Last night, a woman stopped her
car in the middle of the street to talk to me.
I was walking home on Pasong Tamo, lost in thought, when I heard a car stop and a voice calling out, “Where’s Guijo, can you help me?
” I looked up to see a white
car, and bending forward from the driver’s seat, a woman , her hair silhouetted
by the soft glow of the city lights, asking for direction. “It’s somewhere there,” I said, waving my
hand to where she just came from. For although I can’t tell exactly the exact
location of the street she was looking for,
I was pretty sure it was not where she was headed.
Have I gone past it? she asked
with a sigh. I nodded sympathetically.
“I think so.”
“How about Bagtikan?” the woman asked again. I threw her a glance which said I was as lost
as much as she was. “It’s one or two
blocks away, I think,” I said, gesturing again. “Though, I could not tell you
exactly where, it’s there.”
The encounter was brief and
noncommittal and yet it was for me a deep human connection. If you spend a large part of your day feeling
invisible, lost, to be asked for a direction and to have an answer that is
readily accepted would be enough to feel good. Getting lost is part of a life here; this is a city of lost people like me; a city of transients; a city where nothing stays the same, including its buildings.
