The party behind the scenes of the party

BY PAO F. VERGARA

MONTHS AGO, when the year was still young, I came across an article from The GUIDON’s Features section about drinking as part of the quintessential college experience. It was a back-and-forth framing two voices, that of those who drank and that of those who didn’t, not necessarily an argument, but a synthesis.

A brief segue: Allow me to say that, having worked in media since graduating, campus journalism remains one of the last truly independent bastions in the country, not answering to any corporate bottomline or political backer.

As a wise man once said, Sana all Centuries ago, the Japanese monk Yoshida Kenko in “Essays in Idleness” mused on the beauty of festivals. It wasn’t the actual festivities that he spotlighted, but observing how people struck down the decor and dismantled the platforms, he argued that witnessing the end of the festival—and in the process, realizing the transience of life—completed the whole event’s beauty.

Kenko never expected people to read his diary, it was long after his death that it was given attention, when a title was appended to it.

It’s easy to romanticize this period as one of kimonos, boatmen on clear canals, and wandering poets, but Japan then was also a feudal society much like ours today. Dogen Zenji, a contemporary of

Although neoliberalism is not unproblematic, we cannot deny its role as a tool for liberation and development. The freedom won by People Power did not start and end at the ballot box. It brought us the power that lights our homes, the water we drink, and the money that changes hands from the executives to the workers. It created a more equitable Philippines than the one that came before. Beyond liberation, we must seek justice through the framework that has already been built and works.

We must acknowledge both the faults and successes of these efforts. Only then can we begin to find and fix what is broken in our society.

Kenko’s and also a monk wrote, “The streams ran red with blood,” referring to the political killings between rival lords and their retainers.

No wonder then, that amidst all this turmoil, contemplatives like Kenko and Zenji had to find ways to stay sane, such as through finding what beauty was there. How far is centuries ago from today, after all?

I think there’s another beauty in what Kenko witnessed in festivals: The parties going on behind the scenes of the party, in striking decor up and down, in building and dismantling platforms, and the bonds forged along the way by those who made the party happen.

Back then, I wasn’t really the party type, but I did enjoy organizing events. I remember bonding backstage with others like me, as all around, arms and bodies swayed to the DJ’s rhythms. We introverts sipped our beers, nodding along, knowing that hey, we made all this happen.

I remember once walking by the McDonald’s across Marikina

There will be days of a more-good-than-bad nature throughout your life in the Loyola Schools (LS), and these should be treated as blissful—as is the way of things with tired college students. Then, there will be days when you feel absolutely unstoppable, when you float through Red Brick Road, groove along SEC Walk, and become filled with excitement at the sight of your friends in JSEC. My college life—and I’m willing to bet most of my batchmates’ college journeys also—continues to be characterized by a plethora of people, each with their own unique and colorful identities. From afternoons in the PubRoom with GUIDONeers to the beer and sisig wings that have formed my happiest senior year memories, the vibrancy of college life can undeniably be attributed to the warmth of friends. There have been good days, and these good days are more often than not traced back to my time with those I’ve grown closest to.

These loved ones are those individuals who make everything worthwhile. You’ve failed tests with a few of them. You’ve walked through the sweltering summer heat on campus with some of them. You’ve enjoyed JSEC and Gonzaga food with many of them. And, you’ve gone on joyrides and sanity walks filled with stories and laughter around Ateneo with a couple of them. Then, there’s the

Sports Center one night. It was late, no longer evening but not quite midnight, and I heard singing and saw yellow lights. It turns out the staff were celebrating the birthday of one of theirs, poppers, trumpets, candles on a cake, phones out to record the moment of surprise and singing.

Nearby, at the intersection of Shoe Avenue and Sumulong Highway, police and paramedics cordoned off a lane as two cars crashed into each other.

In popular consciousness, certain experiences are considered essential to certain stages of life. Miss out on them and you pretty much missed out on said stage. College is one such stage with a certain set of “quintessential experiences.” a lot of the time things will end up going wrong. College experiences that go awry are what allow us to make peace with the fact of life that there’s no other way to deal with a bad day than to simply get through it. This is not a message of “everything will get better.” This is a message of “if it were meant to be, it either should have been by now, or it will be later.”

