Walking Through T.M.

I am sitting in the middle of it all... swirling dim lights, mostly red lights, bottles of beer and ash tray full of cigarette butts on the table, people dancing and shouting in unison "take-it-off! take-it-off!" while four ledgers work it out good on the bar table. Smoke pierce my eyes, as the tar in the air dries it.

After the "show", I walk out the club for a breather.

A stranger near the entrance gives me a friendly nod,
while the girl who loss her cellphone still sits at the gutter,
staring at the floor.

God knows what she's thinking.

Some guy tries to hit on one of the ledgers,
while the rest of the other ledgers ramp their out to there car.

Parking attendants peak at one of the "loaded" scooters parked near by.

Street vendors stare aimlessly, as they make it through another night on the job.


Looking at their eyes, it seems that this is just another night.

An empty, cold night

After the dancing, drinking and shouting, everyone walks out the place, into the streets, being as they are before... nothing new.

Gazing through the length of Tomas Morato, I start walking by the side walk, glancing from side to side at the closed stores, parked taxis, waiting people--tired people, conspicuously looking women, homeless people bundled up on the sidewalk, sleeping...

After the drinking and the merry making, this is what greets me outside.

As I always say to myself in my weekly travels at the late hours on streets of Metro Manila, "Ito and Pilipinas..."

Then I find it funny walking around the rotonda at the intersection of Timog Avenue.


Going back the steps of the club, I hope that my friends in there are having fun (sincerely! no sarcasm honestly. I hope to God they are not "empty")


Reflecting about it, I remember my Th151 teacher saying, "The man who enters the brothel is looking for God, but looks at the wrong place."

Well, I've looked for God before, and actually sought Him in those places.
Now, I have found Him and hope to stay with Him.
Though it is still interesting to go back to those places, in hopes of finding and knowing people who also looks for God in wrong places, as I did before.
[It's because finding God is not the end of it...]