Manila is a Love Affair with Chaos

Loneliness, alienation are said to be by products of urbanization. The cold and uninviting city, offering anonymity, transience and isolation among proximity is as individual as it is societal.

Born and bred in Manila, I grew up in fear and fascination of its complexity. Initially sheltered from its less savory aspects, it was only over the years that I came to see a living painting I ceaselessly attempt to capture in words. It is an exciting love affair, it evolves but persists because it makes no demands or promises and expects nothing. It is also unrequited.

Absent the familial ties of a close-knit community, it is chaos constantly struggling to order itself. Manila is irrational, making up its rules and refusing to obey them. In Quiapo they sell black candles and mysterious bottled objects right outside the church. Jeepney drivers with eyes at the back of their head squeeze into crowded lanes, peddlers navigate the labyrinthine traffic and ply all sorts of things – from candy and cigarettes to battery-powered cellphone chargers, not really caring if the stoplight changes from red to green. Some government offices refuse to do business as early as half an hour before closing, and a regular office is abuzz with gossip and a lack of urgency. And malls that hold Sunday Mass – perhaps only in the Philippines. Pedestrians set the laws of the street in large numbers. Just look at Taft Avenue on a busy day (it’s perpetually busy) and you’ll know what I mean.

This is but one aspect of life in the city of cities, Manila. Manila is dirty and crowded, fueled by inefficiency and traffic, typically “Third World”, where transactions are often in the black market and the informal economy cannot die. A greater number are unemployed, live on the streets, scavenge for food, steal or kill to survive.

What is it about the city that inspires fear? Is it the sensationalized bits and pieces they show on television?

This is the city I know, or so I’ve been told. A city that looks on poverty and unrest everyday, but grows in numbers. A city that already used up promises of a rosy future long ago, and still attracts dreamers. Here, we struggle for space, we struggle to breathe, we struggle against struggling. We will ourselves to exist. We live.

The city that holds me in thrall is a beautiful city. Beautiful amid the grit and the squalor, the uncertainty and the dangers. Beautiful because of its anarchy, the perpetual chaos that never quite resolves itself. Beautiful because its eyes are always wide open, holding a disinterested watch. Manila is always, always on the brink of insomnia.

(for transit news magazine)