GMA News: PAGASA: Weather clear for November 9 asteroid ‘sighting’.
It seems silly to take the word of a hit-or-miss weather bureau and a daily known for dipping into tabloid fodder. Yet as I while away in an office the end of the world seems all the more likely. Why not now, after all? We’ve survived plagues, technological breakdown, forces of nature…what’s one asteroid to end it all?
What would you do? A friend asked. Simple, I replied. I’d stop cramming. I’d finally write the poems I’ve been meaning to write, that treatment I’ve meant to finish, exorcise those scenes that have lived in my head since I was 12. I’d put them in a little tin box: the kind that seems to survive meltdowns. Whatever lives after the fall will be sure to find it.
Then I’d wander. Wonder what Manila would look like through graduation goggles? Traffic must seem so wonderful. It’s like a time paradox: funny how life goes on while you’re stuck in place. Trash would be so nice, evidence of a time it was relevant, when it smelled nice, when it was of use.
If I had the cash, hopping around Asia as a grand finale also sounds sublime. I’d be Lara Croft rolling through the ruins of Angkor, chasing after my own shadow. I’d be in search of the perfect pad thai and thai coffee.
Maybe I’d end it all at the topmost level of Borobodur in that deceptive quiet, napping against a stupa.
But no, home would be the best place to wait for The End. Exhausted after all that traveling, all that writing, with the blasted pets stepping all over me as I collapse into bed. Just a little extra to the ordinary.
Where will you be when the asteroid hits?