My foreword from the LIT folio SY 2006-2007

Moi holding the folio LIT for SY 2006-2007
My ever reliable officers taking instructions from the Volderator/Moderator. =)

Pictures thanks to Nikki Calayan

Reminiscence


The noun of the verb,
that state of cognition,
the stating of the fact

that it indeed transpire –
the feeble stalwart words
ending in the future tense,
never reaching a period.

Yet, though deceiving,
I have always thought of it
as the verb of actuality.

To know that even just in the mind,
one can take a picture of a
leisurely landing leaf,
or a waning gibbous.

To own that even just in the mind,
I saw through deep set pensive orbs,
I heard the most sonorous whisper,
and I held a firm calloused hand.

Only then can I confirm that
the you,
the I,
and the We
existed.

How language can work to affirm or to deceive is as real as each dead star giving us light that has long expired. Reminiscence, the theme of this folio for SY 2006-2007 is as much a noun as it is the verb, for it is the act or the “action” of remembrance.

Writers and everyone else are as much free persons and captives of memory. Like photographs, we are able to confine a moment – a smirk, a leap, a boisterous laugh, a tear, a sigh, into a mental photo album which we can leaf through again and again.

Yet sometimes it is the photograph that imprisons the photographer. We either leaf through the album and become part of the pages, not wanting to make another album, or we get stung as we reach for even an inch of the cover.

There are so many things in our memories that we’d like to edit, delete or even recreate. And that is where the power and the danger of reminiscence lie. Only in the mind can we embrace the truth or alter it into our truth. Only in that past tense can we say that I did it, I had it, and I will always have it. Only in our reminisces can we say that it is ours, and that nobody can ever take it or him or her away. And only there can we say that I exist because I have a memory of what it was like before I started existing.

As you read through the contents of this folio, may our reminiscence trigger you to remember that in the beautifully scarred landscape of the mind, we can always run under the sprinklers and dance as if we were under the rain.