Coming of Age in Ermita [ESSAY]

By: Jessica Bonifacio

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At 17, I dreamt of walking the streets of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. I vowed to make it mine. What better place to start my journey but the country's kilometer zero, the marble monolith in the midst of Luneta?

It was one jeepney, two train rides, and two brisk walks away. I went alone except for a purse too cramped to contain my burgeoning feeling of newfound independence. Defiant, starry-eyed, and sweating out of my shirt, I satiated my need for rebellion by sandwiching myself in rush-hour train crowds and breathing in the smoke and lust of Ermita, Manila - then the farthest place I've been to by myself.

Middle-aged men hurled yells as I walked through the roads. On their hands were laminated posters, their mouths wide agape as they screamed, "NBI clearance!" to anybody who would listen. These men would assist you with government documents for a small fee.  Though for how much exactly, I could only guess, as I slithered like a swift snake out of their way.

To my right, black smoke drifted out of an apartment building, perfuming the air with the faint taste of burnt wood. A small crowd gathered below, their eyes transfixed up. It wasn't a big fire. Even so, I was surprised at the lack of enthused murmurs. It seemed a daily thing, what with the jeepneys zooming by and the men with tattered clothes pushing brown carts along, what with the sari-sari store workers holding out plastic sachets of morning coffee as if the burning apartment wasn't burning at all.

That was how the city greeted me.

Soon, I found Luneta. I greeted the monolith. Then, the museums. Oh, the museums.

Juan Luna's Spoliarium was a cold slap. It swallowed up space; it kicked and it screamed. It was my first time seeing a painting of that magnitude, but far from the last. I would keep seeing it, and all the other paintings in Manila's museums, and in fact keep hearing the NBI clearance men and the rumble of jeepneys as I revisited the same place over and over in a span of five years.

This is a review of sorts. A report of my coming-of-age. A lot has happened since I was 17.

First, I had my first kiss, my first rally, my first cigarette, my first job. Then, I had lasts. My last teenage year, my last childhood pet, my last high school class. A pandemic took over the world. I felt love, romantic love, which held me and inspired me and tore me once it was over. Through it all, Manila was unchanged. No matter how many times I saw it, Spoliarium always stole my breath.

It was, like the city, limitless in size and yet humbly framed; secretive and in-your-face. 

I've heard it said time and again, that the problems in painter Juan Luna's time are prevalent to this day. While Spoliarium depicted the oppression of 19th-century conquistadors; now it's countrymen against their fellows, corrupted capitalists against the peasantry.

Growing up meant learning about the machinery of the world, calibrating my moral compass, and finding ways to anchor my idealism with the practicality of the everyday. I slurped up books on society and integrated myself in mass work, but was anguished to conclude that worldly issues were not solved with mere youthful passion.

You have to be somebody first. You have to earn hard skills. You have to have resources. That's how the world works. It's how Spoliarium inspired revolutions - and in the modern world, lost teenagers - by being skillfully, earnestly made.

The other day, I looked at the painting for the nth time. I felt directionless. I don't know where my life will go. In a way, I am one of the apathetic bystanders below the apartment fire, eyes fixed on the smoke, wondering if it will spread or die.

I pray to reclaim that sense of wonder and defiance that I had at 17, breathing in the dust of Manila for the first time.

I know that I will always come back to Ermita. Sometimes wiser, other times less certain of myself. While I find my way in life, the jeepneys will keep on rolling, the museums standing still, and Juan Luna's Spoliarium, hanging in dignified silence while observers come and go.

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Disclaimer: This is a first draft and is subject to editing.