over dinner it came out, quite randomly, in the way college-aged singaporeans tend to be connected to other college-aged singaporeans, that a friend of a friend here is going to be best man at an ex's wedding - which is to take place next weekend. of course one expects it - except for childhood sweethearts everyone was once someone else's ex - and accepts it - one left jealousy behind years ago, nor desires to go back to where one used to be. it's one of those slightly surreal but pleasant enough occasions, if enough time has passed, and you're on good enough terms with them, only you see in this case we are not. and he was so entirely divorced from our set for the last four or five years, and i had made it clear that if anyone wanted to stay in touch it was their business but i didn't want to know about it - that i was able to build complete silence into a wall between myself and the unpleasant past - and now to have the pact of silence broken - by an unwitting person - turns out to be deeply troubling. it came out so unexpectedly, in an unrelated bit of conversation, and the date so soon, not this summer, this december, but this very weekend! - that the news is rather dizzying. it ought not matter, so many years later. and it doesn't matter - i don't dwell on the past daily - and the wound is not still fresh - and one wishes everyone else to live well, ultimately. what you realise is that you still can't really think about the past without also feeling residual anger and bitterness and hurt - not for the first trangression, no, but for the deceit and cruelty and cowardliness then that have scarred one - that you haven't really, entirely forgiven - so that the wedding seems to flaunt itself - prosper the faithless! - a reminder of earlier broken troths, ugliness and cruelty.