(no subject)
There are holes in my world, geometric voids in Manila I know only be the places that surround them. On the map I see a constellation of stars, and glowing lines which link them. They're the streets I know, the buildings, the neighborhoods, the districts, lit up by a recollection I have of making my way between them. And then there are the voids.
I went onto Google Maps last night out of curiosity. Had Manila finally blipped onto the Google radar, thanks hopefully to its ten million citizens' existence? Had we finally deserved Manhattan-like detail on a map which used to apologize, "sorry, we do not have imagery at this zoom level for this region", or god knows what message Google cooked up to basically say "sorry, but don't you live in trees anyway"? Apparently we did blip, thank god. It must have been the expats.
What happened next gently rocked me. I found my house, and realized that my ex's was around a foot away from mine on-screen, on magnification 6. I saw UP; Bia's, Sam's, Caloy's, Judd's, and Nissy's houses; the tight huddle of city tower blocks lining Ayala Avenue; the sharp triangles gridded around Quezon Circle. And then I saw the voids: the hole of Cubao; pinpricks shining through the black of Quezon City; a glowing Greenhills on the edge of dim San Juan; UP burning up with dark spots of buildings I don't seem to have visited; and enormous streaks of black running beside EDSA, the highway I thought I knew best.
The word is "awed", or maybe "humbled", to describe seeing the entire world I move in, all the streets I've gone down, and every single place I've stepped into, all intricately spread out, fitting together perfectly, connecting in ways I would have never seen from the ground. This city is impossible, so simple in its complexity. There are holes in my world between the constellations; I live in this puzzle, finding pieces for only the glowing places, and the voids are getting smaller.
I went onto Google Maps last night out of curiosity. Had Manila finally blipped onto the Google radar, thanks hopefully to its ten million citizens' existence? Had we finally deserved Manhattan-like detail on a map which used to apologize, "sorry, we do not have imagery at this zoom level for this region", or god knows what message Google cooked up to basically say "sorry, but don't you live in trees anyway"? Apparently we did blip, thank god. It must have been the expats.
What happened next gently rocked me. I found my house, and realized that my ex's was around a foot away from mine on-screen, on magnification 6. I saw UP; Bia's, Sam's, Caloy's, Judd's, and Nissy's houses; the tight huddle of city tower blocks lining Ayala Avenue; the sharp triangles gridded around Quezon Circle. And then I saw the voids: the hole of Cubao; pinpricks shining through the black of Quezon City; a glowing Greenhills on the edge of dim San Juan; UP burning up with dark spots of buildings I don't seem to have visited; and enormous streaks of black running beside EDSA, the highway I thought I knew best.
The word is "awed", or maybe "humbled", to describe seeing the entire world I move in, all the streets I've gone down, and every single place I've stepped into, all intricately spread out, fitting together perfectly, connecting in ways I would have never seen from the ground. This city is impossible, so simple in its complexity. There are holes in my world between the constellations; I live in this puzzle, finding pieces for only the glowing places, and the voids are getting smaller.