Metanoia: the Manila you don’t (yet) know

I’m freezing purple in my office that looks out over the desert where construction workers are laboring in 40C heat at 10 a.m. What initially drew my attention to the window was the consistently flat sky. Hours from now I’d be staring at a sun that’s so bored it can’t even bother setting until night lazily pushes it over with its toe.

I notice this because where I grew up, sunsets are like a woman’s moods—sometimes sulky, sometimes serene, other times flaring its skirts in abandon. Manila’s sunsets are much like its inhabitants—vastly varied and deliberately theatrical despite the smog.

It’s quite impossible not to love the Philippines when we’ve got world wonders like the Banaue Rice Terraces or the subterranean Tabon Caves or numerous beaches with sand the consistency of powdered milk. We have tarsiers and underwater cemeteries and swimming alongside whale sharks, and you have to desperately try not to gape when marveling at Apo Reef. I can sell you the idea of meeting Manila for the first time because of her colonial structures dating back 400 years, or the historical significance of having the oldest Chinatown in the world, blah blah blah.

But anyone born and raised in Manila who swears to always having loved the city is a reprehensible liar, a spoiled brat of some VVIP, or really, really dense. I’m pretty sure the traffic is why we became the selfie capital of the world. It’s an unbelievable challenge to not bleed hemorrhoids when you spend a massive chunk of your life in Edsa’s gridlock, being forced to stare at silly billboards of even sillier celebrities flaunting their cosmetic surgeries (only in Manila do you find this blatant admission to vanity) or harping on the gospel of whitening creams (because, you know, if you have the sun-kissed skin God blessed your people with, then you’re pooooor).

It’s hard to get past the fear of riding a public vehicle and getting five stitches for not surrendering your cell phone to a guy wielding a serrated knife. I don’t know which is more depressing—the heartbreaking poverty that never seems to have a solution or the twits we elected who confront plunder indictments with idiotic music videos. So no, no one can automatically love Manila. It happened to me at a time I was fully lucid and able to understand what that emotion really means—an emotion that trickled into my subconscious and greatly influenced the kind of person I am working on becoming.

In 2012 I began nicknaming my years. That year was Exodus, 2013 was Game-changer. Exodus was when I discovered I could dance with fire, literally. I had gotten into flow arts—poi and hula-hooping and a new circus-freak temperament that allowed me to see an entirely new Manila. The city had always felt like a sweltering ultracommunal fishbowl to me. Everyone sort of knew everyone else, and it could get really claustrophobic at times. But in 2012, I began to see everything that I thought I had already seen but was actually seeing for the first time—being blown away by raw musicians while I sat in Saguijo drinking a San Mig pale, watching a gory interactive play staged by the underground theater ensemble Sipat Lawin, running around dark, abandoned school grounds, or being shocked by daylight when I leave the time capsule that is Time (a proper nightclub that is a contradiction to the live visual art happening on the roofdeck of its building every Wednesday).

Manila, the urban sprawl that dresses like a metropolitan city but operates on island time. A beauty whose slums and SM malls and churches in every corner (and in SM malls!) and potholes and sweaty armpits are just as much a part of its authenticity as its verdant parks, hypermodern glass buildings, streets that light up like Christmas and resounding laughter that flows like chocolate velvet from your soul to your groin.

Everyone cites Filipino resilience like a cliché. We seem to be handpicked by the Universe to take on its most crushing calamities, yet the first thing you see from us when the cameras start rolling in the wake of death, destruction and despair are a smile and that friendly little wave. We suffered centuries of Spanish and American occupation and constant political sodomy by our own dynasties, yet we have stubbornly produced a culture so accommodating and involved that people can’t open a packet of chips in public without feeling the need to offer some to everyone else.

Just look at our jeepney: that relic from the US military in World War II we gleefully turned into a colorful icon of public transport, with seats facing each other, clearly demonstrating the Filipino’s social disposition. We dive headlong into intense, unnerving “feels” and either turn those into something tangibly beautiful or make droll vaudevilles that belie their gravity. This is why our artistry—be it music, medicine, engineering, dance, visual, etc.—is so genuine. This is also why Filipinos are recognized worldwide for excellence in hospitality or entertainment or healthcare or service careers. Our indomitable, passionate, waterproof spirit is a therapeutic balm in a world of disconnect.

There is no universal answer for why you should visit Manila. But she is worth so much more than a day trip and is not just a purgatorial platform to the rest of the stunning archipelago. The city is so vibrant you can taste the lights and smell the sounds, but you have to allow the time to experience the magic. Manila, reflective of her people, is that place in your psyche where you spontaneously try to heal from unbearable conflicts. Manila means the word that I named my 2014 for, that beautiful word that means spiritual transformation and fundamental change in character. Come to Manila when you’re bored or broken and ready for an awakening. Come when you are ready for Metanoia.

Sweet Caneos describes herself as “a professional flow artist and pole dancer” who founded “the first hula hoop community” in the Philippines and in Saudi Arabia, where she is currently based.