Past Forward

I have been swamped with a wave of nostalgia of late.

It started, I guess, when I went back to my hometown to attend the wedding of a childhood friend.

As his Best Man, I gave a speech during reception; on how our friendship went back a long way; on how things were when we were young.

I realized that what seemed like yesterday now reside in the distant and irretrievable past…

Those afternoon treks to the nearby hills, those evenings lazing in our tree house, those jamming sessions with the Eheads blaring on our weather-beaten cassette..

It was easy for me to recall those memories because they have such a huge impact on our barkada.

But browsing though my diaries last weekend, I realized there were so many stuff from the past that I have logged but could no longer recall.

Also during the Xmas break, there were 3 incidents from long time ago, that my friends have narrated that I could barely put a simulacrum that would give justice… The tutorial session in Visayas Ave. that Maritess was insisting; the drinking session in Night Brews where I got drunk and hyper as Jua and Noy were narrating; the horror room which we’ve put in the neighborhood as Jua was fondly reminiscing

It had been frustrating trying to squeeze my brain out for some memories, for some clues, for some remnant information that would validate my friends’ stories. But it had been a futile attempt. And it still is..

It was a bit unsettling because in my Pisay batch, I would be the one who would be able to recall the most significant bits ad pieces of our high school life.

I came to accept that maybe some events have been not that significant that my mind no longer holds it along with the emotions and feelings that went with it.

But then again maybe I have not worked hard enough to log the others that should have been significant.

For there are some memories that have long been kept in the deep recesses of the mind that spring back to life the moment an association is made…a haunting smell, a weird dream, a familiar face, a moving journal.

We are defined after all by the bits and pieces of the memories that we have.

Our significance, our identity, our existence rests in a way on those information. ( A Twilight Zone episode, The movies Total Recall and Dark City all come to mind)

And so I made a vow to write as much as I could of all the significant things of the past that I have not yet written.

Not for anyone else but for my older self who would someday be reading this to make a grasp of the past.