Allow me to add this to all that's been said

"The blackout takes over the night erases the city from the map erases everything"
-Conchitina Cruz, "I Must Say This About The City", from Dark Hours-

Since everybody has written, is writing, and will write about the typhoon that has recently come our way, I told myself, I won't write about it. So I kept it away, put off the urge for as long as I could. But the images in the news, the horror stories (made even more horrifying by the fact that they were not fiction, but fact) were just too much for me to take, while keeping mum and being passive.

It seemed almost irreverent to remain silent, when the rest of everything and everyone was, and is raging.

On my September 26 post, I wrote:

Let's all stay indoors. This is not a good time to be out.

It was morning when I typed those words and I was, as yet, completely unaware of the catastrophic scale the inclement weather (I thought it merely "inclement" at that time) was about to shoot up to. I was lucky that where I lived remained untouched by floodwater. The only complaint I could come up with was that rainwater came in through the window, creating puddles on the room's wooden floor. I grumbled even as I wiped. But still, I wiped.

The shame I felt, then, when, after turning the TV on, the screen presented coverage of a furious typhoon gone mad on the city and its people. Flood, flood everywhere, making lakes out of streets where people remained trapped inside floating cars; dark, filthy water risen and still rising to alarming heights, climbing up staircases, reaching up to terraces, chasing people up, up, so that they had to brave the rain and the wind in order to seek safety on their roofs. There were places where even the roofs failed to provide the shelter so desperately sought.

Really, who could have been prepared for this?

No one, I guess. And so the typhoon has left us in shock, in shambles, in shreds.