Straight from the (Jack)Ass' mouth

... ang aking damdamin ay pinaglalaruan ng baliw at ng ulan...

tomorrow classes begin. fitting that tonight the rain falls. a signal start to a new season.

today summer ends but tonight i'd love to dwell on the season that was and sift through all the ends and the beginnings before the rain washes them away.

summer was kicked off in grand fashion. my last exam for the year was a night-time philosophy orals that ended when blueroast (fyi: the annual senior send-off party) was set to start. emerging from 15 odd minutes of an enjoyable oral exam i could already hear the music pulsing from the revelry only a stone's throw away. it was a celebration of the end and yet friends readily ate up the memories along with their food and washed it all down with as much nostalgia as beer. i took as many pictures as i could to preserve the images but perhaps more important were the things i couldn't capture. laughing at inside jokes revived from earlier years. knowing -and conniving- glances shot at friends as their college-long crush strolls by. the feel of a full hug heavy with potential finality.

two, and also three, days later a more sober recognition of the end would take place with graduation. it was a moment that everyone worked towards and yet it was also a time when people had the last opportunity to look back. however exhilirated everybody was there was also aprehension. but then it is a familiar feeling we have when taking first steps and, after all, it was a commencement exercise. but as of last march i wasn't marching yet.

again 2 or 3 days later my barkada and i would embark on what we fondly call our "great summer adventure." it was an almost two week long vacation that had us tripping from manila to bacolod and then to boracay and back. i can't even begin to describe how... just imagine all those teen flicks where they graduate and set off in a whirlwind adventure to celebrate the what-was and the what-will-be. an abundance of food and alcohol, dancing and music, and, beautiful girls and beautiful beaches. new scenes and new people in the drama and comedy of experiences in that short span of a larger-than-life summer vacation.

getting back to manila was as much a return to the concrete greyness of the metropolis as a return to reality. we needed jobs. those who graduated needed real ones while the two of us who havent yet graduated needed pseudo-jobs for our summer ojt requirements. ironically this urban-inflicted realization was how i found myself in the province. learning the ropes of the family business and working for my dad. while not entirely new it was certainly different. this was a more in-my-face glimpse into my future. things were more palpable and more concrete than anything i had imagined for myself (and that's saying alot; those who know me also know how broad and deep my imagination is) and while this was comforting it was also vaguely unnerving.

since having ended my required hours and my required summer classes i've spent the remainder of the summer at home. mostly somber with my thoughts. sometimes happily with my friends. and now it ends. the summer that is.

but as i should've learned by now all ends are merely signals for new beginnings. this season may not be summer but it may just be -and i do hope that it would be- as fruitfull as the last. after all, things wash clean under the rain and things grow better with a little water.

posted by Peejay @ 6/13/2004 08:09:00 PM