Lost in transition

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

WE all forget over time. Some forget by sheer will, others by the passing of time. Uncannily, we also remember things we thought we have buried, encountering the same experience with either freshness or more pain, but not necessarily with the same intensity. In fact, there are times when you know you hated someone but totally forgot the reasons for the hatred, and still remember the hurt. Conversely, if you have not forgotten you are living with a partner, you tend to look at him and wonder at the hilarity of your choice, or worse, wonder who he is. As we transition from one stage to the next, we often forget more than we are able to remember.

So, where does our consciousness go when we forget? Does it merge with the superconscious and forget itself? Does it get lost? Where?

 

Imperfect tense

soon, the days will snatch away

bits and pieces of my memory

your name, for example,

was it Pedro?

or was it Perfecto?

 

I am not good at names, never was

but I remember the warmth

the tender hug on a cold night

on a hilly side of Baguio City

at a time when the air smelled of pine trees

overlooking Poro Point

 

you made me believe

those flickering lights were lives

that made it through the hardest day

and that the light burned unsteadily

with the impulse of the tidal waves

and the whim of the sea nymphs

 

it surprised me, the calmness

with which you hid a kind of sadness

like, perhaps, you knew someone there

who perished, in the flood that drowned

the village, survived only by the swaying tip

of the cross on top of a steeple

above a submerged chapel

 

why is this story so much like,

someone else’s, like an arrow pulled out

from the melancholic rib of Ben?

i used to remember these things,

perfectly

 

but now, I only remember the warmth

the tender hug on that cold night.

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