The 2 Beautiful Years of My Life

The title seems to propose that all the other years are not beautiful but actually, they too are but none is as beautiful as those 2 beautiful years. The others are wonderful, challenging, amazing, intellectually refreshing, spontaneous, free, but none is as beautiful.

I could not think any other better introduction but this:

Elbi was a dream come true. And when one's dream comes true, it carries with it the emergence of all that was beautiful. As if everything that happens trickles from that dream. It is exactly how I see my Elbi experience. 

A lifetime might not be long enough for those two beautiful years to line themselves in the linearity of my biography. If someone would write my biography, I wouldn't want her to write in chronology for that would underrate how much mystery and wonder every year holds. I want her to write in circles so that it would seem that my life, even ended, still happens, each beauty replicated in other lives, in other stories.

How I wish I could replicate my stories.

My Elbi stories. They started in 2003. No, even earlier, in 2001, when I first stepped on Elbi's grounds during a high school field trip. When I saw the trees and grasses of Freedom Park, when the bus drove along Pili Drive, I uttered loudly, "I'll go for college here." My high school barkada retorted that my parents wouldn't agree on it. They knew that my parents wanted me to enroll in Diliman. I extended my two arms upward and say, "This is where I want to be in college." They all smiled, unconvinced.

When I filled out my application form, I did it in hiding. I didn't ask Mama to check the data, as I would usually ask her to do. Then after about six months, I got a letter from UP. I passed in my first campus choice. My parents were half-happy.

I landed in Elbi. My first class, it was Philosophy 1. Prof. Scheherezade Ruivivar, taught us the essence of contemplating life.  What is falsity and what is truth? What is logical and what is absurd? What is life and how is it to die even as one breathes? She gave me my lowest ever grade in class because I confused October 7 with October 17. It was my first encounter with absurdity. And I wouldn't forget her for that.

In Elbi, I came upon many other professors and instructors, both old and young, learned and learning. I recall we had LTS lessons at the Bahay ng Pahingungod. Whenever I would go there, the jeepney I'm riding on would pass along D.L. Umali, the graden where a classmate claimed his parents made him, the Women's Dormitory, the Men's Dorm and finally the YMCA. Life then was scheduled perfectly at times but imperfect moments yielded more memories.

Like when I got absent from my Hum 1 class because of a morning fever. In the afternoon of that same day, I reported in my other classes. On my way towards one of my afternoon classes, I saw my Hum 1 instructor by the Hum steps, with a bluebook on his hand. By the time I reached the right side of the antique building, he was already walking towards me. He told me he had been looking for me inside Hum to give me my graded exam. He handed me the bluebook he was holding. He could have just waited for the next class session to give me my exam, but instead he looked for me. A touching sense of self-worth took over my fever. Teachers who care for students even beyond the classroom is an Elbi gift.

I met other professors who later on became very essential to my journey as a young adult. Their images, still vividly etched on my mind.

And more importantly, in Elbi I met friends. Friends or companions or accomplices. Whatever term fits, I met them there. And these friends, they stayed even after Elbi.

In Elbi, I learned and fell. I fell in love. Or did I? I don't know. I was too young to know. I was too young to even touch it. It flew. It was beautiful when it flew. It was painful, too.

Whenever I would get hurt in my games as a kid, Mama would give me apples. In college, Elbi gave me kapok fairies and macadamia nuts. A play would make me forget I almost failed a quiz. McDo would make me forget everything. 

But I won't forget how beautiful Elbi was. It was like its Hot Spring-- hot and springing. It was alive. Elbi. Elbi is yellow and green and white and orange and red. In my mind, I could paint it with my eyes closed. But I could hardly put the image into paper.

For how can one really express something that is beautiful? If you paint it, the colors would not be in the same gradients as you experienced it. If you write about it, words would be lacking. This effort to write? This is nothing compared to the beauty that was Elbi.