Remembering the Now

I’m the only one remaining in the editorial department of our office. Half of the work force of the company has already left for home, yet I still have to linger for a while, waiting to complete my eight-hour stay.

Relative silence has already set in, the air getting colder, and there’s a palpable stillness among the rows of computer monitors around me.

Then, it hits me. Actually, it comes when Rivermaya’s hitsong 214 first notes seeped out of my earphones. I know it already. The stillness and silence of the place add even to this strange feeling of nostalgia for the 'now' – a now that eventually will become the past.

So right now, as I sit before my monitor, I know already that sooner or later, my presence in this place, this job that I have now will end; that this space in the universe will soon be out of the trajectory of my orbit.

To start, five people whom I come to know in this company have already left for various reasons. So this fact only reinforces my anticipation for my inevitable departure in this company.

I’m trying to recall when this feeling of ‘endless wandering in space and time’ started. For sure, when I was in college down to my nursery days, I felt everything would stay forever as it was; that there would be no parting of ways, the place and everything that came with it will stay forever with me.

Was it when I first dropped out of college? Probably.

Right now, everything is ephemeral. Nothing last long.

And while the people who walk and move around me, busy with their work, and even the interior of this office, I would watch and stare at them with distant, dreamy eyes of one reliving a past; everything that is happening right now around me is a past already.

It is as if I’m already in my senile life, staying in some cramped place, and remembering the days of my youth.

And right now, I’m experiencing with all my senses, the memory of the ‘past’.