My ramblings....

News Update

It has continued to rain for the past few days
In waves, like a mourning woman. Letting the tears slide down her raw and pink face, she shudders and gasps, weeps and pounds her fists, then collapses for a moment of exhausted empty silence before the temporary amnesia of her loss passes like a haze.

The tiny streams which burrow their way through rock paths have reached their fingers out into the dirt, and mud welcomingly embraces feet and wheels and paws
White mists have been passing in and out of palm trees
Which makes it look like everything is softening and bleeding at the edges, like it was all made of water colour

At the southern edge of Bugo, on the hill, there's been a rock slide
To the east, on the river, the water has risen, to the knees, to the neck
The Barrangay hall has opened its doors to the damp, displaced people
Near the bridge, the brother of Pastor Pancho slept deeply all night, and thus was cost his television set
Up the road a bit, Teacher Desiree was woken at 3 am to move their belongings to higher ground, she's spent the afternoon drying floors and scrubbing walls

This has a strange ring of a Canadian snow day, but with loftier implications. Classes have been cancelled, children will stay inside. That is, if their inside hasn't been filled with brown hapless water sailed by Mango juice packs and plastic Sumo wrappers. The drainage is clogged and so people wait with their elbows on their knees and their eyes on the tide, hoping this demanding visitor wont stay long and wont leave too much behind. They sleep on bamboo slats with fifty other people and listen to the rain surge in and out, like rice in a can, like white noise on the radio, an electric fan, the sound in your ears before losing consciousness.

I wonder at that kind of power. It reminds me of God sometimes, or it's the closest thing I can imagine as a resemblance to him. Unexpected, uncontrolled, unstoppable, unmovable. Fierce. It's true, sometimes he frightens me, though I don't believe him to be sadistic or dully unfazed, like this passing typhoon. But I like to feel that hopelessness sometimes, that there are things we humans can't control (all that power wearies me), like water, the fall of the rain, the direction of the waves.

posted by Unknown @ 10:24 PM