But college is more than what old movies and social media make it out to be: it’s that one place and time where ideas roam freely, when one expresses oneself freely. Even working students may find a freedom they’ll look back to once the daily grind of post college life commences.

Everything is as it should be.

THERE WILL BE DAYS THAT DON’T MAKE SENSE

I have become intimately familiar with the in-betweener days, the times when everything just feels normal. Throughout my stay in the LS, there have been so many times someone has asked me how class went, and how a particular meeting, event, or even party was.

All my feelings could be summed up in three words: “it was okay.” Responses like this are not for a lack of words to describe how I truly feel, or because my day was secretly bad; it really was just okay.

There Will Be Bad Days

There will be days when it feels like the universe is playing one big joke on you. There will be days that are more bad than good, and then there will be days that are just plain awful.

There have been days when all I wanted was to get off campus. There have been times when not even my best friends could cheer me up—and they didn’t have to—anyway, it was never their responsibility to. I know that bad days are to be expected. Bad days are par for the course, and if they never existed, then I would have never really been pushed to figure out the things that truly matter. College is constructed in such a way that we’re afforded more opportunities to make mistakes, to experiment, to live and learn—and

While in college we chased deadlines, the pressure of full adulthood lingered in the background. In college, I made certain mistakes that, if made later, would be harder to bounce back from. One can experiment, one can mess around and find out. That’s freedom. That’s the quintessential college experience.

College is an ivory tower for a reason. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, the term “ivory tower.” Seen another way, it’s like temporarily escaping the city, heading to a summit, in order to view it in a new light.

A lot of the theories discussed in class make sense when experienced after graduation, and a lot of murky phenomena clear up with theory.

Like the wandering poetmonks of Heian-era Japan, college is for most a time of meandering, a cup of sake under the cherry trees, for drinkers and non-drinkers alike. We’re able to talk about the blood on the streams from a safe distance, with the guidance and tools to process it.

Don’t worry if you feel like you’ve missed out on “quintessential experiences.”

It’s not your fault especially today as the country is tentatively (re)opening, as we’re (re)learning to bridge social distancing and be with and among each other again.

For those who started college in 2020, I don’t blame you if you’re gonna catch up on everything you missed: the live UAAP games, the group meals, org life, the barefoot walks on open fields after a particularly riveting test, the drinking—be it alcohol, coffee, or whatnot.

So often have I thought that I should always feel as if I’m on top of the world and beside myself with joy and excitement, as if that’s the only acceptable way to go through college. Yet, when it comes to actually preparing myself to leave campus, I can see now that the days that don’t make sense are actually much more significant than they initially seem to be.

On these days, do what you want. Go out. Sleep in. Be active in class. Cut class. Have a slow afternoon with friends in Matteo. Visit your org room. Stroll through the SOM Forest. Or, just talk to a loved one in JSEC. On days like these, stop worrying about how you think you should feel; sometimes just being is perfectly okay.

The drinking! With good company, with company who gets it, with company who, at this moment in time, gets you for you, with company that’s finally beyond a screen and in the flesh.

You may have missed some typical “essential experiences” but you never know how the unique experiences you found in lieu of the “essential” ones make fertile ground, making you ripe to fully enjoy the experiences to come after graduation.

The world has space for everyone, after all. And like mangoes, don’t we all flower at different times? I’ve had friends who partied tons in college go on silent retreats five years after, while the wallflowers at parties now dance freaky in Poblacion.

You never know what selves you’ll encounter later, especially if you don’t miss out on the self, the you, experiencing the world right now in this one fleeting but perfect moment.

There’s a party going on.

And it’s here. It’s everywhere.

Pao F. Vergara was a member of The GUIDON Features Staff, AY 2015–2016. Vergara is currently a freelance journalist, cultural worker, and multimedia producer whose works have appeared on the Manila Bulletin, the Inquirer, ABS-CBN, Art Plus Magazine, and NewsNarratives, to name a few. Vergara has also been volunteering across Philippine Zen centers since 2016.