Before and After

 As I write this, it’s the last night of October, Halloween night. Ghosts and ghouls have temporarily taken over the grubby children walking outside. They want some candy and my mood shifts from wanting to indulge them and shove them aside. It’s probably because I’ve got death and dying on my mind, given that like the rest of the country, we’re set to pay our respects to our dearly departed. And then some.

I slept at five this morning, with the winds of the most recent typhoon, Santi, howling outside. For the first time in my life, I was afraid to sleep during a storm, fearful of the roof getting blown off or something getting thrown against any of our house’s walls. This, I suppose, is a manifestation of “recent tragedy” trauma. To think I wasn’t even directly affected by either Ondoy or Parma, save for water seeping into our ceiling! But who isn’t traumatized, really?

I’ve long held that some events in our lives are significant enough to divide it between “Before” and “After.” Sometimes, it’s as beautiful as falling in love; sometimes, it’s an almost unutterable tragedy. My 2009 was marked by The Flood in Manila. Post-Ondoy, I have learned to fear the rain. It’s a big thing for a girl who used to love running out in stormy weather.

Over breakfast this morning, conversation turned to the upcoming disaster film 2012. Directed by Roland Emmerich and featuring an ensemble cast led by John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson, 2012 explores the possible scenario in the year 2012, which is the end of the Mayan calendar and during which a lot of cataclysmic global events are predicted to happen. It will be released in theaters on November 13.

Trailers and viral marketing campaigns have already been scaring people and generating interest in—as well as some protests against—the film’s marketing strategy. There was a fake website and a fake novel, all pointing towards the possible end of days. 

I used to scoff at doomsday scenarios, but on the weekend Ondoy hit, a tsunami hit the Samoa Islands and a high-intensity earthquake shook Indonesia. Global disasters of Hollywood proportions are easier to imagine, now that I’ve seen a whole city submerged in water.

This is not to say, of course, that I now believe the world will end on December 21, 2012. Scientists have scoffed at the 2012 prediction and called it pseudo-science; Mayanist scholars have said it’s a misrepresentation of Maya history. I’m sure the world will end sometime, as all things do, but I’m still wary of putting an exact date to it.

You can trust New Age to have a positive interpretation of things—which, I have to say, I’m more inclined to accept. For New Age proponents, 2012 is the year a global shift of consciousness would happen. They have pointed to the idea of a spiritual revolution, with people increasingly suspicious of materialistic Western culture. It sounds heavenly, I think, especially if you picture beautiful peace-loving hippies. Still, they lose me at aliens and crop circles—although I’m not one to discount their existence either.

Still, always, before I lose myself in worry, I find myself flooded with images of happy times and happy scenes and happy lines. There was a “Before,” and there is an “After.”

The storm has passed, and I live to wake up to another sunshiny day.