Surreal eruptions

My advance apologies if you find me facetious today. I can’t help it. I need to ditch my usual fastidious dowdiness of a maiden aunt for some panache. Hopefully.

Cartoonish assertions of some powerful people after the disastrous Taal eruptions ensure this since these recent assertions of apparently impregnable convulsions of absurdities will always prompt a humorous counter-commentary from me.

In truth, as I write this, I’m wringing my neck with irrational luridness while anxiously awaiting Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s official theological dispatch on the Taal disaster.

I confess I am at a loss on what the grandiose pastor of the solar system will say about Taal. How will he excuse himself this time for not stopping Taal’s eruption as he did during the height of the Mindanao earthquakes? Will he say again he didn’t stop Taal’s eruption so he could again punish people for not believing him just as he did after the devastating typhoon in Bicol? Will he pull a surprise? I want to know.

But as I sought answers staring at the ceiling, I also preoccupied myself with seeking the best word to describe the influence of Mr. Duterte’s spiritual adviser had on our sorry land.

I was sorely tempted with “magical realism.” But the line between magical realism and fantasy, realism, “the marvelous,” surrealism and the grotesque was so thin, it wasn’t enough. To combine all, I ended up inventing “Quibolosque.” I hope you approve even with your tongue in cheek.

Anyway, “Quibolosque” does begin to describe Mr. Duterte’s first official pronouncement on the Taal disaster.

Mr. Duterte, in his first public appearance since the Taal eruption last Sunday, was asked if he was fit enough to visit areas afflicted by ashfall. He responded with: “Kainin ko pa

’yang ashfall na ’yan, T…a! Pati ‘yang Taal ihian ko ‘yan, bwisit na ‘yan (I’ll eat that ashfall, even Taal, I’ll pee on it, goddamn it).”

On first reading, the presidential declaration is a good instance of how Mr. Duterte routinely assimilates and domesticates pressing burdens, this time on the vivid terrors of people and animals caked head to foot in volcanic ash. He domesticated the ghastly terrors of a volcanic eruption through the phallocentric boasts of toughies bonding during drunken bouts at the corner sari-sari store.

The fantastic, rollicking imagery of a president peeing on a volcano provokes wonders on the imagination, however. Provocative enough for the quick retort if the presidential pee was copious enough to fill up Taal’s gaping craters, which at last count stood at 47.

I am being mild here. Historian

Jojo Abinales in a Facebook post is blunter: “The President wants to pee on the volcano and eat the ash it has been spewing out.

The Senate President believes seeding the cloud coming out of the volcano will douse its fury. Not only that. The fools cut the calamity fund by P11 billion. Clowns are running the country.”

As my friend Jojo says, Mr. Duterte isn’t the only “Quibolosque” in town. Others suffered similar symptoms, with the potent addition of having imbibed the “teratology of our contemporary political imagination.” (Teratology is a word from biology and means the study of monstrosities or abnormal formations in organisms.)

A rung lower in the political hierarchy stands

Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III. Demonstrating his relevance as a seedy courtier in our political scene, Mr. Sotto is calling for cloud seeding operations to clean up ash and debris in areas devastated by the volcano.

“Water removes debris… Let’s not wait for the rain. Water should alleviate the present ashfall bad effects,” says Sotto of his grand idea which he vigorously defends.

“Bad effects” is a wretched, inarticulate way of describing the apocalypse landscape of nearly a third of Batangas province, now littered with ghost towns.

Agoncillo town, one of the many quaint towns sited on the volcano’s caldera itself, was celebrating its fiesta on the Sunday of the eruption. It quickly turned into a no-man’s land after the town’s 38,000 residents hurriedly left, leaving behind homes, livestock, chickens and dogs to their fatal fates.

Nearby Talisay town also turned into a virtual ghost town overnight after residents frantically evacuated to government civic centers or relatives’ houses in neighboring towns beyond Taal’s 14-kilometer danger zone.

The ensuing exodus left enduring apocalyptical images of desolation. A journalist told of a distraught farmer pointing out an acacia tree felled by the sheer weight of ash on its foliage: “See that old tree there? That survived all disasters, except this one.”

And so too were the haunting, heartbreaking images of 2,000 horses, benefitting tourists, caked by suffocating ashfall and left to die; or the eerie echoes of kernel-sized volcanic pebbles pounding corrugated roofs amid hundreds of nerve-wracking earthquakes bringing about ground fissures.

No doubt the apocalypse landscape of trees, buildings and rooftops covered by thick gray dust and mud needs cleaning up. But will Sotto’s seemingly practical solution work, that is after the rescue of people haunted by imminent respiratory illnesses?

Cloud seeding, notes writer Ninotscka Rosca, is nothing but “fancy words for ihian (peeing).” It will also make things worse than it is now.

Ridding thick dusty ashes by inducing rains, granting it works, is a nightmare. Agoncillo town’s concrete roads are covered in ankle-deep sand. Neighboring Tanauan City is covered with almost five centimeters of volcanic ash, aside from toppled trees blocking roads.

The volcanic ashes, however, on the roads and sidewalks have turned into mud following an evening downpour last Sunday. The mud triggered traffic jams, forcing rescue and private vehicles to skid and slide on the Talisay-Tanauan Road. Traffic stretched for about two kilometers after that natural downpour.

Now imagine what will happen if “Ondoy”-like rains were to be induced! Short bursts of rain just won’t be enough to wash out all the ashfall and mud and dead animals. And where will all those muddy ashes — once mixed with water sets like concrete — go? What horrors awaits fearful homeowners after the Noah-like floods?

In sum, putting a new man-made disaster atop a natural disaster is so crushingly surreal even the “Quibolosque” term is so pitiful a word.

“He domesticated the ghastly terrors of a volcanic eruption through the phallocentric boasts of toughies bonding during drunken bouts at the corner sari-sari store.

“Will Sotto’s seemingly practical solution work, that is af ter the rescue of people haunted by imminent respiratory illnesses?