Unlit cigarettes and lighted streets

I hate unlighted streets; streets that are pothole-ridden; untidy boulevards with dog and cat litter; stretch of concrete that bear no directional signs; streets that have no sidewalks because the allotted spaces for such have been expropriated by the uncivilized and unruly; and streets inhabited by hawkers, whose commerce ranges from peddling flesh to stale street food.
I hate more streets populated by criminal drivers who stay only a second and then without warning—not even a signal light for minimum courtesy—suddenly switch lanes and after the near-death experience of the aggrieved and over-taken fellow driver take pride in the criminal behavior. Such scum of the road should be guillotined, or worse, poisoned to death.

It is unlawful to strangle drivers without breeding? Tell that to the meek, not to me.

I am on a warpath. I want to spit betel nut saliva in the eyes of the uneducated hazards of the road.

If I were the chief of the Philippine National Police, I will set a daily quota for every police in uniform to haul at least two criminal drivers to Muntinlupa, on pain of being stripped his uniform if he fails to meet the requirement.

But because I am not a law enforcer (I am an undisciplined writer), I can only bite my tongue with my remaining molar in disgust over the scheme of things in our beloved country. In our streets, I should say.

The window to a country’s civilization—and civility—is its streets and their condition.

The street is the most visible monument to a cultured people. You don’t believe me? Go to Divisoria, or Tondo, and take a photo of a stretch of pavement. Then, hurry to Makati or The Fort and do the same. Now, go home and compare the photos. Write your observations in essay form. Title it, “My Street Adventure”. Be detailed. Tell me what you see and relate your childhood days to it. Decide for yourself if you are happy. If you are not, blame it to the streets that you photographed. If you are, good luck. We are not compatible, at least in our taste for streets.

Sometime ago, I wrote an essay for The Manila Times about the walkways of Tanauan City. In that piece, I described the sidewalks of Apolinario Mabini’s old town as conducive to thinking and contemplation because they are wide. I appreciated the fact that boulevards lined up and shaded by giant trees are a view to behold. I love wide sidewalks, particularly those with no disorderly and dilapidated structures that obstruct the view, say, a lamp post that has no lamp. Did you ever wonder why lamp posts without lamps abound in many parts of Manila’s city streets?

I love clean streets, even if they are narrow. At the subdivision where I live, the streets are just right but they are clean, at least the ones that intersect my house, because I make it a point to sweep them spotless on weekends when office work temporarily takes a day off.

The legend that Singapore is a ‘fine’ city emanates from the fact that in that First World metropolis one will be fined, and heavily at that, if you ever spit or throw gum, candy wrapper, or cigarette butt into the streets. Cleanliness is a virtue I long to see in Philippine streets which, by the way, double up as garbage bin, parking lot, and wet market. This causes our streets to choke in traffic.

Streets riddled with moon-like craters are abhorrent. When she was a year or two, my youngest daughter, Lilac, used to cry so loudly when, while travelling, the taxi or bus we are riding bounces up and down upon hitting a pothole. Lara remembers clearly Lilac’s hatred of ‘lubak’ that she often teases her little sister of this childhood episode. It has become a source of laughter in the family.

Stories have been told about people being robbed, molested, mugged, or worse, abducted and killed in dark alleys and unlighted streets. So, unlighted streets are a bane to one’s health and one’s mortal existence.

They are also signs that our cities—we—are Third World. Unlighted streets mean we don’t have money to pay for crude oil, crude oil being the fuel that runs our power turbines that produce electricity.

Dark streets are also lonely. That’s where lovers whisper and moan—while sharing and salivating in wet dreams. Unrequited, despondent, lonely hearts looking for ‘love for sale’ thrive in pitch-dark streets.

On occasions when I cannot avoid walking along a dark alley or an unlighted street, I usually have in handy my ubiquitous lighter and an unlit cigarette between my thumb and forefinger, just in case . . . . I also don’t stride casually along. I walk briskly, with eyes darting from side to side watching for a sign of a mugger. If one materializes, my planned stratagem is to feed him my cigarette and light it quickly and run for dear life.

Experiences also abound of newly-arrived provincial people getting lost in the city because of a sign-less street, or a street that leads to nowhere. I, being so forgetful of directions, dread to venture out into such streets. It should be no problem if our cities have street maps, like those in other countries, but alas, we Filipinos are not map readers so here’s one piece of advice: if you are lost in Manila, or Cebu, or Davao, don’t go to the police to ask for directions. Chances are, they also don’t know. Go to the tarot reader or look for a Madam Auring and ask her to predict where you are going.