Wednesday, April 25, 2018

We’ll wake you up in October

“The thing about tourism is that the reality of a place is quite different from the mythology of it.”
-- Martin Parr

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY
-- Good night, Boracay.
Sleep well starting April 26, 2018 and allow efforts by the national government to deodorize, purify, and clean you up.
You will undergo a massive rehabilitation and a little face-lifting for six months, as promised by the Duterte administration.
You will take a unique forced “vacation leave” and will temporarily be dislodged from the radar of the world’s most preferred tourist destinations this summer.
Since business will come to a screeching halt albeit temporarily, the island’s economy will go slow, too, and is expected to have a domino effects in the Local Government Unit of Malay, Aklan and its environs.

-o0o-
Activities and work forces in resorts, hotels, and restaurants will have to be dispersed for a brief moment, and the idyllic beach will be free from contamination of human wastes and sewage from commercial establishments for the time being.
Filipinos will be waiting with bated breath as the combined forces of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Tourism (DoT), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), provincial government of Aklan, municipal government of Malay, the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) do their Herculean tasks.
Boracay, we promise to wake you up in October.

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Robert Bly’s “Waking from Sleep” can be best dedicated to Boracay’s temporary slumber:

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.
It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.
Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.
Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us for the day.

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