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Sunday, December 28, 2003
Obenieta: Holding on, handing over
By Myke U. Obenieta
Sun.star Essay
So much can be done by raising a hand. Imagine what extent of evil could have been avoided if black sorcerers and witches were without arms to flail their maledictions with. Or what degree of goodness could have a made a difference in the world if those with the best of intentions would have more than a finger to lift.
Whether it’s man-made or a handiwork of nature, grief has made its presence felt a few days before the world waves the year goodbye.
So far, at least 2000 died in an earthquake that ripped through southeast Iran.
Around a gas field in southwest China, the death toll is expected to mount after 191 people were reported killed when a well burst, blasting off a jet of sulfurous hydrogen in the air.
No need for industrial accident, however, in Tel Aviv as long as a suicide bomber could make it just as easy in paving the way of at least five people to Kingdom Come.
In a blaze of fire, too, went the 90 Lebanese victims accounted so far from the wreckage of a jet plane that crashed off the West African state of Benin.
Nearer to home, the hell unleashed by a landslide in Leyte is no less heartbreaking.
And who says rain would be enough to wash away the wrath and anguish of a housewife’s family in Ronda, Cebu after bullets hit her while they were sleeping?
These and more are reasons enough for hands to wring out helpless or to harden into a fist. Indeed, woe unto those with amputated arms whose disability owes to the fact that they can’t even conceal a cry, wipe out a tear, or pull strands of hair messed up by misery.
Oh, they would have given an arm if they could choke into silence even a child lisping this innocent rhyme: “I have two hands the left and the right, hold ‘em up high so clean and bright...”
Three photos on this paper’s front page yesterday made so much of hands, or the lack of it. Talk about visual consistency, and the layout artist pulled it off like a sleight of hand.
Over the masthead was a peek of basketball hotshot Shaquille O’Neal, both his arms digitally cropped out in the layout as if to underscore his feeling of futility after his team got trounced.
Further below O’Neal’s picture, as if to echo his agony, was a close-up of a boy crying over his bandaged hand. “This boy,” according to the caption, “is one of the victims of 57 recorded firecracker incidents related to the holiday revelry from December 14 to 26.”
Without meaning it, the layout artist foisting the photograph of the armless O’Neal and the wounded boy might as well have scaled down to size the tragic statistics and rendered a human face to the abstraction of distress.
But, look, smack in the middle of O’Neal and the boy was the image of Pope John Paul II. To some 60,000 pilgrims gathered at the St. Peter’s Square for his traditional Christmas blessing to “The City and the World” (Urbi et Orbi), the Pope reached out his hand, as if to soothe the world’s injuries as he spreads his prayers to the four winds: “Save us from wars and armed conflicts which lay waste whole areas of the world, from the scourge of terrorism and from the many forms of violence which assail the weak and the vulnerable.”
As clock-hands inexorably cast away the remains of the year, may we have time enough to seize with a miser’s steadfastness the devalued currencies of faith, hope, and love amidst the lavish clutter of these clichés—uncertainty, despair, hatred.
“Oh,” cried a poet. “Man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” Not that we can do nothing more than go reckless as we dare stretch the limits of sky—by spangling the dark spaces between stars with sparks of firecrackers, sputtering off into a fistful of ashes.
Into the new year, dear reader, may the way of the phoenix be the wingpath of our best wishes.
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