A secret illness

Given my penchant for nostalgia, especially if progressed to its extreme, I would have been diagnosed with this malady had I lived in the 17th century—when longing for the past skidded beyond its reputation as romance into an identified illness. 

Fortunately, for me, four centuries since, nostalgia seems to be everyone’s secret illness, though pining to the point of dark fears that would cause fevers and nausea have mutated into often-fierce “protest voices” gelling as a cause, poised on an enemy of what’s been there—loudest of all, would be man’s sometimes all-too-human weaknesses, especially greed, that’s wreaking havoc on Earth and its gifts.

Still, as it happens when fazed with possibilities like losing the sun, we hurtle so far back where the problem shrinks to our size, and wave off the stark danger, even if apparently quite close, into an impossibility in one’s lifetime. Hence, we revert to paltry romance, massing behind causes like crumbling walls, where once a palace or cathedral stood, or a pretty cottage framed by rambling rose vines.

But I had found not just a handful but a fierce crowd, defending all-creature rights but especially, what’s in danger of being displaced or rendered extinct by annihilation (quite a hint of hyperbole, here, but true). Like Donna, a neighbor, who lives right above our floor, with whom I ended up some weeks ago at the neighborhood’s supermarket fresh-food counter, not swapping recipes but lamentations on how a number of shellfish, as well as fish, that we think could be there forever, would soon be gone.

Her mention of fish had reminded me of this: If you haven’t heard yet, well, like how demand for Nemo’s species (clownfish or anemone fish), had exploded through the hobby trade with children, who in their innocence want a pet in captivity, like him as humanized in “Finding Nemo,” which Pixar produced and Disney released,” that of Dory’s, (a blue tang or palette surgeonfish) in the recent sequel, “Finding Dory,” might soon, too, if it hasn’t surged yet. A mild warning that cause-oriented voices recently sounded like that of Julie Rodriguez of Care2Causes had been for Nemo, that survives in an aquarium—really a glass prison for aquatic animals—but a more stringent one has been aimed at Dory fans, because it can’t.

“Lucky for Dory,” exclaimed Donna, and instead of savoring a hoped-for Dory stuffed toys or pillow, in place of one blinking in an aquarium one day, and belly-up the next, always a sad sight, we exchanged tales of childhood. As ecology-friends converts, though, we had cringed at relishing her aquarium as a little girl, while I, having none, recalled a river itself, where I grew up, reveling in a just-once thrill of trapping with elders, jumping shrimp and wiggling small fishes at our feet —town mates have told me such an experience could be hard to conjure up these days.

In us both, some kind of guilt rankles—not only did a number of goldfishes die on Donna, as she had confessed, a turtle, too. I brushed it off, assuring her, what small damage such childhood ways with nature really do inflict compared to adults.

Back to fishes, think of appetites such as for caviar, which has subjected the beluga sturgeon that lays eggs priced like gold, to what activists have labeled extreme cruelty when caught. I could have mentioned the way the mud fish once upon a time in Philippine rice fields, Filipinos like me, crave to this day—gone extinct with what farmers had claimed from fertilizer use, and soon clams and mussels from increased acidity in our waters, according to recent findings—guess, why?

Donna and I stopped there, realizing we had just trapped ourselves in nostalgia for a scintillating Earth and its gifts, flailing to grasp how little we know and see of what ails her or us.