Affinities

Prepping rib-eye steak on Tuesday afternoon, a day before Halloween and the gated-village custom of Trick or Treat, for which we had also prepped our gate, it all seemed somewhat ironic and inappropriate, what with our thoughts tuned in to how “Frankenstorm” Sandy was wreaking havoc on the US East Coast.

We all have friends and/or relations in NYC, in NJ, in Long Island, in Virginia and all the way up to Maine. Freaked by the announced gravity of the threat followed by consequent TV news of landfall and continuous reportage on CNN, we check out our friends and relations via e-mail, FB and mobile phones.

We wish everyone well as they “batten the hatches” — offering prayers, words of caution, memes to lighten their spirits.

One goes: “Bagyo lang yan, Pinoy tayo!”

So familiar are we with bad weather, and so linked up globally that we can’t help but be drawn veritably into virtual/vicarious experience of natural disasters.

And of course we stream in with quips, not necessarily dismissive of calamitous prospects. “Na-Ondoy ang Nuyok!” “Naging Malabon ang Manhattan!”

It was so much worse, in fact, what with the strength and scope of a hurricane born of a tropical storm thence complex-ed with seasonal northeasterly, full moon, high tide, snow blizzard…

We feel for our Fil-Ams but also for our American friends, especially when we’re shocked and awed by formidable stats that easily dwarf our own vulnerability to devastation: 6.5 million residents suffering from power outage as of 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Manila time; 60 million peeps likely to be affected in 23 states — most of which we can name the capitals of, given our intimacy with American geography, history, culture and current events. 

These are the people we adopted Halloween from, to give our Westernized kids (and sales clerks at malls, bartenders and waitresses at trendy resto-bars) a chance for a frolic with face paint, masks and costumes before the dreary practice of trooping to family graveyards for All Saints Day — in recent decades re-administered its localized billing as “Undas.” 

Practices inherited from colonialism two ways, and a still influential faith rivaled now by Hollywood mythos, have been super-imposed on the old indigenous bogeys — mixing up kapre with zombie, ghoul with santo, garlic with crucifix and silver bullet. 

Oh what fun, superstition. Then again, traditions ultimately rest on graphic images, thus also leap towards cosplay that is fostered by designs born of speculative inter-galactic imagination.

The images we see of natural disasters occurring abroad firm up yet another connection. When it’s the Big Apple and environs, the six degrees of separation resisted worldwide — but conversely reduced to 1.5 owing to Pinoyhood — take yet another turn at glutinous networking.

We have close friends and family there. How are they doing?

Why, it was only last August when we had enjoyed dinner with our Fil-Am writer-friends at a busy resto in Hell’s Kitchen. So now we are glad to be assured that Gina Apostol is safe and dry working on a term paper in the quiet confines (howling winds held distant by good windows) of her apartment in that same neighborhood. And Lara Stapleton and Bino Realuyo are similarly high and dry, in a manner of speaking only, since they’re likely battening down their gullets with whisky and rum, respectively.

Patrick Rosal says on our MacPro screen that the lights in his area are flickering, uh-oh. Ditto with Nerissa Balce, who’s deep in Long Island, which we’ve heard often serves as a gateway for Atlantic storms.

We dread any power outage in the abodes of these poets and writers, even while we know for sure that darkness will feed their mighty pens soon enough. 

We had also stayed in Northport in Long Island during that sojourn, with Tina Punzalan-Roxas and Pitong Roxas, enjoying their fabulous combo of mashed potatoes and porterhouse steak.

Now we were applying exactly the same exemplary marinade Pitong relied on: McCormick’s Grill Mates Montreal Steak seasoning. The large jar had come in just days ago, part of the prized contents of a couple of Balikbayan boxes that took two months to cross the Pacific.

Such are our connections, strength of affinities. When we treat family to the steak dinner that Tuesday evening, we tell them that 12 hours away the couple that gave us the tip on that remarkable seasoning may not now be enjoying first-world electricity the way we were.

And that in fact the kids all along the Eastern seaboard who had been looking forward to Halloween might now have lost all opportunity for the fun of Trick or Treat.

Our own kids will make up for their loss, half a world away.

Meanwhile, we keep connecting or trying to. Tina says they’re fine, still, while Pitong has stocked up on red wine, the better to celebrate our latest Bedan victory in our own NCAA here.

Much later, however, we hear of how babies are being evacuated from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in flooded Lower Manhattan. Why, the Roxases’ son Migs works in that hospital. He had been here with his Dad last month. Built like a tight end, he must have been a great help in that heroic evacuation. 

From New Jersey, Tina’s and our podner’s co-Kulasa, Mayette Elepano Branwein, had earlier assured us that she also stocked up on what she calls “the basics: water, bread, milk, pasta, Bartenura Moscato, Toblerone, etc. I am ready to weather the storm, pun intended! It’s as though my dinner table is ready and I’m just sitting here waiting for my late guests to arrive. Ha ha ha!”

From Queens, Ninotchka Rosca continues to render contextual reportage and commentary on the latest existential developments. Among these is the fact that her dog Guapo had insisted on sleeping on the center of her bed, and was now snoring heavily.

At some point we hear of a block on fire in Queens, and instantly worry about Guapo’s dream state. Thankfully, Nina was still up to allay our fears; the fire was in another part of her queenly domain.

Two of our Bedan schoolmates, Tony Abad in Connecticut and Oying Pinto in New Jersey, eventually answered the roll call sent out in our e-mail loop. They were okay even with the outage, relying on their mobile phones to assure us so.

Corporate lawyer Monique Gallego e-mailed back that her apartment still had light and water, and that “the only ‘incident’ was a crane collapsing a block and half” from her place in Manhattan.

All was well and good, then. Very likely, the friends and family that hadn’t responded were just tucked in for the night.

We look forward to the morrow, when our kids here in our village will go through the paces of filling up their loot bags, from neighbors that had signified willingness to distribute treats by applying Halloween décor on their gates.

As we had: simply a couple of wretched-looking face masks, in red and green, and a centrally placed plastic jack o’lantern topped by a similarly orange witch’s hat.

We’ve announced that we welcome tradition, whatever its source or weirdness.

At 9 p.m. that Tuesday, Manila time, the premier poet Patrick Rosal announces the inevitable from New Jersey: “The electricity outlasted the rum.”

Alas, such tragedy. That, too, is part of our infinite variety of affinities.