Judging from the pieces I have read in this website most contributors would be half my age and some even younger. For those who have read my scribblings you would have noticed that most of it are reminiscences.
To the young, my pieces would seem self indulgent but that is how it is. At my age there is the urge, almost a compulsion to put on paper the past. It is a futile attempt to deny mortality, as if reliving life would somehow add years to one’s existence. I write my reminiscences not for other readers but for an audience of one…myself and I make no apologies for it.
My reason for putting down on paper slices of my past would not be any different from those who write autobiographies. The fear that with the onset of old age one will begin to forget. So, I now must hurry.
If life can be represented on a cyclorama where all things that have happened in our stay on earth are flashed on like a collage, the best of us would have spectacular and gigantic layouts with brilliant and vibrant colors splashed and splattered like a Pollock canvas while others would be framed in small spaces with less colors…even monochromatic for some. Regardless of the dimensions, strokes and play of colors each person’s layout is a unique composition unto itself, not to be judged by anyone or by any convention. The writing of memories is an attempt to preserve this composition, an abstract self-portrait, as it were.
There is a sense of urgency here…a race against the dimming of the light. Remembrance of things past become more difficult as the mental faculties become less able to recapture the lucidity of the images, the resonance of the names, the heat of emotions and the bouquet of tender moments. The first things that go into oblivion are names and faces, then trivial slices of life and later on wholesale deletion of events and finally, in senility, all that is left is a blinding white cyclorama. Realizing that I am at the early stages of wear out and, that, faces and names quickly go, I tried to create a list of names of people I have ever encountered. Names are wonderful aide memoires. They trigger off a wide gamut of emotions ranging from love, respect and affection to loathing and disgust. Names evoke exciting times, fearsome events, loving moments and humorous encounters. All these are relative perceptions and are very personal in nature. I write to remember. I write to remember things that can coax a smile on my face. It is meant to be private and is reluctantly shared.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 5:20 pm by ed_roa and is filed under Blogs at iba pa..., Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.