Manila really is Just Like That.

i go to Plaza Miranda and within seconds i will find a practicing mangkukulam selling cheap toys, tarot card readings, underwear, and curses all from the same stall in front of Quiapo Church. i have bought a curse off one of them once. i still have it in my bedside drawer because i chickened out last minute and never used it but now i'm too scared to get rid of it.

i walk through the informal settlers/squatter areas near my home and hear whispers of people dying in their sleep-- and it's almost always because of either two things: the police shot them in the night or because they brought something back with them from the province.

people disappear a lot. sometimes, they never find them again. sometimes, you only find parts of them. you're sure it's probably the work of a human but. you're never actually sure.

there are balete trees where you least expect them. there's one by one of the back roads leading to my office building and nobody wants to take it down because there's something living in it. same goes for the great sampalok tree in front of our office building. but they park their cars right next to them, paying a simple bow and "tabi, tabi po" as a parking fee. i try not to look at both trees when i pass by in the evenings on my commute home.

just last week my aunt called to casually tell me that they had their house blessed AGAIN because their maid had accidentally angered something the last time she visited her province of Nueva Ecija and everybody in the whole family has been waking up with scratches and bruises on their arms ever since. they had the house blessed by an abularyo this time because the first blessing from a catholic priest didn't work.

actually, my whole family on my grandmother's side is sensitive to this shit-- which explains the nonchalance, tbh. this isn't their first paranormal rodeo.

i know there is a branch of literary theory that studies why the development of magical realism, tropical gothic, and urban fantasy in fiction is largely credited to the global south (i.e. latin america, mainland asia, and south east asia), but fucking living in this bizarre city really drives it the fuck home.

there's at least two fucking balete trees near Manila's town hall. a building that is, by the way, shaped like a fucking coffin. i cannot make this up. it's so on-the-nose, it's like actual literary imagery right out of a magical realist/tropical gothic short horror story. and it's REAL.

STUDIO GHIBLI + WATER

Ponyo (2008) When Marnie Was There (2014) Porco Rosso (1992) Spirited Away (2001) Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Tales from Earthsea (2006)