04 May 2006
queens of edsa
i tried withdrawing money in the nearby atm. i only had a few bills in my wallet left and based on my big apetite and insatiable thirst for useless spending, this will not see me through. gasoline for one rountrip from quezon city to makati alone...enough to bring me to school for a week. no exaggeration there.i used to do atm transaction before but eversince i exhausted the funds in my account during this half-day christmas shopping in 2004, i immediately threw away the goddam card. now, my salary is coursed through an atm account and i don't have a choice but to use one.
while my transaction was being processed, a text message arrived. when i lifted my face from the mobile phone's lcd screen, my sight dropped on this scene: the cash being eaten back by the atm machine.
* * *
the other morning, louis and i were patiently enduring the heavy traffic on the way to work. since i was behind the wheel, there was another option besides passing through c-5 road, the one parallel it generally known as EDSA. i had chosen to endeavor the latter and suffered the consequences. quezon city to makati should only take thirty minutes without traffic but since this is metro manila, a child could be born inside the car and learn how ro construct complex sentences while stuck on the way to the next municipality.
as i was trying to prevent a giant bus from overtaking, i noticed a new structure being built across megamall. "highway 54," its unlit neon sign said. "EDSA used to be called highway 54, right," i asked even if i was sure about it. when it was still called such, it was a popular belief that salvage victims were dumped on the grass fields along it, particularly in its northern part where quezon city is now.
louis confirmed that edsa used to be highway 54 and proceeded to tell me why EDSA was built in the first place. EDSA is semicircular because it was meant to go around manila. it is the supreme purpose of said highway for tanks and other war vehicles to pass through it in case manila was under siege.
i knew this all along. i think he was also the first one to tell me this a long time ago.
* * *
epifanio delos santos is a name of an actual person i do not know anything about. named after him is this important avenue that pierces metropolitan manila from north to south. like a nylon string in a lei, it binds the cities and municipalities together in one chaotic clump.
roughly translated, epifanio delos santos means "enlightenment of those blessed."
* * *
there is a religious shrine built along the intersetion of EDSA and ortigas avenue. this is called the edsa shrine. it is said that in 1986, troops were sent on helicopters to bomb the people protesting against former president marcos's regime. the soldiers looked down on the crowded interstion: two roads interseting at a right angle accomodating a huge crowd of angry filipinos. they then saw that from bird's eye view, that the said thing resembled a cross. they did not have the heart to unleash destruction upon it. it is extremely unfortunate that the flyovers crisscrossing above the said intersection have not been erected at that time yet.
the success of the people power catapulted president cory aquino to power. five years before that, her late husband's funeral procession drew a huge crowd to march on edsa--a crowd comparable to that in ghandi's own funeral parade.
now, a decade later, it is nightime and the neon signs and the headlights and all the glare burn colorfull holes into my windshield. no, i did not take acid, but staying in an imobile car for more than two hours may give off a similar effect. from here, i see the spawn of the union between pres. aquino and her hero husband--styled, made up, photographed and rendered as she endorses a foodsnack. beyond that, a gigantic picture of her with her husband endorsing underwear. further down, her, endorsing a mall. scattered on either side of the tunnel, her endorisng shampoo.
i only get to pass through one fourth of this avenue.
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