Sunday, July 22, 2007 Estremera: Early morning ramble By Stella Estremera Spider's Web
I'M STANDING at a waiting shed, making do with the post's shade, trying to fit my almost corpulent figure into the thin strip of no-sun as the 7 a.m. sun glares from the left.
Whoever still doubts the concern about global warming need only to stand beside me. It wasn't five years ago when 7 a.m. on a July day meant a tinge of dawn cold.
But the dawn has not been cold of late. Just three hours earlier I was trying to conk myself to sleep while my body cringed in protest because of the hot foam mattress that the electric fan couldn't manage to cool down.
And then a truck whizzes by at top speed stirring up a cloud of dust; must be a handful of soil that has been rendered infertile, its topsoil long lost, constantly covered by gravel and sand and stirred up into dust by the wind and humans. Did you know that's how deserts start?
The speeding truck is followed by a jeepney snorting out black smoke. I cough and sneeze and scoff out my disgust.
How small is that island that's supposed to be the first one to disappear once the Antartic ice crashes into the sea along with the polar bears? Is its elevation from sea level anywhere near the elevation of where I'm living now? Would that mean that Times Beach will be gone and then we'll maybe have something called Matina Crossing beach? Pretty heavy thought for 7 a.m.
Finally a taxi takes me out of the misery created by the swirling dust, black diesel smoke, and a sun that's as hot as high noon and yet is slanted right where the shade, sheds, and every other thing above me cannot cover.
The 7 a.m. AM radio news is on and the nasal voice of a female reporter talks about the formaldehyde in candies and biscuits and the Chinese embassy's call to the Philippine regulatory body that found the formaldehyde in their darn foodstuff, and I wonder: who the heck ever thought of putting formaldehyde in candies and biscuits, anyway?
We've heard about such trick for fresh fish. In fact, that must have been a decade ago when tuna from this part of the country was in the middle of such controversy. But formaldehyde being formaldehyde -- you know, stuff that keeps cadavers from decaying until they're buried to turn into dust from where they came (I just hope not any of the dust stirred up by the speeding truck that I have just inhaled) -- while it may be darn ruthless to use the same to keep fish fresh longer, but it does make some sense, the ruthless businessman sense. But biscuits and candies? I don't get it.
But hey, if they can make siopao from cardboard soaked in caustic soda and then later on report that the reporter just made the story up, then be ready for anything; formaldehyde in biscuits and the implicit threat of an embassy's call included.
In the office I browse through the day's tabloid news and counted three rape stories, all minors, and remember the time, very much within my lifetime and when I was no longer that young when a rape story was always met with outrage, shock, and concern and a rape story involving a minor was nationwide concern... deemed so by the reporters themselves. Now, rape has become regular police blotter stories in the line of "suspects being killed while trying to escape." Dismay, outrage, shock and concern suspended if not rendered no longer appropriate. I wonder why saliva tastes bitter...
Still the Chinese stuff rankle and I wonder how it is to be the ruler of 2-billion citizens where all rural areas still do not have water closets and people live in close proximity with their excrement: it's Isla Verde a billion times over. I feel bile rise up my mouth once more... appetizing thought for an early morning work. Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the heat that kept me up most of the night, I just hope that all these outraged thoughts aren't only by me as I continue to long for a cold dawn and for the sun to no longer glare at me as I stand by the roadside at 7 a.m.
The morning sun is supposed to make us smile as it creeps up a horizon covered with mist, but not anymore. Formalin keeps cadavers and biscuits fresh and bile is the regular taste of saliva.
