Monday, October 22, 2007 This suitcase in this hall By Miguel Antonio N. Lizada Kuya's chair
FOR the past few days, the cast and production staff of "Death of Memory," a production of Tanghalang Ateneo, has been rehearsing in the Basement of Eliazo.
The place indeed holds so many memories and I found going it rather nostalgic to go there in the late afternoon; it felt like I was a resident student again, going home after a day's work.
Today however was a bit different. With the semester finally coming to a close, the dorm seemed lifeless and empty again. People who either stay during the break or arrive very early know how the dorm is like around this time: dark, quiet, and cold.
Seeing this absence made me want to write about it. Here it goes: The life of the Cervini-Eliazo Residence Hall is a cycle -- a cycle of living, dying and rebirth.
The dorm dies earlier than one may think. It ages as early as the Monday morning of the college final exams; when the first suitcase is dragged from a resident's room, down the corridor and to the lobby.
Here, here in the lobby, the radio waits with the night-shift guard; the radio waits for the usual instructions: a "tango" to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport please, or the Centennial Terminal, or, as the case may be, to the Cubao Bus Terminal.
And so it happens, and so it continues, and so the dorm decays exponentially. As the week wears on, the suitcases begin to pile in the lobby. The Ilonggo's three bags near the Porter's booth. The Cebuano's outside beside the guard post, the Dabawenyo's beside the aquarium.
After the radio receives its instructions, the dormers wait and chatter.
Goodbyes and promises become their new language: the Ilonggo's singsong-accent when speaking seems to sing a melancholic tune as she gives her goodbyes; the Cebuano's hardened tongue seems to have softened a bit when he says "Ayo ayo bai ha?" There is sadness too in the Dabawenyo's voice as naga-goodbye siya sa mga kaibigan niyang gina-joke-joke siya palagi habang naga-kain sila at bago sila mag-tulog.
When the last taxi has ferried the last homecoming resident to the airport, the dorm becomes exactly like a corpse: cold. With no smokers in the "SPG" to warm the place up, with no hotheaded DOTA player, with no red-faced drunk crawling from Tia Maria's Cantina, the dorm is a cold corpse.
But in a few months time, the dorm will live again. The taxis will bring them all back. And the radio will look forward once more to trafficking the tangos going in and out of on Friday and Saturday nights: a tango for Eastwood, two for Makati, another two for the Fort.
The life of the Cervini-Eliazo Residence Hall is a cycle -- a cycle of living, dying and rebirth, a tug-of-war between coldness and warmth. Its life ends with the first dormer wrapped in jacket leaving at 3:00 in the morning. And it lives again, a few weeks later, with a dormer coming back sometime before lunch, taking his first hot shower and greeting "Unsa man bai?" to the first person he sees on the way back to his room.
