Haunting Season

I came across "haunting" a few times in the past 24 hours, and figured that it is a theme that is worth writing about.

"Haunted" could very well be the most apt description for many Filipinos in the island of Luzon who are still grappling with the loss of life and property, their landscapes altered as radically as their lives.

On November 1, many of us will be trooping to cemeteries and memorial parks to celebrate family reunions that include our dear departed. Others, especially those whose loved ones perished in floods and landslides, may very well consider their former homes or settlements veritable interment grounds.

I find it funny that the two starkest uses of "haunting" that I came across last night had to do with the spirits/ghosts of Baguio City that a Facebook contact had been trying to write about, and a short film another friend had been wanting to shoot for a few months now.

I have no idea what the first was about, but I immediately thought of spirits haunting Baguio because of the havoc that humans have repeatedly wreaked upon it. If there was any place so beloved in the wrongest of ways, it must be Baguio City.

How do humans love thee, Baguio City? Let me count the ways. They have cut down your trees to build houses and malls. They have polluted the air with vehicles to ferry people who refuse to use their feet to navigate your undulating, beautiful curvaceous hills. They have quarried and scoured the earth to flatten you and make way for roads and parking lots.

You would think that Baguio's "lovers" would get the point after the horrendous earthquake of 1990 when much of it was leveled to the ground. But what did they do? They only planted more concrete to replace the trees and vegetation. They even erected a mall, altering a landscape that could have been its salvation in the recent floods.

People must love it so much that they have replaced most of its picturesque hills with their concrete homes that, if you really think about it, reminds one of tombs.

I have nothing personal against the people who wish to live and enjoy what Baguio has to offer. On the other hand, it is not hard to be indignant at those who have taken advantage of people's desires by letting settlements rise where they should not be, and for tearing down nature's hard work to protect its skin - the earth - from the occasional ravaging of the sky, and the dancing of the planet's plates.

The pushers of that drug, concrete, need to be exposed for the emptiness of their promises. Concrete is indeed a hallucinogen. It lulls humans into a false sense of security that they can be protected from the elements (and indeed themselves) by this plastic armor.

Too much concrete numbs humans and keeps them from feeling their connectedness with nature.

It is interesting to note that the other way that "haunting" came into my space today was by way of a filmmaker friend who had wanted to make amends for his childhood "sin" of stealing a friend's toy.

After all these years, his act of taking what was not his continues to haunt him, and to make up for it, he wanted to tell its story - perhaps as a way to ask for forgiveness (I suppose that he never stole again), and as a cautionary tale for those who are so tempted.

These two stories of haunting come together in my mind and I realize they are not unrelated.

The pushers of concrete, are also those who have been stealing, not only from the people, but also from the earth. They are the peddlers of infrastructure and extractive projects that leave our landscapes scarred and eroded, and our coffers empty. You figure out who they are. We are most probably related to many of them.

I know this partly wishful thinking, but in this season until November 1 and even beyond, I would like them to be haunted by their sins, and give back, not only by confession, but by ecological restoration.

Otherwise, they are only fit to become compost - and perhaps that is the only way they could give back to the earth from which they have stolen much.

They will have to have many many lives to replace those lives they have taken away.