Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Obenieta: Hello to the haunted By Myke U. Obenieta So to speak
SOME would wait to tell the truth until they’re gasping for their last breath.
It does take supernatural spunk, after all, to hold on to a lie and to die at the same time.
And so, for those grinning away the groan over former president Joseph Estrada’s declaration (“I didn’t steal from the Government”), maybe it’s best to wait till his tongue would stick out in thirst for holy water at his appointed time of extreme unction. That way the skeptics recently spooked by Malacañang’s executive clemency would not be bellyaching in a prolonged hunger to bite President Arroyo’s ears off.
For all we know, she probably was just in the mood for a Halloween harlequinade too early, eager to wear mercy like boa feathers. At this time when her enemies are dying to bury her alive, maybe she was just projecting an example for them to go easy on her. Come on, let’s have a break. Or so she could have moaned especially now when it seems many are in the mood to light black candles for her administration.
Maybe it’s all a satin-gloved scheme to dispose of her detractors without being so brazen about it. Raising their blood pressure until they’d be all down with a stroke would be a nifty blow to hush their fault-picking frenzy for good, certainly. Why, they might even be driven at their wit’s end and leap out the window till the remains of their discontent scattered on the pavement would suffice to force those noisy protesters off the street. And it could be carcinogenic to keep on cursing her like she’s the cause and reason for every woe imaginable from the obscenity of terrorism to erectile dysfunction.
Indeed, there’s more than imagining your partner’s lips might suddenly sprout with a fang or remembering a moonlit childhood of ghost stories to squelch one’s amatory instinct in bed. All you have to do is to persist in being haunted by thoughts of lovey-dovey Erap and Gloria heating up in one’s head. Why bother yourself with a nightmare, dear?
Aiiee, how steadfast our sense of disquiet. Do we have to wait for worms to wriggle out out of our nostrils, mouths, eyes and ears for us to rest in peace?
Erap and Gloria might go on to win a Nobel Prize for burying their hatchets, and go far as ambassadors of goodwill elsewhere in the world where bloody absurdity continues to cut a wide swathe. Let bygones be, what do you say?
Then again, staying restless is the only way to keep alive that remnant of innocence to make a difference between right and wrong. That’s all it takes not to whittle down moral standards to the level of shards, and step all that aside or go hopscotch over it—easy does it, forgive and forget—till one’s foot is in one’s goofy mouth.
And what if moral outrage in the absence of decency, truth, honesty dies naturally? Here’s one perfect epitaph not to be trifled with, thanks to the great Bard: “The evil that men do lives after them...” Guess who got the last and loudest laugh.
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In light of our traditional cemetery-centered holiday, here’s a bit of digression and trivia to tickle the mind out of the headlines.
She died of malnutrition after gaining fame for writing about health and the scientific way to eat. Or make a name synonymous with sweetness, and drown in a vat of chocolate. Dr. Alice Chase and Robert Hershey of the eponymous chocolate brand, according to an online source on the “Strange and True Facts About Death,” might as well had been tripped over by a merry-making Grim Reaper.
Death is not dour, like the living, all the times. It does not always demand to be taken too seriously. In Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” for instance, the dark monarch with his parody-perfect costume looked like he was on his way to a Mardi Gras, if not out to render clowns unnecessary for a children’s party. Mischief becomes him in that wonderful scene in the woods. See how, with a sly smile, he slowly saws off the trunk of a tree on which a womanizing scoundrel perched to avoid being killed either by his lover’s vengeful husband or the forest’s wild animals.
May we, in this season of candles, continue to find humor through all things horrible.
