Commemorations

Commemorations

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The month that just passed was noteworthy for having three special days in our calendar. And I missed writing on all three!

Better than never.

First, February 14, Valentine’s Day where we are in essentially young people’s country. As the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ poetically put it, ‘That is no country for old men.’ Somewhat embarrassing for a senior to be caught inspecting the Valentine cards (just ‘valentines’ will do, you can drop ‘cards’) on display at stores with, what else, the intention of buying one —,isn’t it?

The date is usually celebrated as a Feast Day in several church denominations including Catholic.

Here’s a poem that can reasonably lay claim to being the Valentine poem. ‘Symptoms of Love’ by the greatest love poet of the twentieth century, Robert Graves. ‘Love is universal migraine,/ A bright stain on the vision/ Blotting out reason. // Symptoms of true love/ Are leanness, jealousy,/ Laggard dawns; // Are omens and nightmares -/ Listening for a knock,/ Waiting for a sign:// For a touch of her fingers/ In a darkened room, For a searching look.// Take courage, lover!/ Could you endure such pain/ At any hand but hers?’

My favorite quote when it comes to this tender matter is from a Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (arguably also a poet, a great one): ‘Perfect love means to love the one through whom one became unhappy.’ Which appears to be echoed by another European writer, Denis de Rougemont who wrote: “Happy love has no history. Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself. What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering”.

Tsk, tsk. These moderns.

Perhaps the ancients, the classics knew better. Consider the traditional depiction of Cupid. He carries his bow and arrows and quiver, all right (love hurts!) but he also has wings whose symbolic meaning is far from being food for masochism. Yes, indeed, wanna give it a try and make a guess what it means that Cupid is portrayed as winged?

The answer is: Love can make us fly.

That’s what symbols are good at.

The second especial day we mean above is of course Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

On Ash Wednesday, a moveable sacred day, the awesome symbol is the ash — the ashes — marked on the penitent’s forehead to imprint on him what Holy Writ says: he comes from dust and will return to dust.

The Lent season climaxes, a month and a half later, on Easter Sunday. Resurrection.

Holidays, feasts, symbols, mnemonics if you will. Rites. Magical ceremonies. Droumena.

These — all this is what the EDSA Revolution of 1986 celebration or commemoration acutely lacks. Acutely lacks because the meaning of the celebration is lost on the young. Filipinos have a short memory we hear it said forever. No sense of history. To all intents and purposes, no history.

I was in Dumaguete when it happened. And it happened, began to happen, miles and miles away — in Manila. Yet I felt, literally, the sudden blowing wind, whispering and whispered, no exclaimed, tossed from stranger to stranger on the street, V. Locsin corner Maria Cristina, where the newspapers showed breakaway soldiers clearly running even in the stills that were printed on the front pages of the broadsheets. I hurried home, suddenly on wings of awakening that the days of dictatorship were coming to an end.

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