift your attention at present. Sniffed the foul odor of the mountain-like bunches of garbage diffusing into thickly-polluted air? Felt the disturbing difference? But it’s reality!

Philippines, like a white dove soaring high above the clouds, is a country of virgin beauty and purity. So beautiful it caught the attention of the machos around. But where has this angelic face gone? There are no more traces of these today, unluckily. Palay fields of the many are converted into hotel rooms and malls for the less. Children are now playing on a choco-colored river, drinking some of it while they swim. The robust breasts of the earth are now distorted due to illegal mining. Bald are the forests; logs stamped for export. Mirror-like bodies of water turned into a landfill. The reddish kisses of the sun now crooked into a biting heat. The poor, white dove that soared high violently fell on the mud-causing-cancer. Its wings are soiled and wet, it can no longer fly.

Of almost 200 years in freedom, do you really think our Motherland have emancipated from the sharp claws of tyranny? There may be no more Spaniard preachers to accuse us of their own-committed crimes; there may be no more American educators to give away free, imported chocolates; there may be no more Japanese soldiers to unbutton the Filipinas’ terno, but tyrants are actually alive. Slowly evading our system and covering its agenda with such an extravagant façade. They are in every face of the Filipinos…

We are the tyrants of our own. Why do such-a-crime and blame it up to others? We’re just like the preachers-in-white nagging unto prayer meetings about what is ‘ethical’ and yet doing same filths all over again. We’re just like the educated whites who know the best way to cure this sickness but are passive and brain-drained. We’re just like the violent sakangs molesting the virgin, curvaceous body of our Mother. We’re changing not for the better; our flesh was slowly eaten up by this cancer. Alarming but true, the beginning of the end was yet to come… so soon.