Para kay Amie

A friend wrote in her blog today about how much she misses kule. All the deadlines, harassment, pressures, infighting, paranoia, conflicts, sleepless nights. A non-Kule person reading this now would probably think, whaaat? She's crazy, who would miss that?!

We would. I would. At one point in each Kule alumnus/alumna's life, you can't help but look back. True, we moaned, whined, turned melodramatic, turned suicidal. But we went back to work the next day, and the next and the next. All of those crazy things were part of a life that we loved so unconditionally. It was an eternally natural high. We wouldn't trade it for anything.

It was a period that was so...rich, in all its pain and glory. Which I guess makes it painful to say goodbye to, especially if goodbyes are done violently, reluctantly, like some people I know. I personally left Kule with disappoinment and panghihinayang, but at least I had three previous years full of memories that were beautiful and that ultimately overshadowed the dark side. Others, mostly the newbies, didn't really have that. For some them, it was all bitterness and anger.

That is what saddens me most. Even now, I feel like I am partly to blame for their greatest disappointment. The unknown terrfifies me. What if? What if it had turned out differently? What if I had done more? We'll never know. At this point, nothing I do could ever retrieve what that last tumultuous year in Kule had taken away from them, all the things they had yet to discover and enjoy. All that we, the slightly older ones, wanted them so much to experience. All that Kule promised them. The burden will always be there, even though we know that all of these happened simply because they were meant to happen.

There's certainly no more turning back, and all that's left are memories. As sorry as I am, I only hope that what we went through--together and individually--in that final, fateful year was enough to help them discover themselves. Because what makes Kule truly memorable is when you leave, continue to live your life, and realize one day that what you are at present has been shaped by all those ONs, meetings, presswork, conversations, sleepless nights, debates, laughter and walking down Faura late at night. Even if those moments sum up only one grain in the sands of your lifetime. I hope with all my heart that that realization can make up for the what-could-have-been and the what-never-was.

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Amie, it doesn't have to end with simply remembering. If anything, that is where it begins. Pick up where you left off. Kule is not just the newsprint with the black and red ink. Kule is all of us--in motion, in transit.:) PADAYON.