Friendship is indispensable to man for the proper function of his memory. Remembering our past, carrying it with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.
- Kundera, Identity
I had a long 'pillow talk' with Nj last night. And I was constantly reminded of Nd. Nj is, after all, Nd's relative.
To steal Kundera's word, Nj is a second mirror that I selfishly created in an attempt to weigh my entirety of being thus far. A reflection of reflection; a double portrayal that became necessary, even just by its fraction. You see, memory works in a wondrous way. The body itself need not necessarily be present. The body leaves traces and trails, scattered in a multitude of forms and portrayals: a place, song, habit, photograph, book, person, etc. which reminds us that the body used to be there, in our lives; and to see its presence after it ceased to be there means, amongst other things, that it holds significance in the entirety of the self.
I cried when my grandpa died. Death is touching, but it holds no emotion. That is why there are people who celebrate or weep over the death of a person. Death never has any emotion. It is a promise, that we certainly believe, to be fulfilled. Tears shed over a person's death is not meant for that person but for the one coping with the loss. People cry to soothe themselves. And what triggers the tears is the sense of loss found in traces and trails in the event of death. It proves to us that the body holds meaning to the wholeness of our self over our encounters with the body. We may move past it, but we never forget.
My encounter with Nd goes a little more than five years back. Our relationship was, to put it into a single word, abrupt. Like a thrill before a man first learned of a lady's body; and it was already over before he knew it. A person's meaning to another could not be measured by time for love owes no obligation to conventional time. A meaningful moment, however fleeting it may be or however insignificant it may seems to others, lies in the profoundness of the encounter. And such intensity is born through the willingness to expose oneself, the trust to stake one's worth to another.
I could only remember a moment, so pure that it begs doubt on its authenticity; a rainy day, sharing umbrella, and a long walk. There was a lot of talking through words, smiles, and each time our arms brushed another's. Memory gives no emphasis on details. It feeds on the event as a whole, or to put it another way, the abstraction of the event dictated by the impression it imposes on the one who is remembering. The weight of a memory, as I said, comes from the profoundness of the encounter where one finds (and reflects) one's entirety of self in another.
Reminiscing is a quest to find and situate oneself in the present by contrasting it with the past. There is the danger of one being deluded into making another as a vessel for the lost body or lose oneself in the failure to make peace with the past. And the cautious ones use it as a means to gauge its growth through traces and trails left by the loss, teachings that only reveal itself through the absence. Finding traces of another in oneself is a proof of humanness for what we are today is the accumulation of encounters with the others.
My ego whispers that I am partly responsible for where you are nowadays; whether it is good or bad is yours to decide. Know that there are kind people out there who will not hesitate to be the pillars supporting you, whichever turn the future may take.
