Manila, Manila

Manila City Hall Clock tower as seen from a building on UN Avenue

 I take it back---I do miss Manila after all. Not this Manila around the City Hall with squalor included...

but this Manila Bay...smell (or stench) and all.
40 years of life in Sangley Point Cavite, Las Pinas, Pasay, and Paranaque plus a strong olfactory sense combine to base my life's memories in this west area. Memories triggered by...this bay's air.

Dragon boat training

Manila Bay; Cavite on the horizon

     I've raved about Santa Rosa, Laguna, and claim not to miss Manila. It is true, I, and as I found out, other friends who have relocated, do not feel the need to go to METRO Manila.

Inside Fort Santiago

      Old Manila, I did not realize I missed. Until a return to Fort Santiago and the walls of Intramuros this week.  From a childhood of picnics with family in the grounds of the Cultural Center by the water, getting there by walking on Taft Avenue; to my twenties when I would go to the Fort on spontaneous drives, through weddings, events, tours...Intramuros is my Manila.  The random trips in my twenties were actually whenever I felt down and in need of solitude, a nearby escape.

      

    Strange that the history of dungeons, the captivity, colonial rule and martyrdom, were my refuge...and provided me a return to a feeling of ''freedom".   

     I still fantasize (albeit overly-romantically---life wasn't exactly easy especially if you were an Indio; it is always the toilet system in Casa Manila that reminds of how satisfied I am living in this century). Nick Joaquin's stories add fuel to this fantasy...

---anyway, as I was saying I still fantasize about how it would have been like...

    to reach Manila via the Pasig river the way Rizal did from Laguna.  

The grounds certainly look much prettier than my husband and I recall. We each have our own sentimental memories of visits as children with family, weddings, events and school tours...most of all, memories of ...dates with other people!

    Now my trips back to the old walled city have added memories...With a child experiencing it for the first   time..."everything old is new again".  It is joyful to hear such a young one exclaim "I love the Old Town!"  She named it such and it was she who begged to "go back to the Old Town".  It was nice hearing her beg to return to the bay "to see the sun set into the water".  Manila may be ugly, unplanned, and impoverished in parts. It is still my Manila. I'm still happy in Santa Rosa, but the familiarity of this old city, the knowledge (and stench, yike) of its streets in my blood make me. Maybe, in my forties, roots and the sense of belonging someplace have finally mattered more than ever.