escaping Manila

Climbing up the top of the mountainside on the back of the motorcycle holding onto uncle J's waist. The air is vibrant and wonderfully fresh. We ride through a rainfall briefly, but in the heat the rain is refreshing and we weave in and out of tricycles and jeepneys full of people staring back or not noticing us...

Uncle J knows that I like adventure, and he carefully explains to me what things are. Without his explanations the neighborhoods melt into themselves, meaningless.

Everywhere on the outskirts of Pasig is a strange beaten housing project that looks like it's falling aapart. Unfortunately the storms destroyed most everything, leaving only rusty wire skeletons. And inbetween the streets endless, endless roads full of so many people, and houses, illegal and legal, filling up every single available crack of space. In the heat the people always look a little sweaty and thirsty, walking around in flip flops and shorts and with small bodies just like mine, their skin darker than mine from the year round sun. There are always little stores where children and women gather to buy strings of candy and soda pop and gossip at white plastic tables.

As the city melts away into the countryside, I'm amazed at how we can ride through a small rainstorm and not feel wet. Leaving Manila we climb up an increasingly lush mountainside and encounter a thick forest and jungle, a foilage that is so exotic and pleasing to my eye. Kutu is the name of the homes on the sides of the mountain, some of them perched at dizzying drops with tin roofs or the nipa huts woven from palm trees.




Every so often we stop at military checkpoints and show papers to prove that nothing is stolen. The police wear heavy uniforms in the heat and have gigantic guns. Everyone is always sweating, except when we are moving, and then it becomes paradoxically cool.

I feel instantly anxious around these men, and my uncle is properly deferential, showing them the papers. They are type a macho men, they strut back and forth with sneers and the knowledge that they can squish us.

At a small mountain house we stop for me to use the bathroom. There's a house full of girls, some of them watching a Mexican telenovela dubbed into Tagalog, drowsy in the heat.

I pass through their living room and see clothes folded neatly in tables, a large crucifix hanging from the wall. This is their life: naked, spread out in film star magazines and girl's panties folded in neat piles. When I walk out I thank them and they smile and wave at us.

I still remember the girl's sleepy eyes as she leans against the side of the hut. Clear plastic bottles dangle from the eaves of the hut stuffed with flowers, how clever!

Clever like the people bent over in rice fields wearing basketball shorts and heavy long-sleeved shirts and rice hats to shield themselves from the sun. My uncle tells me that it's hard work, backbreaking work, and it pays almost nothing. The people in the fields have soggy feet all day, I imagine.

When we ride back into the city and neighboring towns, there are huge jeepneys full of people, all of them always staring back, sometimes none of them noticing us. I like this feeling of being invisible to everyone. Manila sprawling out is an incredible tangle of humanity, of small running children in school uniforms and old men pulling wagons.

When I put on my motorcycle helmet, my face is hidden, and I am completely forgettable. I wonder how long it would take for me to completely fit in there, to be reabsorbed into the island of Luzon. I imagine myself sinking in up to my neck in the wet tropical earth, carrying plastic bags of food at night or selling things at the big cement-topped markets. I am good with numbers and marketing, what would it be like to lay out a row of objects on a flat tabletop instead of digital slippery things?

It's a strange thought, but somehow it could work. Anything is possible, right?