This is a strange, almost eerie landscape somewhere north of here near Bais. It’s early morning and there’s mist over the land, over the sky. It seems innocent, but it’s easy to imagine something horrible hiding quietly behind the cane, waiting. A drugged up NPA Guerilla with a knife; or worse, a sharp clawed asuang, trapped in the field by the daylight. First the horrible face, then: ripped flesh, screams, and the blood.
Shift to a different story, something with romance: From behind the distant cow appears a beautiful young girl in a tattered evening gown, staggering in the mist, weeping. A handsome young cane-cutter in torn jeans and a sando enters from the left. He sees her sad condition; he approaches her shyly to offer his help. She says she was assaulted the night before by her rich boyfriend, who beat her and abandoned her here when she resisted. The boy comforts her and promises her revenge, and his eternal devotion.
On the other hand, the boy and girl might vanish, replaced by an approaching car, an old car, that trails dust red along the road behind it. The car stops beside the sugar field. An old lady gets out, tells the driver to wait. She stands, looking sadly into the distance across the stalks of cane. This is the last of her land and she has lost it. Her children have gambled it all away. She has come to take a last look before the bank evicts her. Then she gets back in the car and slowly drives away.
But probably not. Nothing happens. You could walk down this red dirt road all day and nothing would happen to you but heat and dust. And at the end of that day you would see nothing different from what you started with: the road, the cow, fields of sugar cane. Millions of hectares like this, all over Negros, stretching out of sight.
And what good is plain sugar cane? You can’t eat it, you can’t wear it, you can’t build with it. It’s only valuable to landowners and to the central.
For everyone else it’s only work, and poorly paid work at that.
But everyone needs something to hope for. And if this strange, misty landscape doesn’t offer anyone hope by itself, even people with empty pockets can find it useful, as a background for their fantasies and dreams.
