manilenya

Reality Rules

This is my blog. More specifically, this is the place I set up for my "how to fix the Philippines" and "what the heck is wrong with this country" polemics.

I do not claim to be exceedingly moral or ethical. Nor do I claim to be remarkably knowledgable about any subject that will be discussed here.

This is not a venue for free speech. I am going to violate your constitutionally-given right because I pay for the bandwidth and the space. You're free to agree or disagree with me, no matter how badly reasoned your rebuttals may be. There will be no discrimination based on race, sex or age on this blog.

There will be no nostalgic and lyrical flashbacks to provincial life. There's a reason this blog is called "manilenya". I've lived in a city all my life. The smallest place I've ever lived in was Cambridge and the Brits considered it a "city".

I am a devout capitalist, practicing Catholic and an intellectual elitist. Be intelligent. You can refute with logic or persuade with emotion. I can then interpellate -- but it's impossible to argue and win when you're dealing with a fanatic. Fanatics don't understand that there's a difference between questioning belief and questioning the basis of one's belief. Fundamentalism of any shape or color will be dealt with by sneers, scoffs, and pointing in your direction and laughing.

Most importantly, you should understand that I'm going to be writing from reality -- or at least my vision of it. This does not mean I approve, consent, permit, concur, comply, sympathize, endorse, confirm, support or even like "the way things are". 

You can go about your life in three ways:

• struggle with reality and become upset
• turn away from reality and live in denial
• or you can accept it and try to leverage your position (i.e., actually do something about it).

Most people choose to live beneath intricate layers of self-delusion. The truth is often cold, complex and simply too painful for most people to bear. People don't like the truth because they have to change, and change usually means pain. Filipinos, in particular, are the world's greatest ostritches. We'd rather shut the truth up and coat it in niceties until it metastazises into everything we do and everything we are. This is tantamount to locking yourself in your room when your house is on fire.

I am taking the position that truth, however unpleasant, is always preferable to delusion. Delusion often leads to certain failure, and failure leads to misery. What's so great about promoting misery? Filipinos create enough of that by themselves.

I'd rather do something about the Philippines than sit on my ass and complain. Better to go to my grave a battered realist than a burnt ostritch.

Confessions

I love this city. This city never remembers days, only moments. Life turns swiftly, as if on the point of a knife. Time rushes murky and silent, swollen and thrashing like a typhoon.

I love this city, deepening in smoke, darkness raising a withered hand to bring down the curtain of ash over a festering river.

I love luminous cars crawling home to buildings that stiffen against the wind.

I love that the city is a nightmare that hovers on the margin of my mind.

I love that this city is cat-quick solace, that it ticks like a heart out of control.

I love its chewy lemony sunlight and its brooding saffron sunsets, the one benefit of pollution that dazzles.

I love even this, even the boiled-down despair, the impossible choices we marinate in addiction because nothing else makes it seem better. Amidst the horror, avarice, pettiness and all the pretty layers of mendacity; amidst the heartbreak I love this city.

I love it because it belongs to me as much as I belong to it. I love it because whenever I think of the Philippines, whenever I think of home, I think of Manila.

I love it, God help me, but I do.

I cannot stand it.

I cannot withstand it.