August and Everything After

Yeah, that was a great album by the Counting Crows.

But for now, it's just a literal statement. It's August already, and everything after that will just be more (or, actually, less-than-half) of 2007 racing by like whipping typhoon winds, while I stand and... wait for the typhoons to come.

Living in an archipelago that expects an average of twenty typhoons yearly between May and November, and still expecting the first one in August is a bit like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Yeah, yeah. If I go by the weather bureau's alphabetical naming system (or lived in Samar) , I'm sure we've had at least two venture into our territory. But let me ask you this: Have you woken up to rain at 6 o'clock in the morning recently, and snuggled under the blankets wishing you didn't have work or class? Have you experienced an all-day rain lately, and resigned yourself to cold, wrinkled, fish-white feet when you take off your socks at the end of the day? Have you walked with an umbrella and have the wind shift directions so quick your umbrella becomes a funnel, and what-used-to-be-your-dry-side is slapped by a sheet of rain-pellets? No? Think back to June, May even. Still no?

Yes, we've had rain, and everyday too. But in case you don't know it yet, it's still artificial-to-offset-drought rain, a project of the agriculture department or the energy corporation. Hmmm. Are our waterfalls drying up too? And why in Metro Manila when it's the Northern Luzon rice fields that are really suffering? I mean, sure wind direction (and cloud positioning, I suppose) might be hard to anticipate, but if you're project has induced daily downpours at roughly the same time for weeks now, then you must be doing something right. Right? You just need a site transfer.

Besides I haven't seen a single rice field (or waterfall) within Metro Manila for the past 10 years I've been here. The only thing here I've seen grow and gush with the rain is traffic volume, and floodwaters.

So, no. Which makes me want to scream, What the hell is going on?

The reason I'm anxious might be purely selfish--I don't want typhoons (super or otherwise) for Christmas; I like knowing when it should be cheap to go to the beach; and most selfish of all--I don't want typhoons suddenly coming from the west, since I come from Iloilo (I'm just being honest--but this is meteorologically impossible, I think.)

To every season a reason is a cliché because that's the general idea. Otherwise, there's be no such words as acclimatize, or mothballs, and weder-weder lang 'yan would be a world-known expression. Call me boring but I do appreciate routine--If I wake up in the middle of the day and have my first meal at noon, I still call it breakfast. I hate Monday mornings regularly, and Friday nights I make it a point to be out of the house. I'm less likely to complain if I'm sweating like a pig in April. And I like my class/work-suspension-due-to-inclement-weather to fall during the first semester. Is that too much to ask?

And before you slap me down for being self-centered ass, Yes, climate change exists and is a great deal more urgent and wide-spanning problem than how I've presented it here. I also know that for every signal-number-three storm that cancels my classes or work, some family loses a makeshift house or have to temporarily relocate from under the bridge. And droughts in rainy season and typhoons during Christmas time are scary rather than inconvenient.

It's just that, honestly, I simply miss sheets of rainwater rolling off a wide glass window, or being caught willingly in a downpour (despite the odd looks), or that after-rain picture where the traffic's just starting to thin, the streets and sidewalks brown-puddled for miles, and the city looks grey and defeated--but for the green. Darker, bolder, greener. As if the world could really be clean again.