Now/here no/where woman

Under the blinking sacred heart of Jesus, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, everybody sits placidly in the jeepney, former vehicle of war converted by Pinoy genius into a medium for mass transport, articulating function and frivolity the way only the Filipino can. Today’s dispatcher in the paradahan ng bayan is the artist Kawayan de Guia, who swears that riding the jeepney through the maze-like state of the nation eventually leads to an inexplicable sensation of being stuck in a bygone era.   And the music! Oh the music! The April Boys back to back with Curtis Mayfield, by turns wrenching and soothing the passengers’ collective broken hearts. Alaskado! There’s no getting off because up ahead is a sign that says no loading and unloading and around the corner is a fat cop with Ray-Bans just waiting for ‘small change’ to fall into his itching palms. The elusive Filipino psyche is out for a joy ride in these musical pieces, these gilded jeepney/paintings and jukebox/jeepneys re...

Lest I forget, life goes on.

The tips of Manang Cielo's slender fingers are cracked from all the work she does growing things. Wedged into the thin cracks of her fingertips there is always earth. Her home is surrounded by bamboo, pine trees, magnolia trees, and coffee planted by her parents and before them, her grandparents. Everything grows in wild profusion. There are always green shoots of one thing or another pushing through the perenially moist soil and, if you look closely, insects and worms of all colors and sizes bustle about everywhere. Plants and fallen leaves cover almost every inch of ground, except for in a wide circle swept daily around the old house, whose wooden floors are always shiny. Manang Cielo no longer bothers to go downtown. "There's no reason for me to go there," she says with disdain and a dismissive wave of her hand. "There" is just a ten-minute jeepney ride from where she lives on one of Baguio's hills. She says she sees enough of what's out "the...

Or, What We Have Forgotten... There is a way of thinking about the world around us that has become so persistent that we take it for granted. We think of nature or the environment as something out there, as being about trees, wild animals, mountains, pristine lakes and oceans. We think of ourselves, humans, as being above nature because we are rational, calculating, and conniving. We think of our cities as being separate from nature. We think of our technologies as management tools that we can use to control nature. We speak of Ondoy as a natural disaster. It's time to change our habits of thinking. Ondoy, the natural disaster, is gone from our country. That particular typhoon is over but we are still in the throes of a social disaster created by nature and humans both. The possible human causes for this social disaster include, among other things, excessive waste generation and improper waste disposal, lack of foresight in the zonation of our cities, our contributions to greenho...

A PRAYER THAT WILL BE ANSWERED by Anna Kamienska Lord let me suffer much and then die Let me walk through silence and leave nothing behind not even fear Make the world continue let the ocean kiss the sand just as before Let the grass stay green so that the frogs can hide in it so that someone can bury his face in it and sob out his love Make the day rise brightly as if there were no more pain And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane bumped by a bumblebee's head (Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. From A Book of Luminous Things by Ceslaw Milosz.)

I've been thinking about... why Manila wasn't prepared... When a 1977 government study saw the possibility of this happening. I've been wondering about... how we might get our acts together in the face of all this... ... when the administration's allies are busy undermining the government (that's us, the people, that they're undermining). I've been awed by the outpouring of love and the amazing resilience among Filipinos and our creativity in times of crisis . I respect and am grateful for those that have turned to prayer, and yet I ask myself, is prayer enough?

OF RAIN AND AIR All day I have been closed up inside rooms, speaking of trivial matters. Now at last I have come out into the night, myself a center of darkness. Beneath the clouds the low sky glows with scattered light. I can hardly think this is happening. Here in this bright absence of day, I feel myself opening out with contentment. All around me the soft rain is whispering of thousands of feet of air invisible above us. BY WAYNE DODD, from A Book of Luminous Things edited by Ceslaw Milosz