Beautify CNMI once more

My Earth Day ruminations got some responses from as far as Washington, D.C., Mumbai, and Sydney. I did not realize that Saipan Tribune’s readership extends that far, but then, in cyberspace, our regular sense of space and time is relative.

Two events this past week (the 27th Annual Flametree Arts Festival and the Legislature’s sPEWing out of the marine sanctuary proposal) induced this revisiting of “Beautify CNMI” which is more than just a momentary brush fire of cleanup frenzy in the service of MVA! It represents a movement of people who have made a paradigm shift from treating the planet as a mine pit simply for indiscriminate extractive purposes, as well as a transformative occasion for individuals to discover their umbilical ties and filial loyalty to mother earth.

My first response to the festival booths was the cynical one: here comes the commercialization of our taotao tano identity. Save for exhibits like that of Noel Quitugua, which propagate images of heritage through profitable means in order to continue the service, there did not seem to be much claim of authenticity. But I expanded my context, and appropriated even the seeming crash hawking of shells and T-shirts, caps and booties, flowers and potteries, viands and veggies, etc., as valid for the occasion.

The sight stimuli from the booths, the aroma from the food stalls mixed with the ocean breeze and the scented regally attired ladies and gents of the night, the squeals of the children in the kinesthetic arcades, the screams of youth as mating game coupled with skateboarding skills, and the cacophony of tongues traced in lineage from the Hans to the Slavs, the Malays to the Columbians, the Teutons and the DownUnders, the Polynesians and the Melanesians, and points in between, gave me pause of what it really means to claim taotao tano identity in this time and place.

The booths and the stage are the drawing attraction of this event. To me, art is the plumbing of our depth relationship to space in the here-and-now, and music is the embracing of the width and breath of rhythms of the spheres.

The confluence of localis and globalis is what I say to my colleague in the identity-assertion field, Gregorio Cruz Jr., to consider; that indeed, the “people of the land” goes beyond fighting federalization in the political realm, though that exercise legitimately have a place in decision-making. It must reflect authentic identity in the here-and-now rather than an escape to longed for “golden age” of ethnic solidarity in a non-existent time; it must conjure vocation for the generation to come.

There are as much behavioral diversity amongst and between the Olopais and the Hofschneiders, the Babautas and the de leon Guerreros, the Ngiraidongs and the Kings, the Pearces and the Tenorios, the Borjas and the Narajas, and other taotao tanos as in any specie.

To be contemporaneous is to breath in global space and worldwide history. Limiting identity and being fearful of newfound earthling vocation does not do justice to the creative diversity currently prevailing in these shores. Being local is a matter of choiceJonas Barcinas of Dandan taught our San Vicente 6th graders a song entitled “We Are One,” along with dance gestures of the islands, a chorus line being: “We are one with the Earth, with the Sky, with the Sea.”We find our taotao tano definition in that line!

I was stunned when our leaders up the hill legislated their fears. I have an image of scared and spineless ghosts (as opposed to the forceful and dynamic personalities they exhibited during the political campaign) shaking in their loafers and pumps before the shadows of the ubiquitous un-homogenous feds (there’s just as much diversity in ’em Wash. DC-based bureaucrats as any!), and rather uncivil to a civic group called Ocean Legacy, not to mention a guy named Angelo and his PEW.

Ruth L. Tighe in her column wrote: “The proposal has been deemed a “no-brainer” by most who are aware of the proposal—with its protection of marine resources, its promise of world-wide attention to the CNMI, its assurance of increased tourism, scientific research, economic investment—all at no cost to the CNMI—what is there to object to?”

Who indeed, would oppose an Ecozoic Park, of the sea and of the land? I will not rehash the details other than to say, there are no details. The proposal is for the CNMI to get on the table and decide the terms of what the marine sanctuary will be! Evidently, in a world that has long been on denial on global warming, depletion and degradation of ocean and land resources, the tragic aftermath of dwindling fossil fuel, the exploitative operations of the garment industry, we need folks around the table with a vision of needs and requirements of the times, rather than just those addicted to a knee-jerk response of avoidance with a non-decision reminiscent of the hardly missed apparatchiks’ Nyet!

One of my students during the Holy Week school break went to China. She visited Beijing and the Great Wall, Shanghai and its environs, Guillin and its rock formations, Guandong and Hong Kong, as a tourist. Tourists generally visit a place bringing their home mindsets and their expectations of home comfort with them. They set themselves up for disappointment. Travelers, on the other hand, visit to encounter, dialogue and experience the “other.” My tourist student understandably came back with unflattering accounts of food, people, and environment.

“Beautify CNMI” for me is an invitation to cease being a tourist to our home and planet, but to be a traveler, where the journey is the destination—a journey into the marvel of a new Earth and a beautified CNMI, a journey into a new consciousness and a rejuvenated taotao tano. And as those of my generation are wont to exclaim, and the Force be with You!