Crows

They have crows in the major cities of the world. Crows in Singapore and Hongkong. Crows in Japan . Crows in the cities of California . So why don’t we have crows in Cebu City ? It’s not as if crows don’t grow in Cebu . I’ve seen crows in the Philippine countryside. In small numbers, I accept, but none at all? The easy-naughty answer is that we’d eat them all. Still the question bears some looking into.

To eat crow is not without social and political implications. To eat crow is to say we’ve dropped so low we have nothing else. It means we have lost all pride in ourselves we would eat what is to many people the lowest thing in the food chain. Crow. It’s right down there next door to shoe.

But crows have always stood for dark things in belief systems all over the world. They are said to move in and out of the spirit world. They symbolize sadness and death, which is probably why people sort of leave them alone in most cities. Perhaps it is the mark of our collective bravado that crows do not scare us, Filipinos. Crows are big black birds. Birds are food. So why not eat them? Do they stand for death? We can deal with that too.

When I think of crows and death I think of Vincent Van Gogh and his painting “Crows in a Corn Field”, alleged by Akira Kurosawa in his movie “Dreams” to be the last painting Van Gogh made before he shot himself.

I did not see that painting here. The first Van Gogh I saw in real life is at the Getty Museum . It is “Irises”. I would have missed it entirely had not my niece Roseanne Gacasan toured me through the museum. She had been in the staff of Richard Meier, the architect who designed this world famous edifice. The museum is beautiful and well thought out. Roseanne showed me a section in the museum’s exterior which was designed to produce swirls of wind that perpetually carried bits of plastic in a seemingly endless vortex. It was the dynamics of shadow and the afternoon light hitting the wall which did this Roseanne explained. There are details in the museum architecture which you could miss entirely if you did not look carefully. In the same way, you could miss the dexterity with which Van Gogh applied his paint unless you came up close. Roseanne showed me a detail which she herself designed. It was a huge wooden door with a closing mechanism that was invisible because it was installed under the wooden floor. The effect was amazing. And, of course, I had my picture taken beside it. I’m particularly proud of this niece who is as beautiful as she is smart.

The Getty Museum ’s architecture is box like and linear with only a few touches of organic curves. It is constructed of blocks of hard limestone imported from Europe . The blocks carry fossils of leaves which produce interesting detail. They become necessities for the gigantic minimalist expanses of wall that characterize Meier’s style. Set against the hilly desert terrain, the final effect is quite imposing. Still I was told the Getty collection is not the best by any means in this country: Which only makes me wonder what the Guggenheim must look like. After all, the Getty has monumental sculpture by Henry Moore, Rene Magritte, Maillol, Calder and a quite unexpected one by Roy Leichtenstein, aside from the gallery full of Post-Impressionists, Gauguins, Monets, Manets, etc. And you could take pictures because the roofs had computer controlled blinds to allow only so much daylight at all times of the day.  I was absolutely impressed. But in the end I still wondered about crows.

I did not see a single crow at the Getty. And in this fact, I formulated my theory about crows. They eat garbage and since there was none here to be found, they stayed away and flocked instead close to the cities. This got me to thinking about Cebu . I found myself envisioning a time when we would stop eating crow. It can come. The time may even be upon us.

We have recently seen seagulls and egrets return to our city. Isn’t it high time we made the killing of birds a crime? Perhaps it will take only a bit of effort to grow wild crows in our city. Think how that may solve to some mild extent our problem of solid waste and food garbage. And even if it doesn’t then at least we will be one step closer to being more like the other great cities in the world. After crows, we will also have museums like the Getty. It is inevitable. May 28, 2009 , Kinutil/CDN