More on that towering feeling….

AS if we didn’t have enough troubles with Chinese fortresses in the West Philippine Sea denying our fishermen livelihood… Mamasapano victims holding hostage a BBL... when will that mile-long MRT/LRT queue end (and if the train will reach destination?)… Or will the next storm be the size of Yolanda?… or what to do if the Big One cuts along the valley fault line? Now, we have to contend with the challenge of Torre de Manila behind the Rizal Monument?

Somehow we seem to have a knack for shooting ourselves in the foot. We are at war with ourselves… and at crosshairs between our rights and their wrongs.

ASBESTOS SHIELD. In Paris, the landmark Eiffel Tower must see eyeball-to-eyeball with the 210 meter high Montparnasse Tower. Demolishing the skyscraper is out of the question because the asbestos shielding the Montparnasse would becloud the city like an atom bomb fallout. (I wonder if Torre de Manila has clothed itself with this defense mechanism?)

In Istanbul, the Turkish Council of State ordered three Onalti Dokuz luxury residence apartments torn down. The 27, 32, and 37 stories sparked widespread outrage, lumbering into view like an uninvited guest, photobombing the 400-year-old Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and Hagia Sophia.

WITHER OUR SUPREME COURT? What Solomon would rather pass up, we ask the Supreme Court to render judgment burdening Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and 14 associate justices to decide according to the law, not necessarily what is common sense or to our common interest.

Can we really afford to tear down a nearly completed 49-story highend residence? We still have that black hole of the former Jai Alai which housed the fashionable Sky Room. Ex-Mayor Lito Atienza justified the demolition by saying that pelota was for gambling. (Nobody says anything against San Lazaro racetrack or the more recent Solaire, the City of Dreams, and an upcoming third?)

We don’t mind the nearby Otani Hotel, nee Shellborne. (It is less than half the level of the many-storyed “Torre” and is not in line of fire of a frontal photo shoot of the Rizal Monument).

Malou Violago Tanjutco showed me a beautiful snapshot of her boys, the twins Enzo and Santi and her youngest Manu, taken at the Rizal monument a year ago with a still unblemished background – just the blue sky yonder. (Malou: “My kids have photos of European landmarks from their sojourns; why not one of ours.”) Our NCCA and NHI demand a clear sky zone behind the Rizal monument… like the flight path for an air plane landing strip. But can’t the photographer shift to another angle to get a clear background?

CURSE THE DARKNESS, OR LIGHT A CANDLE? What to do, now that we have painted ourselves in a corner? Is DMCI coming to court with hands clean? Or will the Knights of Rizal claim pound of flesh? Our politicians, experts in the art of the possible, should put on their thinking caps.

(Forget painting the Philippine flag on the 49 stories! Gemma Cruz Araneta mal mot-ed: “Hanging the flag to wash our dirty linen…?!”)

(Allowing others to grow more trees of skyscrapers is not the answer. We don’t excuse out excesses by their numbers.)

Ernie Fajardo suggested to silhouette the Rizal monument (pylon and our national hero) on the face of the Torre de Manila. The signature of Rizal would be a nice cachet to the edifice. (Remember it on the former Rizal theater?) Add clouds and blue sky to the canvas. (Later, maybe when things are quieter, perhaps even insert a PAL or other airliner which wants to be visible between clouds?)

EVENING DRESS. How about tapping the light and shadow wizard, the Frenchman Richard Thomas, who turned the Aguinaldo shrine in Kawit into a beautiful canvas to tell the story of the Revolution? Perhaps a 3-minute high-tech spiel every hour from 9:00 p.m. to midnight on Torre de Manila about Rizal and the Propaganda Movement?

But I am jumping ahead of the story. As our Eliando Cinco put it, this is a king-size PR problem. An initiative to donate the first floor of the “Torre” to a foundation which promotes Rizal and his legacy seems a good step in the right direction.

SITUATION IMPOSSIBLE, BUT NOT HOPELESS. We all have to weigh in to find a way out. Or our neighbors and the rest of the world won’t stop laughing at us. FEEDBACK: