The wrath of a million tears

You see things like this on the news and in the movies. As a setting for a story, a major motion picture, to add a dark color and a sad soundtrack to a blockbuster. But seeing and experiencing things like this happen live, with your own eyes, is quite surreal.

Images that will forever be etched in the collective subconscious of Mega-Manilenos are the photos, videos and live feed of the rage of the storm that was called "Ondoy".

The video of the group who, save one, never made it past the underside of the bridge in Rizal, The countless corpses and overturned cars, the insenstive comments of some "filipina" in Dubai (The term Filipina in quotation as she has obviously not shown that she deserves to be called one),the outpouring of support from the angelic samaritans (some even to the point of sacrificing their own lives), and of course celebrities as well, for ne'er a story be complete without them and they, too, were equally affected.

Soaking in the tearful aftermath, one cannot help but ask "What now?". When everyone has recovered from the fury of the storm, will this just be another memory swept under the rug? Will we just let this be another spectacle in time, through which we survived but did not resolve much like the tragedies of the Superferries and Sulpicios?

This calami-tragedy struck me as more of a grieving, melancholic Mother Nature than an angry one. Baguio in 1990,Mount Pinatubo in 1991, Ozone, The Bocaue Pagoda and other similar tragedies all felt "angry". Those seemed as if the discipinarian in Mother Nature spoke up and screamed "This is what you get for treating me like this". Ondoy's case was much different. It felt as if she just poured out in one day (or a few hours) years worth of tears held back, and every single drop of those tears united in one titanic display of authority.

 We must cuddle up to Mother Nature, show her our love and affection, before she leaves us for good. She might just, so as the late MJ said : "Let's make a better place for you and for me".