Nick Joaquin

Manila, My Manila

Nick Joaquin is so cool to write about history in this manner

Claudine

No roof, no trail, interrupted weed and foliage. Water and soil and light and the very air had the cleanliness of new creation. The islands were bare of life, except the life of leaf and bough, of bird and insect, of snake and fish. Everything was morning-fresh because so unseen, so unbreathed, so unpeopled!

Oh, what a vision you must have been to my sires when first you enthralled them in the dew of your dawn: Manila, my Manila!

MANILA took a long time to make. What is now its ground used to be sea. The sea reached as far as the present towns of Mandaluyong ("a place of waves'") and Makati ("a place of tides). It is said that diggers in Makati often find seashells. This cold mean that once upon a time Makati was seashore or seabed. The line of the Shore may have been along Guadalupe, under the cliffs. So, at that time, the highway called EDSA would have been a beach! 

Manila, My Manila

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