Somebody Please Invent a Time Machine So We Wouldn't Be This Nostalgic!

After reading some posts by nang Adel, my writing mentor and past-editor-turned-to-friend, I was attacked by a deep sense of nostalgia especially upon remembering the crazy schedule and activities of university life including some of our long forgotten ideals as student journalists and writers.

Along with this first line of nostalgic attack came a big wave of half-remembered scenes from the past and how I realized I can never return to it, or remember the details of them no matter how I try, or how I can never, ever reconstruct them in the present.


It did not help that I had to eat my lunch alone in the midst of the chaos in the school canteen which I don't need to describe since I believe that everyone clearly knows the scenario in a school canteen comes the ringing of the bell which signifies "lunch time".

 I don't know what it is about eating silently alone in the middle of the hustle and bustle of voices and the clanging sound of silver wares that give us a deep sense of loneliness and sadness---but this is another story and I'll find time to deduce the reason next time.

Going back to the wave of nostalgia that hit me today, like a scene from a movie, a bulleted list and images then flashed on my mind, so vivid that I had to sit down and put all of this to writing or else it would keep bugging me for hours or days after.


I am nostalgic of:

• ...having overnights at my cousins and how we become so rowdy and noisy just before sleep time. But we cannot do this anymore since my cousins are all grown up and they have lives and families of their own or our differences and ideals have made a drift between some of us. This made me remember Inday Ana (I know her soul is in peace already), one person who is already missed for 4 years and perhaps for a very long, long time. 
• ...waking up so late in the morning to the tickling of my nanay (she kept doing this even though I'm already a 23 year old grown woman) or probably to her shouts (I never thought that what irritates me so much can also be missed). Living away from home now makes me cherish the simple pleasures back then which are most of the time unnoticed. 
• ...spreading our old folding bed just outside our house during humid nights or when there are blackouts and lying on it for hours with my younger brothers and sister while locating the stars and constellations with our battered and dog-eared New Era Encyclopedia at hand. 
• ...passing the time in a moldy bamboo bench outside the house while sharing stories and attempting to hit high notes, which disturbs the neighbors since we do this during telenovela periods. 
• ...attending fiestas with the GYPSIES even in barrios and barangays which are too far-flung to be reached by the roving tricycles. And it's always a misfortune (which I never regret) that we go home with me filled with bruises or aching muscles since 10 people are trying to fit in a tricycle with a capacity of 6 persons. And since I am the smallest in the group, I had to sit on somebody's lap or try to make myself fit in any small space (not fit for an average sized person) that is available. 
• ...going back to school for practices during weekends and wasting the time laughing so hard 'til our stomachs hurt. 
• ....the cheese-flavored bluskies biscuit and the pineapple shake which are often served by my nanay to my starving high school classmates (including me) during presentation practice or group projects at home. 
• ...the fishballs and kikiam paired with a bottle of coke shared with the GYPSIES' Saturday group at our town (it's already a city by the way but I would probably call it a town forever, I love the sound and the idea of it being a small town) plaza. 
• ...riding in a bus at night time to go back home every Friday---I'm keeping the windows open even though it's too windy 'coz I like to be bundled up in a jacket or a sweater. 
• ...videoke sessions with Janjan, my youngest brother, complete with head banging band acts. 
• ...dance sessions with Janjan and with Mariz (I'm warning that you wouldn't want to watch us doing this one 'coz we get really crazy and uninhabited..., and I'm never a good dancer) 
• ...lazy Saturday morning chika sessions with inday Nancy, my tita slash confidante.....you are also missed 'day, very much. 
• ...10 o'clock first period class during college. 
• ...lunch filled with philosophical talks, mostly nonsensical, and at times meaningful silences with the SILAKERS 
• ...sleeping at my favorite spot in the SILAK office (lined-up chairs at the back of our long conference table). 
• ...scheduled free trips and interviews (sometimes, not fit for amateurs) which leads to some of the most meaningful experiences and articles. 
• ...getting kilig (that I am silently screaming) during the times when I pass by my college crush in the hallway and he stops and talks to me even though it was about some school matters or nothing in particular. Or the times when he stopped by our office for several times for small talks... or the time when he personally persuaded me to do something and personally said that I could make a difference...or that particular time when he stayed for the whole afternoon to watch a movie when there was a campus activity going on and I pretended to be asleep on the corner while quietly peeping at him once in a while...(Thank God I'm completely over him and it was a harmless kind of admiration, and I think his girlfriend which is one of my good friends knows that I had a passing admiration with her current boyfriend.....haha)
• ...the smell and sound of the printing press. 
• ...the rush of seeing my article in print. 
• ....taking a big part in preparing for the Flores de Mayo in our barangay chapel. I've grown up being a part of this and I firmly feel that there will come a time when a big slice of the responsibility will be passed on to me (God help me on this). 
• ...blowing plastic balloons, we just all love plastic balloons! (Now where did this come from? Talk about random thoughts, huh?) 
• ...sleepovers with friends---especially the GYPSIES and the SILAKERS sleepovers. 
• ...walking the creepy, dark hallways of our college and passing through a secret exit when we were locked up together with our adviser (now, this made me really laugh...). Imagine how we made ourselves fit in a window while wearing our college uniform and then passed through some cobwebby passageway.....this experience is a blast! 
• ...late night girly talk with Fatty, my room mate for 3 years.

This list is to be continued. I don't know when, perhaps when another sense of nostalgia hits me. So for now, I think my raging emotion is somehow calmed and though there are still a lot that keeps on trying to pop out, I could not put them down in writing 'coz they are like half-remembered songs that just keep on slipping away when I try to pin down the memories (this is just another way of saying that I'm having memory loss).


Unless a time machine will be invented, then, 'till the next wave of nostalgia….