Rainy Dazed

The July rains have come on queue yet again, flooding The Court of Last Retort with this year’s assortment of frogs (and the occasional cow). And, once again, your Attorney’s-on-troubled-waters have donned their raincoats and umbrellas in hopes of surviving the monsoon season without drowning in the blues inside court chambers. Typhoon Gloria was particularly harsh on Argee — and quite expectedly. His continuous, inconsolable croaking of his all-time-favorite love song Ocean Deep, is enough storm signal for the Philippines to contemplate re-building Noah’s Ark.

But unfortunately, it seems that a lawyer’s work is never done despite neck-deep waters in Malabon and Valenzuela and rampaging lahar in La Union and Pampanga. While toiling behind the computer screen in flooded Pasig, trying to stir up the latest for this Friday‚’s court session, it seems that the weather has thrown Argee and Honey more than just another cat and dog. After all, the rain did more that just dampen their week — but strand them in court altogether.

A kinky situation? Not really. In fact, consider it a capital YUCH! Being confined with Honey or Argee inside a room is a far worse fate than tanking out on a pool of slush. But the weather knows neither friend nor foe and is perhaps the most democratic expression of nature’s fury — it affects everybody almost equally and just as severely as everybody so Honey and Argee saw no alternative but to stay a night in court. Together. At night. Until the rain stopped. Whenever that may be.

Argee and Honey thus decided to choose their corners and mark their territory praying that when daylight breaks, they don’t wake up with their brains scattered all over the floor. Argee, however, kept a baseball bat stashed away just in case. But as the hours trickled on by, the rains didn’t let up, and prospects for another day of survival seemed to drift away. Harrowing as it already was, the ordeal was coupled by real-time nightmares splashed on the television screens.

Scenes of landslides devastating entire communities, orphaned survivors weeping at buried relatives, repeated instances of open-manhole drowning, electrocution of pedestrians and entire families being swept away by overflowing riverbanks were news too sorrowful to bear even if tucked in a warm blanket and soothing the nerves with a free flow of liquor.

Your attorneys-with-an-attitude’s attitude on the relentless rains forced them to issue, motu propio, a prohibitory mandatory injunction. After all, it was incumbent upon them after leafing through a recent study conducted in the University of Massachusetts which concluded that depression, anxiety, irritability and anger may be caused by lack of light which, in case you’ve noticed, had gone on a long holiday after a sweltering summer sojourn from May to June.

This may explain why most Filipinos tend to drum up the doldrums lately (Or, to a twisted extreme, why Honey and Argee were so close to murdering each other especially during this month. And it isn’t just as simple as another case of fretting over wet feet — notwithstanding kurikong, pasma and alipunga. But as Honey and Argee soon realized, there are a lot more reasons why the up and up should be more common when the rain is down and down.

Well, for starters, the burdens of both academic and work load lighten with the usual suspension of offices and classes. A bane to the economy we may think? Not necessarily. With schools and offices empty, the retail industry is doing brisk business. Like sardines fished out of the waters, Filipinos can themselves inside malls while stocking up on necessities and while acting like shoppers-on-a-mission a la Noah’s Ark-angels.

Even the underground economy doesn’t show signs of drowning deep in mud during uncertain weather. Instant employment is provided to the enterprising thousands who offer their services to stranded commuters for a mere fraction of a Gondola ride in Venice. Where colorful jeepneys retreat from the streets of Metro Manila, bancas paddle beautifully and bravely across flooded areas and provides a surreal Venetian impression on the country’s waterways.

Honey, of course, remembers how she shamed Cleopatra after being carried on the shoulders of half-clad hulko-machos who helped her cross a flooded street. Her instant boy toys came prepared with a huge parasol and a makeshift bridge. Argee, on the other hand, forked a fortune hiring eager hands to shoulder-carry his entire sedan after his car nearly morphed into a submarine along España Avenue.

Fashionistas also have a field day with every downpour. All-too suddenly, arctic apparel makes sartorial sense and ice cream sales experience a severe plunge. Trenchcoats and leather jackets become hip with Matrix 2 yet to be screened and without having to roar around the metropolis on a bad, bad, big bike...

So don’t think twice raiding your closet for decade-old turtlenecks and wearing those ukay-ukay sweaters. Now more than ever is the best time to express your fashion statement in support of the weather.

If not, too, for the rainfall, we would not be able to bid farewell to the plague of high electricity bills. Short of blowing a blizzard, the storms have rendered useless airconditioning. Chilling out on the home front had never been so economical as temperatures have dropped to a more relaxing below 28 degrees Centigrade. Besides, stormy weather is lambing weather. A time to call-in sick and to snuggle up with that somebody described in Depeche Mode’s Somebody. Indeed, a time for being downed by love-nat and for taking kiss-pirin yakap-sules.

In the end, whatever and however we feel about the weather, there’s always just something deftly poetic about listening to the pitter-pattering of rain on the windowpane. The whizzing of wind and water wills wonders for those weary of the world.