Requiem for a Pine 'Tree'

Bibliographic Entry: Saboy, Scott M. 2009. "Requiem for a Pine 'Tree'. In The Baguio We Know, edited by Grace Celeste T. Subido, 53-56. Manila: Anvil.

Note: This essay was inspired by a politician's project that wasted the people's money with the construction of a concrete pine tree in place of a real tree. Ironically, the sign at the foot of that monument said, "Plant Me and Protect Me".

I think that I shall never see

A poem concrete as a tree.

A tree whose mangled mouth is set

Against iron bars and hard cement;

A tree that can't see God all day,

And too petrified to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of soot and smog in her plastic hair;

Upon whose bosom Christmas lights lay

Who can't be intimate with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only politicians make concrete trees.

I would be most grieved if our ax-wielding mayor and his coterie of lumberjacks will make good of their promise to lay waste to one of the country's architectural wonders that has graced the crown of Session Road for over a decade now. For where else would I pick precious petrified pine nuggets of wisdom when that new species of the genus Pinus is gone? Already, that million-dollar repository of meaning has made my cup of reflection run over and more.

For one, that tree somehow connects us to the grandeur of Rome itself. It can remind one of the twin Stone Pines shading one of the Eternal City's streets and of that great bronze pine cone at the heart of Vatican. If you accept the connection, then I'd say we'd better show we got a good taste of the Classical by matching the decor on the crown with another at the foot of dear old Session Road with the creation of a replica of the Pantheon at People's Park. This structure will be a grand place where all our City Fathers and the vanishing species of flora and fauna of the Cordilleras can find themselves glorified in finely sculpted stones or world-class concrete figures.

We'd better heed the appeal of that Pine tree – "Plant Me and Protect Me" – for it is a good reminder for people, especially those in power, to make it their life mission to erect monuments for themselves before Mr. Rigor Mortis catches up on them. There should be no problem with this, for we have long accepted this drive behind many government projects. We have long tolerated the practice of contorting sections of public schools and waiting sheds to form the initials of our politicos, term after term. I reckon that were we to mark all these waiting sheds and schools from Batanes to Jolo, we could complete the 26 letters of the alphabet several times over.

So I suppose our concrete pine tree is a good testimony of our tendency to exult the lord more than the laborer, the general more than the foot soldier, the speaker more than the speechwriter. That is why we set in metal plates the names of those who hold the purse and the scepter, instead of the names of those who have sweated it out in putting up the structure with their shovels, plumb bobs, scrapers and brushes.

I have also come to believe that the controversial tree can be a fitting symbol of the New Baguio: a city enveloped in odious car fumes instead of fog and pine scent; a place where the natural and native are being replaced or superimposed with something artificial and imported; a commercial area where some have become insensitive to the commodification of our indigenous culture exemplified by a Bonus sash slung over a native dancer's garb during a Panagbenga parade.

There should be no surprise in this, for we live in a JolliMcworld where fast-paced profits blur our sense of rootedness, a world of Botox and Restylane that entwines beauty and superficiality, or mistakes the former for the latter. Just as the blessed statue behind our concrete pine tree may not really be a symbol of a vibrant faith but of a moribund spirituality, that tree can be a fitting illustration of our artificial sense of beauty.

On the other hand, I guess it is equally true that our blessed tree exteriorizes our longing for the Old Baguio captured in the image of the old Dainty where Sid Chammag, Ben Andaya, Ben Rillera, and a host of other merry newsmen used to sip a cup of coffee for hours and chat the day and night away leaving old Akong wondering if he will ever make a huge profit out of his business. Or in the image of the old John Hay which has now become less accessible and so forbidding with all the millionaires' abodes dotting its landscape that can make the ordinary yBaguio realize his lack of fortune all the more. In other words, the tree urges us to answer an basic existential question for Baguio folks: Have we left Baguio, or has Baguio left us?

We preserve the memory of an irretrievable past with pens, brushes, and perhaps an ancient SLR camera just as hunters preserve a glorious past by petrifying animals not so unlike those African beasts staring at diners of Safari Lodge. It is thus wise that we preserve the memory of a once pine-clad area with a concrete pine tree.

At least, when all our Pine trees shall have gone to kingdom come, thanks to our real estate developers, our children could still gather around that mighty concrete tree to connect with a vanished heritage. So let me suggest that instead of axing that tree down, we should plant concrete and plastic sunflowers around it to make it more glorious. And to top it all, our architects, engineers and artists may also be egged on to come up with a masterpiece of sayote vines entwining the trunk of the tree and sayote fruits that glow in the dark at Christmas.

And that very idea is very inspiring to me. For I am now thinking of suggesting to our good mayor in far away Balbalan to also make a cemented replica of the Balasang tree in our sleepy village of Balbalasang in anticipation of the extinction of this species of hardwood. Monuments of our fast-disappearing alingo and ugsa would also look nice around that tree. Oh, by the way, it may interest you that Tabuk City had long anticipated the possible disappearance of its farmlands and the demise of the last carabao by preserving that old white carabao monument in the junction fronting the St. Williams' Cathedral.

So you see, axing that tree means wasting all the petrified (pine cone) nuggets of insights hanging from that oft-criticized architectural wonder. But alas, even cries for "Mercy" won't seem to change the mind of He-Who-Wields-The-Ax. And so I grieve.

But already, I can hear something in that tree crying "FREEDOOOM!" most deafeningly ala Braveheart. So I’m getting ready to say most solemnly to this great marker: Requiescat in Pace.