RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
People are signifiers of meaning. This is how we deal with people. We cannot really know people exactly well though we sometimes think we do. This includes people who are closest to us. This is how we know in a relative way how to deal with them. We know what we can and cannot say. So as not to offend. So as to be friendly. Or express love without needing to say too many things. Or more things than we really need to say. And there would be times when the smallest gestures are all we really need.
Such as when you visit a foreign country and meet friends and relatives you have not seen in a long time. And you had been quite close. Old memories come to mind. In a flash. And then you remember what you had done together, when and at what time in your lives. And you might be surprised to realise how a forgotten universe of memories and meanings had been there all this time, somewhere in your mind and only slightly forgotten or hidden away somewhat in momentary oblivion. And then you remember how you had done this. Or had gone to this and that place. And once there, saw this and that. And said this and that between yourselves.
This universe of memories has a center. This center is the person himself or herself: the signifier, a name, a face whom you had not seen for quite a while. This person is text. He or she is narrative. A long story. He or she is Meaning. And we hold this inside us. And we might see here the wonder of the human being, or if you will, the human mind. It is the wonder of you. And people. We are all signifiers.
But the bigger wonder is how this universe of signifiers is not at all dispassionate. It is not stripped of feeling. Thus, even as you remember these things, you remember not just a story but a story carrying with it exactly what you felt as you had done these things between each other. The narratives are not naked flesh. They are dressed with a recollection of complex feelings not at all distant from the fact of touch. And then you realise how tactile memory really is. Memory is also a phenomenon of touch.
Which is how we truly remember people. And in remembering them we are taken backwards in time. And once there, we remember a story composed not just of words. The words are mere containers holding between them complex emotions, feelings, taste, smell, sight and sound.
And all these form only the basis for moving forward with each other as we meet once again. All these poignancy of memories serve only to guide us as we deal with each other from here on. Thus, we talk. We go places. We eat. We drink together. And as we recall our stories, we feel the old with the new – the feelings of the here and now. All the better to enrich and add to what we already remember between us. The story continues. Soon we say goodbye, once again; but not without learning something new of each other. In the run of time, we know this is all we really have between us. It is all we need. This is what we mean to each other.
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