2.02 am, 25 July. No classes again! I am in the library with Patricia, and Angela Sinco. The windows have been thrown open and the airconditioner is off. There is a fan near my corner of the room. Angela/Joy-joy is at work on her laptop and Patricia is performing her levitation act (her nose levitates inches from the page she’s supposed to be reading, in some weird and yet strangely fascinating form of napping). I am reading page thirty of my organic chemistry module. It is two in the morning and I have coffee running through me like crazy, which is ridiculous of course, since I didn’t have class yesterday—a few hours ago—and I don’t have class today—a few hours from now. But Trix and I have been here for hours, just chatting. Her sister came in intermittently to talk about music, and once to suggest something for Iris’ MSS dilemma (Cedes’ idea: “Renovate Animo”. It is on the white board). We made Patricia listen to “Atlantis”. Patricia requested earlier that I should play Hands Down. I love her. She’s such a martian. But I’m just kidding. I love her like this, open and not so walled up and giddy. I feel oftentimes like she is impenetrable, and when I told her this she told me, Why thank you. I wish she would open up more, but I know that it’s not part of her nature. I don’t even know why I want her to do it; I just get the feeling that she’s unhappy, and it is as though some part of me takes her unhappiness to be a personal offence. Against me and my own incomprehensible and unexpected cheerfulness.
Trix and I have listened to Far Longer Than Forever, My Heart will Go On, and Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina. We’ve talked about movies, and Dmitri, and the name Derek. We’ve talked about high school, and boys, and classmates, and the functional group of anisole. We’re still not asleep, thanks in part to coffee. Today Cedes and I tried brewing coffee, but she took it upon herself to do it all so I suppose I really wasn’t part of the effort. We—she made some this afternoon during the SONA, and her first batch of coffee was just absolutely perfect. It was hazelnut, too, and I will never forget the first sweet taste of that coffee, that pleasant surprise, that incredible realization that something I hadn’t even expected to happen had happened, and beyond all hope or expectation.
These two days without school are like that, too. It feels like a vacation from my worries. I’m ill, but I don’t feel it. I like just being here. Forgetting that I have a life outside of this place, outside of this well-structured place where everything I do is planned and intended to be perfect. I like forgetting that I have a life that doesn’t involve me and Cedes Tanchuling sitting in the library or near the dining hall door talking about the second stanza of “Feeling This” or sitting in the tea room or sitting in the dining hall debating on existential matters as applied to bread (particularly bread that she has already toasted in the oven). I like forgetting that I have a life that doesn’t involve me teaching Krizia and Patricia organic chem (and me pretending that I don’t know what I’m doing), and me coming downstairs always always always to the sound and reality and fantasy of Richelle’s music. I like forgetting that I have responsibilities that don’t include school and Tahilan and laundry and going to early morning mass. This is my life now. I would like this to be my life. I am happy right now. I wish that it could always be like this… the whole world asleep, me sitting peacefully in a corner of the library facing organic nomenclature and neglecting my Bio laboratory homework, Patricia wearing green stripes, Cedes wearing her intensely green “Gang Green” shirt, my chem lab reports done, the rain outside falling falling falling gently, my phone quiet.
I don't really miss things as they were back then. But sometimes it's nice to remember.
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