ARTS and CULTUREThe Silent Emergency
byVictor Peñaranda
A Paper presented atthe Congress of the Philippine Center of International PEN Conference
Theme:Literature of Survival—Archipelagic Feasts, Tropical Disasters
December 1 & 2,2011 • Silangan Hall, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila
Oftentimes we find ourselves engrossedwith our own thoughts and fail to be aware of our surroundings––the plants,trees, birds, streams and rivers, mountains, the sea connecting our islands, orthe distance of heartbeats between two persons. While walking on a quietmorning towards a destination, we hardly notice the farmer plowing therainsoaked paddies or the children on their way to school.
We tend to ignore what confronts usbecause our thoughts are elsewhere. There is the traffic jam to deal with onthe way to work; the deadlines to be reckoned with; the holiday bonus nextmonth; a daughter’s unpleasant situation; preparations for the family reunion,and whatever else the mind may be busy about––all tend to cloud our perceptionof what is before our very eyes.
When the mind dwells in anticipationof the future or in reminiscing the past, many of us tend to forget how to bein the present–– to be aware of the moment and to participate fully in what ishappening freshly and spontaneously. And so, we pass up the opportunity toobserve the blueness of the sky or the warm smile of a loved one. We fail tosense those things dear to us and overlook the kindness of others because theyare outside the bubble of one’s self-centeredness. Our psychologicalpreoccupation with fear, hurt, anger, frustration, or resentment distorts ourability to experience things, places and people as they are.
When this mood persists we decide todraw boundaries, create a sense of separateness between this body and otherbodies, between this soul and Nature. A mindset emerges of an inside and anoutside, my side and your side. Without knowing it, we assume a stance of beingdifferent from the rest. We make sweeping generalizations about the superiorityof human beings over other creatures; we insist that the forces of Nature haveto be controlled and made predictable. We totally forget why we are here andflaunt our lack of concern for the natural environment. We see plants and treesbut instantly neglect them; we hardly notice the vital signs of birds, theircolor or song; we cannot feel the flow of streams, the depth of rivers or themagnificence of mountains; we cannot identify with the sea.
❝Our psychological preoccupation withfear,
hurt, anger, frustration, or resentment distorts our ability
hurt, anger, frustration, or resentment distorts our ability
toexperience things, places and people as they are.❞
Our alienation from Nature is subtleand barely recognizable, but it has reached the level of emergency. Societieshave shaped a culture that value Nature only in terms of its usefulness tohuman beings. And so we refer to “natural resources” rather than to aquatic andterrestrial life. The word “resources” implies utility. Those belonging to themineral, plant and animal kingdoms aredispensable and can be exploited absolutely to serve the needs of humankind. Wehave imposed our self-centeredness on the planet quite successfully and havedetached ourselves from Nature by completely forgetting that the sacred breaththat gives life to human beings is the same breath that gives life to the wholeEarth.
When we lose respect for Nature, welose respect for life. That’s why societies rationalize with passion thedestruction of forests, the pollution of the air, the abuse of rivers and oceans.Entire civilizations fall into amnesia, completely forgetting that humanity is umbilicallylinked to Nature; that we belong to one and the same biosphere; that we share OneLife with the universe. Calamities follow the trail of reckless progress.Because we claim not to know any better, we assume the role of bystanders toescape blame and the act of atonement.
Painfully and slowly has it dawned onus that by endangering Nature we also invite disaster on ourselves. The threat ofself-extermination haunts societies because we have allowed the hastenedextinction of entire species of flora and fauna. This has somehow driven us toreflect on our own existence. Somewhere along the way, we discovered that thecure to amnesia is anamnesis, the recollection of who we really are. Byawakening to the bright light in us, each one can embark on a journey toreclaim our ecological and spiritual heritage. We recall that we are both humanand divine. William Blake had an astonishing way of putting it: “If the doorsof perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, andinfinite.”
We are given the chance to be childagain by re-learning that we are not apart from anything or anyone–– that there is nohuman condition or natural environment that is outside of us. We can choose tobe explorer by recalling or ascertaining the names of those who have becomenameless in Nature. Without names those that inhabit the lands and the seaslose their significance, even become invisible, and therefore, do not merit careor concern. We can choose to restore what has been lost, not only for the sakeof the wilderness but also of ourselves.
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| Pilgrim in Transit is Peñaranda's latest book of poetry. |
“I was about to close my eyes
Allow the morning to christen me with light
When a flight of white egrets crossed my sight,
And at the glint of a moment
A solitary crow flew across their path
Without touching the shade of a wingspan.
I felt something dispassionately moving,
Something precious about quietly watching.”
—Flight of Egrets, V. Peñaranda
One day I found out that the birdsweaving gracefully around a farmer, while he was tilling the paddies, are calledkanaway, the name given to migrant terns that frequent lakes, wetlands,estuaries and flooded rice fields. After that experience I periodically took photographsof the rice fields at different lights of the day and of the year. I alsobecame aware of the irrigation canal where a neighbor captured an injuredturtle–– the softshelled terrapin. My family took care of the turtle for abouttwo weeks until it recovered and then, we released it back to the same waterswhere it was found. I also learned from the caretaker of the irrigation systemthat the flourishing aquatic plants on the surface of the water are called“quiapo.” My mind raced back to memories of an old commercial district inManila, along the banks of the Pasig river that is also known as “Quiapo,” verymuch near the island where I was born.
