confluence of land, nature, body in diwata

in Diwata, there is a continued interconnectedness between the natural, the physical/corporeal, and what makes up landscape. the lines between bodies, nature, and place are often blurred, and each often stand for or are somehow connected to the other (the ocean as womb, tree bark as skin, the flesh of fruit, etc). elements of the natural and of landscape are often personified. both creation myths introduced in the collection point to this blurring also. in the poem "Again, She Tells the First Story,"  the wind dances with the sea and roars and the woman is described as being "born of the rocks" while the man is "born of sea spume." in the first poem pointing to genesis, the bones of the first man ossify from dust and fire, the wind gives him breath. the first woman lives within the landscape of the first man's body and is birthed from his rib. the woman being birthed from the cracking of the bamboo is similar. body parts and plant parts have the animal qualities of birthing, creating.

bodies and landscapes often become each other in these poems, or exist inside each other. in "Duyong 5," the speaker's mother's "womb becomes the sea." in "Dragonflies," the river comes into the bodies of those who fall into it, to be heard in the beating of her heart. in these two examples, our concepts of vastness and space are altered. we don't think of the vastness of a body of water as able to be contained or present in a body. and we don't think of a person's womb ballooning out to contain an ocean. 

it's so important to recognize the ocean as landscape, not only because it does CONTAIN (ecosystems, land masses, wildlife, etc) and because it sustains us (food-wise, etc), but also because it can be colonized, mapped, encroached upon. and also because it is traversed and a mode of transport. these poems continuously remind us of how the sea is a bridge colonizers (Spain, the USA) cross in order to colonize, re-vamp, change land, push out and introduce violence to landscapes and the people who inhabit them. in the poem "Duyong 4" the man "takes the ocean as his consort." he is "carried in the womb" of the ocean, he "enters" the ocean, in the same way men "enter" female bodies throughout the text. the confluence between lands, bodies, and nature is especially important in the context of colonization and war because "other" bodies and "other" landscapes become susceptible to violence and transformation at the hands of colonizers. colonizers claim ownership and overtake bodies as well as landscapes. just as the land is built upon--fire escapes come into the picture, light pollution overtakes the night sky blocking out natural light, homes are displaced, etc, bodies are overtaken and changed-- via rape, acts of violence, murder, improper burial, introduction of clothes and customs (the whalebone corsets breaking ribs, shoes on bare feet, etc).
as an undercurrent in this collection is the acknowledgement that place holds meaning and evidence of identity, culture, community, history and memory. what happens to all of these things when landscapes are forcibly altered, how can these landscapes continue to hold these identities, histories, and memories when they are razed and built upon and the bodies of the people who've experienced those histories or have internalized them (via memory) are also destroyed and dismembered? i think, in the face of colonization and imposed violence to spaces, cultures, and people, is why it's such an important, political strategy to blow open and reclaim the creation myth--to emphasize all the possibilities for the reclamation of creation and growth and the fact that we constantly create ourselves and can constantly recover that power of creation. it's especially important in connection to the creation narrative, remembering how Catholicism was imposed upon (of course, not only) the Philippines.