Dog days, 'ber' months

PINOY KASI

Dog days, ‘ber’ months
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:15am (Mla time) 09/06/2006

Published on Page A15 of the September 1, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE “ber” months have finally started, and for many Filipinos, that means, jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas is around the corner!

I’d like to do a different take though to the “ber” months. We greet them with cheer maybe because we sense the rainy season slowly coming to an end. Sure, we anticipate more typhoons, including super-duper ones, but we sense relief is coming. September, too, comes on the heels of the very difficult, if not strange, month of August.

From March to May, we go through oppressive heat, so we welcome June, made cooler by the monsoon rains. Then August comes along, the rains pounding away even as the heat seems to return, this time with a vengeance.

We associate August with dangerous vapors that emanate when the rains hit the warm earth, causing all kinds of ailments from skin diseases to diarrhea. It’s a month that seems almost unnatural, full of omens and dangers. Our collective memories grope to the distant past of earthquakes and volcano eruptions in August. Suddenly, August takes on sinister qualities, what with memories of the Plaza Miranda bombing in 1972 and the Ninoy Aquino assassination in 1983, which both occurred on Aug. 21.

As a Filipino-Chinese, I’ve always had a kind of doubly hexed way of looking at the month. August often coincides with the seventh lunar month, owned, older people say, by the hungry ghosts. The underworld supposedly opens its gates and lets the ghosts roam the world. These are the ones neglected by the living, and, let loose, they seem to be able to wreak great havoc, causing disasters and wars and, well, just getting people darn crazy.

I was out of the country part of August and came home to what I felt was particularly muggy hot weather: Homes with a stuffy smell, moldy belts and bags, pets burdened with more fleas and ticks than usual.

It didn’t help when my parents told me this is one of those years where the Chinese add another month to the calendar. The Chinese take all this quite seriously, reluctant to start any new venture, whether a business or a marriage, until the hungry ghosts return to the underworld. Why, I asked, do they have to add another seventh month? Does that mean another month of hungry ghosts?

Dog day afternoon

There’s really a reason for the kind of weather we see. For countries north of the equator, these are summer months, even if we think of August as a rainy one. The particularly hot days are those when the planet’s tilted toward the sun to take in more heat.

The Romans called these “caniculares dies” [days of the dog], attributing the heat to Sirius, the Dog Star, shining a bit too brightly. The term still survives in the Spanish “la canicula” and in English as dog days.

At best, the dog days are seen as languid, lazy days. I remember living in Texas and seeing poorer families sitting out in the porch, looking quite glum and unwilling to do anything. Sometimes, though, especially during very warm dog nights, I wondered too if people weren’t being consumed less by melancholy than by torrid desires brought by the sultry summer.

Balmy sweltering summers do seem to incite people to do crazy things. Remember the movie “Dog Day Afternoon”? That was based on a true story about John Wojtowicz who held up a Brooklyn bank on Aug. 22, 1972 (look at that date!) to raise money so his transsexual lover, Ernest Aron, could get a sex-change operation. The botched robbery turned into a hostage drama, partly comic with all the different characters, including the transsexual lover, popping up at the bank.

Reframing

Dog days do carry over into September, and with it, our fears and anxieties. Men do crazy things even in September -- look at when martial law was declared. It doesn’t help that we live today with another President who believes in destiny and divine mandates to greatness.

But hey, let’s snap out of this national depression. Let’s use the month to do a bit of what psychologists call “cognitive restructuring.” In lay terms, that means learning to look at the same reality with a different frame, with a different lens.

August need not be a month of dire omens and ghosts and malevolent vapors. If the weather’s inhospitable, look at it as a challenge for you to renew friendships. Find a copy of “Dog Day Afternoon” and invite friends over to watch, and impress them with your knowledge of the true story’s ending: Wojtowicz was eventually sentenced to 20 years, but served only 7. He did make money from the film’s rights, giving $2,500 to Ernest Aron, who did get his operation and eventually became Elizabeth Debbie Eden.

Better than videos, take up nature’s challenge in your backyard. Instead of despairing with the overgrowth of plants, marvel at what nature can do. The monsoon rains and August’s heat seem to set off a botanical alchemy: Ferns and mushrooms appear from nowhere, wild rhizomes sprout tropical lilies, vines suddenly yield flowers and fruits you didn’t know you had.

The other day, I asked my mother’s gardener to identify a particularly tenacious vine, wondering what exotic flower was waiting to bloom. “Ube,” he replied curtly, quickly adding on to the day’s lesson in ecology, “Galing sa ibon” [Comes from birds]. The birds do a good job of spreading plants around.

And that’s what you could do as well to overcome August’s angsts: Look for birds, better still, entice them to come out -- even bread crumbs can be a feast.

It’s a good time to plant, although you should avoid those that are prone to being water-logged. Imported herbs like lavender and rosemary and mint die easily during the rainy season, while tropical ones like mayana and oregano (the native version) and “damong maria” quickly colonize your garden with the rains.

Choose some corner to create a garden with one family of plants. I’ve started a ginger garden, what with the many versions that yield cooking spices as well as ornamental flowers. Besides the common “luya” [ginger], look for “dilaw,” or Curcuma,varieties, galangal (for Thai tom yum), torch gingers (for Singaporean “laksa”). Where to get the rhizomes? The vegetable vendors at Farmers’ will tell you.

I started the ginger garden for Yna, hoping that when she’s older she’ll garden too and, seeing the gingers, will remember I planted them for her with magic incantations: “Like ginger, may Yna add flavor, add spice to people’s lives, but never with hurtful maanghang speech.”

And the ghosts? The other day she came running out of a room screaming, “Multo! Multo! Multo!” [“Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!”] Ah, but little Yna’s a wise old soul, laughing her way through as she rushed into my arms. To be sure though, I told her, “You know better right? There are no ‘multo,’ no hungry ghosts.”

When she’s older, I’ll tell her about the human ghouls we need to worry about, notwithstanding dog days and “ber” months.