The After
Artwork by Jay Lozada
When we’re through being stoned on grief and nostalgia, what will we do?
If we go back to whatever we were doing before Saturday—varying degrees of drudgery and self-absorption—this will have been just another dramatic spectacle (and we’re good at staging those).
If we resolve to make the recent national catharsis mean something, what should we do next?
Somebody? Anybody?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
August 6th, 2009 at 01:48
i’ll change my identity and continue bugging strangers with explicit sexual advances!!!
August 6th, 2009 at 02:26
I wanna suggest hardcore reading, but I feel like I’m in a position already not to be able to say anything without feeling the slightest bit uncertain. It’s double-think and messed up, and this Cory grief is nothing, if not the most palpable catharsis of realizing all this.
Everything still just doesn’t feel right. And I mean this most selflessly. I hope people aren’t as close as me to go dialing 8937603.
August 6th, 2009 at 09:19
For starters, stop treating our fellow pinoys — the ones the perfumed ones call jologs, the Wowowee crowd — with disdain. The sosyal crowd holds them at arm’s length like they were filthy rags instead of talking to them and finding out what their dreams are. History shows that great revolutions come from the moral force of the middle class that lead and inspire the ‘masses’. Our middle class isnt inspired nor is it inspiring, fostering suspicion from the ‘jologs’.
Talk to them. And listen.
August 6th, 2009 at 11:56
It has been twenty years or so since that momentous event that swept a wave of peaceful protests in many countries around the world. The whole world learned from the Filipinos. Have the Filipinos learned anything from it? They’ve have two EDSAS; I guess they need twenty more.
Now that the woman in whom they had so much faith and glorified — at least, ironically, during the early years of her tenure and during her funeral — had gone to heaven (as Catholics are wont to believe), Filipinos have been left wondering what it must be like to be in paradise.
August 6th, 2009 at 12:39
moved to tears by teddy locsin’s eulogy
August 6th, 2009 at 12:47
have a state funeral and bury the current president alive?
August 6th, 2009 at 13:05
Perhaps getting ready to vote can be a start (but not the end) of it. Links to the Comelec registration verification site, as well as Comelec’s main site, are here:
August 6th, 2009 at 13:16
Eloquently put as usual.
The past few days should be a reminder to everybody. A reminder that we’re capable of doing incredible things. But most of all a reminder (a warning) to those who plan to work their evil in the coming months leading to the election. Yes, most of us would probably go back to our old routine. But hopefully with a more watchful eye, and a prouder spirit.
Even in death she rallies us… let’s not fail to do our part.
August 6th, 2009 at 13:29
Juan Flavier should run for President. This would be something to fight for.
August 6th, 2009 at 13:44
turmukoy, i’ll second that motion. I’m a Juan Flavier believer, too.
August 6th, 2009 at 15:37
Hi, turmukoy. I, too, would vote for Flavier if he ran. Problem is, he’s old and frail now, and I heard he’s sick from diabetes already. I don’t think he can take the rigors of a presidential campaign; it might kill him. And if he is lucky enough to survive that, his six years in power is sure to do him in.
August 6th, 2009 at 21:58
she is a reminder for us to live simply…. love more….
August 7th, 2009 at 00:08
We watch and we wait. But the 9 months wait seem an eternity. I wonder: only Villar,Roxas,Fernando, and Puno have political ads as of now. (Ate Vi has one, but I think it’s for a shampoo-“sa ikauunlad ng bayan,kailangan natin ng shiny hair?”) We’ve been swimming,or drowning in democracy since 1986 when Tita Cory came into power. Her term was militarily unstable,and it wasn’t her fault. Those were difficult transition years but she steered us with a steady and morally credible leadership. 23 years later,gentle Cory passed on,we’re older and now we’re like lost little orphans with a tiny evil stepmother witch who is steadily poisoning our national psyche with her continuing presence in Malacanan Palace. Of all the possible candidates for the 2010 presidency, I am considering Richard Gordon.
August 7th, 2009 at 08:45
If I may… One vote doesnt really count much, no matter what they tell you. Your one vote won’t make a difference. If the vote is close, the winner gets decided by the Supreme Court eventually, not your one vote.
It’s not about electing the right person. It’s about being the right person. That’s a lot more difficult than casting a vote once every six years.
August 7th, 2009 at 08:46
I think we will see the effects of Cory’s death only when we will be faced with a national moral crisis. When clean and honest elections don’t happen next year, we Filipinos can have her as our moral compass. Her inspiration can awaken us from apathy and encourage us to stand up for our rights, for our democracy, and for our country.
August 7th, 2009 at 14:18
@Jeg, If I may, I’d like to point out that one vote DOES matter, after all you can’t make it to a million without starting at one. Imagine if just a thousand people were to have the same outlook as you do, then that’s a thousand votes WASTED. Sure it might be a small number but it isn’t a stretch to imagine how such a thinking could catch on until eventually we have a population that is so jaded they won’t even bother to vote anymore. Yes being the right person is important. But part of that “being” is exercising our right to that “one vote”…
August 7th, 2009 at 22:22
I buy Colors regularly but I haven’t seen that Philippine issue with the Jay Lozada artwork. I checked the Colors website, couldn’t find it in the archives. Was this ever released?
August 8th, 2009 at 08:51
ManilaBeans: I hear you. There is a difference of course between not voting because you dont care, and not voting because you do. But Im not advocating not voting. Im saying that mathematically one vote is insignificant and won’t make a difference. Besides my point is that people tend to think that voting is the height of their democratic duties. Vote, then go back to whatever it is theyve been doing.
By the way, I think it’d be great if a million didnt vote out of principle, but I recognize that elections in this country are a spectacle few would want to miss.