By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

 

LATELY, I have difficulty adjusting to the heat. It gets so hot that no matter how many times I change my clothes, my back sweats like a flowing river.  It does not help that the trees along the sidewalks had been cut to allow space for pedestrians to walk, which ironically, had turned into parking lots for the increasing volume of cars. Pedestrians who normally take these routes, now have to compete with speeding cars on the street itself.

Even the plants are suffering. I noticed that some vines started to dry up, and new shoots have shrunk. The streets are full of plants with withered smiles, shriveling under the sun. Some of them dried so fast while others are waiting for their own death, a slow process of life being sucked away by the very element whose benevolence sustain their life.

I wait for the rain. I pray for rain. I pray for dark clouds to stay and not move on, till it becomes rain. I wait for the rain to drop on my face, on my parched lips, on my thirsty soul.

“Rest your mind. The world will solve its problems.”

A sound advice that needs considering, but how? I am not used to lying down, I sleep a maximum of four hours, and the rest of my day is spent moving around. Also, I am not attempting to solve the world’s problems, I am just trying to make living a little better for me, and for the others who still believe this world is a beautiful place, despite the escalating brutality, owing to circumstances that arose, in the exercise and aftermath of unmitigated greed.

The birds had acquired the habit of coming close to my door, and some of them are exploring the nooks close to the canopies, where the air is cooler. I wonder what is happening to insects, and other creatures that used to survive clinging to the underside of leaves, and the crevices of barks.

The bees living inside the small hole of an adobe rock in the backyard that used to get disturbed by the presence of humans and sensitive to slight movement have become welcoming to my presence, especially as I water around their “home”, and they cling around the wet stone, instead of buzzing around.

We reap what we sow. Even those who tried to protect the environment will not be spared. Humanity as a whole will suffer the consequences of the action of the privileged few, and the inaction of the callous majority. Nature will regenerate itself from the destruction and the havoc resulting from human activity in its own time, and it will not make a distinction, or an exception, in its path to restore its pristine state.

We are now witnessing the outcome of human assault on nature. The greatest toll is on humans, from the casualties of war in areas where exploitation of natural resources prevails over the safety of communities, to the pollution of the soil where we grow our food. The forests, our breathing spaces, are slowly dying in our hands, and unless we patiently grow the consciousness, there will be no fertile ground for the trees to grow, or anything else.

 

a tree grows

in silence

inside of me

 

This is my hope, that the next generation can acquire the consciousness as a necessity for survival, and to redeem what this generation has lost.

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