SURF the Internet or browse through books in the library, and you will encounter images of a serpent or dragon with a ball between its fangs or caught in its mouth. The names for this creature are legion, but we commonly call it the Bakunawa. In some narratives, the Bakunawa is a moon-gobbling serpent that causes lunar eclipses. When the moon starts to disappear, people would line up along the street of the town or at the beach. They have pots and pans that they beat with sticks and stones, so as to distract the Bakunawa and compel it to spit out the moon. The old men and women would shout at the sky and implore the monster to give them back the moon.
The Bakunawa, however, is not just into moons. In many tales the Bakunawa could threaten to end the earth’s existence, because it can swallow our planet, our only home. In other islands in the Philippines, the Bakunawa is identified with the Tandayag, a serpent-like creature that outgrows its lair, leaves it and swims into the depths of the sea.
The strongest noise is the only way for the serpent/monster to disgorge the moon or earth. In other illustrations, one can also see another creature, called Nāga. More virulent and villainous in character, this serpent/monster is the “counterlife”, or contravida, to many folk heroes, as well as kings and princes in Southeast Asia’s sacred myths.
In Cambodia, for example, while the Nāga stands for negative energy, it also stands for immortality and timelessness. The symbolism can be stretched to cover the notion of time, which, while controllable, requires a communion or engagement with the forces of the universe so as to access its influences.
I wonder if people see in the lighting of firecrackers a universe where monsters rule human fate? I wonder if they see at all Time in its most organic form, monumental and towering above us all.
I pine for this age of sacred monsters, but it is an age that will never come back. There is so much bad noise around us that monsters will not survive in our loud society. This noise assumes many forms: bad films, bad interviews, bad news. The most significant news at the end of 2014 was not one of development for our country—which continues to be underdeveloped—but a wedding. Another story that emerged from that wedding, to which 700 guests were purportedly invited, was the reconciliation between comedienne Ai-Ai de las Alas and this person who’s always known by that inane title, “presidential sister”. Like, who cares? Would the universe care at all?
The noise of indifference persists around us. Even after an investigation about it has been launched, people are still talking about how the Department of Social Welfare and Development supposedly misspent its aid to the poor. That there are many poor communities that do not receive the funds that are supposed to help some people have a bit of food on their table troubles our minds. While we are discussing this assistance to the needy, some lawmakers are already questioning it. The reason is the old notion that if you help them, they will forever depend on your assistance. This comment came from supposed lawmakers whose career depends largely on the largesse of their position. And while we are at this notion of the poor, here comes the declaration of 2015 as the Year of the Poor.
What exactly do we mean by “poor”? An old paper by Benedict Kerkvliet still stuns me for its daring to reclassify the nation’s poor by coming up with several layers of poverty. At the bottom are those who call themselves isang kahig, isang tuka, which is a stirring equivalent to that socioeconomic concept of subsistence. If you do not scratch, what can you eat or peck at?
How does the declaration of this year as the year of the poor alleviate poverty, when the institutional Church that made that declaration wallows in wealth?
Filthy wealth is noise. Celebrity is noise. Politics is noise. Incompetence is noise. There is no need to strike pots and pans to create a racket that should strike fear in the heart of the great Bakunawa.
But there is a trick to this mythmaking. Look closely again at the images of the Bakunawa. The moon or earth is floating inside its gaping mouth. The Bakunawa has not yet swallowed the moon or earth. The Bakunawa has inked a social contract with us human beings. Its role is to threaten that it will swallow the earth or moon. That tension between disappearance and appearance is ultimately the engine. But in that contract, the universe made sure that there is the fine print to favor us human beings. We make the noise; the Bakunawa relents. Time is restored and we have a happy new year.
But when will this contract expire? If the noise we make persists, then the Bakunawa will not even attempt to try to consume our moon or planet. There will be no beginning, no promise of cosmic change. The year will be forever old.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano