By CHRIS S. AGRAVA

I ought to streamline my cell phone’s contacts list. For the past few months, none of my supposed friends tried to contact me in any way, except maybe for a few forwarded messages that didn’t really warrant replies. Nobody’s asking how I am or at least how the neighborhood cats are doing (one time, they ate the burger my sister left for me after an exhausting day without any food consumption). My inbox is full of nagging messages from my editor asking for my photos of this or that event and notifying me of an overwhelming photo ops line-up for the week. Then a few text messages from my sister asking if I won’t be having dinner at home again.

I want to be invited again. Just like better days. I don’t care where. A stroll, a walk, a run anywhere, a cup of coffee, a feel-good flick, sober conversations, herb-induced euphoria. If talking takes too much effort, if it induces too much memory, if it leads nowhere, then we can do away with talking and seeing, if that, too, invites too much questioning. We can simulate a near encounter. We shall reduce everything to a pause. I’d settle for good intentions.

A friend who once sported tunnel earrings and listened to black metal is now taking up medicine in a university in Manila. One, meanwhile, who used to worship Paris Hilton and talked all the time about the latest in foot wear is now taking up law. Some are already professors here in UP. Most of them now work for call centers. A few took their backpacks, filled it with clothes, stuffed it with discontent and resignation, took a bus north, rode a jeep to some obscure barrio, walked miles towards the dark shroud of the forest, and held their issued M16 rifles.

Some of them, who used to be inseparable, already had their falling out. Relationships have been scarred in the process. If I knew that we can never survive unscathed, maybe I would have taken lots of photos. I remember those moments when we had the time and opportunity to gaze at the overcast evening sky without exchanging words, even glances. Like what happens now, except for the lost contact and the emerging derision.

The world is full of fleeting images too fast for even the quickest eye to capture and freeze into a static frame. Memory can also only do so much, more so because you can’t trust them. It was filled with better days. ●

Published in print in the Collegian’s November 22, 2007 issue with the title “Better days.”