My Manila (13.5.20)

 I am often asked, "What or 'Who' is this, 'Manila' that your posts address?"

Manila is the breaking dawn viewed from the second floor balcony of a house in Malate or watching the sun rising from the horizon from atop a hill in Culion, Palawan or Panacan, Davao. She is a sunset taken from Baywalk or deep in "No Man's Land" during the Taal eruption.

Manila is the smell of incense, ganja, stale beer and cigarette smoke in a bar along J. Nakpil, the sound of "earth music", Afro-Cuban, spoken poetry, "Pinikpikan", grunge and trance—a rhythmic, psychedelic high uttered in French, Spanish, Rastafari, Bahasa and Hiligaynon!

Manila is the constant clicking of my Nikon FM2 amidst a wild crowd with a Bob Marley jacked-up. She is the blade I carried to cut my "Isabela" or "Corona" on a warm summer weekend in '98. She is the Cerveza Negra that went with the "purro" while humming to the tune of a Fleetwood Mac song.

Manila is the drunken sojourn in Baguio when we lay on the green of Camp John Hay with a half-consumed "lapad" tucked in a young lady's jeans back pocket. She is the hundred million things I've done—the reckless, senseless, absurd and often death-defying, marked by dots along my half-century timeline.

More importantly, Manila is that lady whose name rings like a favorite song beckons to me. It is in her arms that I wish to be wrapped around and under her caring hands I trust to heal. She is the anxiety that keeps me up at night, whom I long to be with, and why at all I am alive. I have sought and lost in as many times as I have found her.

Manila is both my journey and destination, the keeper of my soul and the captor of my spirit. She is everyone I've ever known but never met. Never will?