thresholds

You suddenly have that sudden feeling of reminiscing out of the blue… of a life you knew in a not so distant past. A time when everything was nearly as perfect as the Sampaloc sunset, of a smog filled Manila, when dusk turns to darkness, you feel safe within the confining eyes of urban drunkards and flower vendors.

Like it was the time you technically live with your friends, whom you’ve shared your greatest dreams and most frightful nightmares. A time when money wasn’t an issue. When Makati was a place of fun, and not of work. A place where scandal and dirty little secrets ensue as if they where part and parcel of daily life. Where weekends are spend on binge drinking sessions above the lake. It was home.

But time changes everything. Only three years have past, we grew old, and somehow apart, physically and socially. We move on, but at times, it’s wonderful to see, hear and feel the sights and sounds of yesteryears as if nothing had change. It is as if I lay myself to rest I’d wake up in the same bed in that small room, together with all of my friends, and enjoy that particular phase of life. No worries. No problems. Just pure satisfaction.

This is what we do best. Being sentimental.

Those evening walks to the chapel and around the football field. Flood. 7-11 at 3am in the morning. Starbucks. The uniforms. The calachuchi tree. The car park. The smoke-scented air within the boundaries of the pavilion. Magic tricks. Obscenities and foul mouths. Porkchops. Sisig. Yosi. Every little detail of it is an ambrosian delight. You know that in that piece of your memory lay a separate universe, distinct from the rest. Sui generis, something which can never be replicated nor paralleled.

Then you grow apart somehow, because it is the will of dharma.

Es tan corto la vida. Es tan largo el olvido.

Life is so short. Forgetting is so long.

We have this saying that, in law school, you don’t have friends, only temporary allegiances. Somehow, I find truism in that premise, cause never have I had any comrades which measure up to the standards of the days long gone.

What I write may not make sense at times, it may be illogical, nay, reprehensible. But the true literati understand well that words convey more meaning than what they usually mean…

I don’t exactly know what’s getting’ into me, but this I am certain, I am in the threshold of a stage in my life, my little death, my rebirth, fourth year in law school isn’t just fourth year… it is like the two-faced Janus beckoning me to enter, yet the other face says otherwise. Then you remember a promise you made not just to yourself, but to your friends years ago.

I survived. I lived. I am a plenitude of all that was and will be that destiny declares me to be.

Beneath the superficial entity, I was always esoteric. Death is always rebirth. And I am nearing this death again. I fear, and tremble, not knowing what lies ahead. But confluent with such phlegmatic theme is a sanguine and jovial frame of mind.

The greatest fear of all is the fear of the unknown, but letting things remain unknown is the most frightful regret of all.

Let’s see what lies ahead…