By naming the birds in our community,they become alive, vivid and vibrant in my mind. They are like silver threads in a web ofassociations of what sleeps quietly in memory and what can be imagined richly:the coucal (sabakot), the grassbird (turyok), the crow (uwak) the wild doves (bato-bato), the redmunia (mayang pula), the marsh rail (tikling) and the crested myna (martines). They don’ttell me the meaning of life but they help me realize what it means and feels tobe alive. By naming the animals, plants and trees I become connected to them bysome sympathetic form of magic. A relationship is established that makes itimpossible for me to cause them harm without wounding myself. Their loneliness is my loneliness, theircelebration my thanksgiving.
Perhaps, it’s beauty that draws mecloser to the sunflower, the santol tree where the fireflies sometimes gather, theblood-red dragonfly that seeks damp soil and running water, the juicy macopa and theenticing mango fruits, the gliding wood swallow. When I behold the dawnbreaking at the rim of Mount Banahaw or when the Milky Way unfurls like abanner of bioluminescence in the night sky, I find a moment of perfection in a worldgoverned by impermanence. And where they are, I choose to take refuge and to heal.
❝When we lose respect for Nature, we lose respect
for life. That’s why societies rationalize
with passion the destruction of forests, the pollution of the air,
the abuse of rivers and oceans.❞
the abuse of rivers and oceans.❞
Awareness has served me well indetecting egrets feeding at a trash-ridden estero in the middle of thefinancial district of Makati. I was alert enough to observe black starlings alightingat a billboard on top of the train station at the corner of Taft and Gil Puyat Avenues.One day, in a quiet street near Welcome Rotunda at Quezon City, I noticed a pygmywoodpecker steadily picking on the dead tree trunk where a house was recently demolished.And while walking to a bus terminal in busy Cubao, my attention was arrested bya crumbling marquee in front of an abandoned building. I pieced together the worn-outletters and read: “What we do in life echoes in infinity.” All these gently remindme to expect the extraordinary in the ordinary, the wonderful where we least expectthem to be.
We can even choose to be aware ofnatural forces often identified with danger. Mount Nagcarlan, Mount Lagula,Mount Makiling and Mount Banahaw are my distant neighbors. They belong to a geologiccorridor of crater lakes and volcanoes that stretches from Banahaw in Quezonprovince all the way to Taal Lake in Batangas. The lava that flowed out of themfor hundreds or thousands of years have made the lands fertile. The steam fromtheir veins are being tapped by the local population and transformed into naturalhot bath facilities and resorts. I try to gather as much information as I canabout them: legends, folk tales, scientific records, tourism reports, maps andhistorical accounts. I have to know my neighbors, get accustomed to them untilthey become like characters in a community rather than background scenery. Soin one poem, the mountain is invited to join our conversation. In another poem,someone honors the sacred during Easter:
“Feel earth breathe through bamboo tonight;
Be the moonglow and I your volcano,
Be fragrance of jasmine, my stillness of the lake.
Everything's present, nothing but presence.”
—Good Friday, V. Peñaranda
By seeing things as they are, weeventually learn that there are no cruel monsoons, no heartless typhoons, nomerciless earthquakes, or no angry volcanoes. Just as there are no immoralforests, no wrong rivers, no jealous mountains, no wicked fishes, no unsuccessfulwinds. Science and reason have helped us understand their inherent powers. Tobe able to prepare for their visits or their demonstrated action, we have toaccept them as they are and try to know the sources of their strength and theirpatterns of behavior, perhaps in the same manner that we would become intenselyinterested in understanding an exotic culture. By doing so, the natural forcesbecome part of our way of life and we adapt accordingly to their presence.
We have to keep an open mind. Iremember the time when we went through a typhoon that whipped winds of morethan 150 kilometers per hour. We used thick ropes to tie the main beam of ourhouse to steel pipes and concrete anchors. We placed old tires and hollowblocks to keep our roof from flying. Our town was right across the typhoon’spath. We were hit hard for about 30 minutes and then the sunlight came shiningthrough the overcast sky; the rain became mere drizzle and the wind calmeddown. We were under the eye of the typhoon. My son and I went out of the houseto inspect the damage and for a few minutes we just soaked in the stillness ofthis strange event. Not long after, we heard the roar of wind coming from theeast, like a jumbo jet taking off. The eye had moved; the wind and rain wereunleashing once again accumulated energy. We rushed back to the protection ofour house. The following day there were news reports of the damage anddestruction, the displaced, the injured and the dead.
The memory of that experience neverleft me. Our whole family also learned, with some slice of nervousness, what toexpect when caught again in the eye of a huge typhoon. We have to be prepared;we should be vigilant (not even to sleep at night); we have to be careful. Theincident somehow lodged itself in a small attic of my mind and chose to becomeverse at the appropriate moment:
“So I have located myself at the eye of the typhoon
Where there’s no time to be afraid or helpless,
` No room for recollection or anticipation,
No hunger or anger – just the sheer delight of clarity.”
—Origins, V. Peñaranda
Perhaps, to be able to appreciate thistropical archipelago we have to be honest with ourselves, always be mindful ofsuffering and to help those in need. In preparing for the next calamity, itmight be reasonable to extinguish the emergency in our hearts, be willing toface uncertainty, and feel at home with the seasons. Each one can invoke the brightnesswithin so the voice can be golden when we chant a poem or prayer in the discordsof the world:
“O Hidden Life vibrant in every atom,
O Hidden Light shining in every creature,
O Hidden Love embracing all in Oneness;
May each who feels as one with Thee
Know that we are therefore one with every other.”
—Annie Besant
