Monsoons

I'm not used to experiencing storms like this, when I was still up North.

When my sister and I were children growing up, I remember storms being blackouts, candles, and the oddly-timed desire to read books with very small print and no pictures, just when classes and homework were suspended.  Sometimes the storms were very angry affairs, and our ceiling, being very low, amplified the raging sound from outside.  Since our barangay was nestled in between the hills that make Baguio a very hilly place indeed, the wind tracing and racing through the contours of hillsides and mountains made sounds like a whistle on steroids.  Sometimes, though, they're almost peaceful, the kind of rain that you can ignore, not knowing that Kennon road is slowly going to pieces as usual, just hearing afterward of the many landslides which queued all the way from the summer that finally went "go!", one after another.  That's usually how storms in Baguio are - landslides leaving gashes in the mountains, a lagoon temporarily created in City Camp, rain and wind making a cold place get colder.

In Marikina, though, storms bring floods.  It impregnates the river into an engorged thing, requiring evacuation efforts from those nearest to its banks.  When I took this picture we were on the bridge with about a hundred people, looking at the flowing behemoth below us, at the debris, at other people, and maybe at the news crew camped just left off-camera.

                                                                                                                                         

As I write I'm listening to the news, reporting of other places which breed a different kind of resilient people - people who choose to stay in their houses rather than leave whatever they think is valuable behind.  Amazing thing, adaptation.

Back in Baguio we would just watch these on TV (like I'm doing now, come to think of it), not knowing - and perhaps not caring, as only TV and a solipsistic sense of security can make you - what flood-ridden areas go through.




And even when the flood waters find their way through to streets - our street - particularly, I find myself taking pictures of small floods on cul-de-sacs, leaves on water, leaves on gutters, a wet cat, and writing about them, and watching weather and flood-related news on TV.  Storms were different when I was a child, I think.