...

past is past, or so she told me. looking back now, i wonder who she was trying to convince: me or herself. was she even listening to herself? the statement is a cliche alright, but did anyone actually believe in that? fool.

but more than that, what amused me more was how she said it with so much conviction--as if she's reciting a tongue twister in a foreign language thinking it was an age-old chinese proverb. i shook my head. so that explains the frivolity, i thought.

i have learned that in order to fully understand her, i needed to lower myself a little bit more. (oops...not enough, how about a little bit more. ok there you go.) still, even at ground negative, i still couldn't bring myself to look at her with respect.

while i'd like to think of myself as the proactive one, i have always given the "past" the amount of dignity and respect it deserves. isn't the past the former present? in fact, it's the mother of all present events. we are what we are now because adam and eve bit the apple. because judas betrayed jesus. because magellan landed on the Philippine shores. why was she regarding history as if it was nothing but a bad dream, something that she can easily flush out of her system once the blue pill has been swallowed? isn't it that if she truly valued the present as much as she'd like me to believe, she would extend the same amount of veneration to the past?

for me the past is not just the past. it represents a day in one's life--a day that could either be good or bad, happy or sad, bright or dark. hearts might have been broken somewhere in that time, spirits might have been crushed, lives might have been lost. how could she look down upon it, look at it like a dirt on her sleeves she can easily brush off?

did she really think she could get away with it just because it has passed? maybe. after all, the world has forgiven japan for being the force behind world war 2. nobody shudders anymore at the thought of hitler's name. erap has gotten out of prison. and soon, probably, a monument would be erected in honor of saddam husein. but even if the world has decided to move on--in whichever way it deemed plausible--the memories of the past, pleasant or otherwise, will always be remembered.

the past is not just the past. it's always something else--something good, something bad, something happy, something sad. whatever it is, it always means something to someone. its not just it. it's way, way more than that.