inklingfair When I was in junior year college, I’d go walking in the campus at night just because I could. I lived in the Kamia OB (Old Basement for you non-dormgirls) and it was so stuffy what with people coming home from school/lab/dinner/org activities that I couldn’t stand staying in the room. So I walked. My favorite haunts were the library — I loved the high ceilings of the Gen Ref section — and the track field behind Bahay ng Alumni.
I walked alone. Sometimes I brought a book with me and look for a pool of light to read in somewhere around the Film Center. Sometimes I followed cats, sometimes I found myself so far from Kamia I had to take an Ikot round Hardin ng Rosas/Bougainvillea (I always confuse the two) and C.P. Garcia. Before Kamia, back in Dagohoy, I would go to the sunken park beside Church of the Risen Lord to watch people walking by. I sat in the grass and looked at their shoes and tried to guess what their faces looked like. When I lived in Amorsolo, I had the Bonsai Garden and the little roads leading to Sikatuna and beyond.
When I moved to 51_mat I don’t think I had any time for walking. One night when I was walking along Malingap (not for pleasure, I just wanted to get home), I got mugged. I think I stopped then. When I lived at Masigla and in Coron, I stayed indoors after dusk (I was a bit scared of encountering the naked village madman at night).
I miss it. I miss the ordinary silence of it. I miss the snail encounters, the hidden paths, luminous cats’ eyes peering out from under hedges, the smell of dama de noche.
Maybe I ought to give it a go again.
Photo by The How Photographer on Unsplash
