TGIF

Friday night--a time to catch one's breath after a hectic week. When a school girl is allowed to be on the computer far later, since there will be no classes on the morrow. When young ones let down their hair in places where the young ones congregate. Where do they congregate nowadays anyway? They used to dance away in discos, until that disco place burned down, along with its customers.

For the old ones, staying at home unencumbered by thoughts of any form of work is simply enough. Once upon a time, home is the last place they wanted to be. But aging and slowing down have taken their toll: nowadays they leave enjoyment and backbreaking work to younger ones who can still enjoy and work.

It's been 13 days since September 26, when Metro Manilans were in for the rudest shock of their lives--floods unseen since Noah, took over their homes, their cars, their very existence. Metro Manilans, though, were spared by the later typhoon Pepeng. But not people in Pangasinan, La Union, Baguio City, who got a taste of what Metro Manilans underwent during those infamous days. This is the essence of equitable distribution of punishment, if punishment it is for abusing nature, for cutting trees relentlessly, building houses and malls in places where they shouldn't, throwing their wastes where they shouldn't, practicing irresponsible parenthood. These are the sins, and they were paid for. They are not sins in the religious sense, they are sins of commission and omission; not crimes in the legal sense, they are crimes against nature and ecology. Apart from the sympathy one feels for the innocent ones, there is a certain satisfaction that one gets when a malefactor gets his just desserts.

But we're sounding too much like the Anthony Comstocks and the Kenneth Starkes.

Let's just hope--vainly, we know--that we have learned our lessons. In fact, we should be more assertive, and demand more of the officials who have done everything but the very jobs they are paid for. It's an uphill and Sisyphean task to extract from them performance. I fear that like Cassandra, those who see only too clearly the end of life as we know it, will be ignored in favor of the facile and falsely soothing promises made by people who don't care for nature, for people, or posterity.