In urging former Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan to surrender to the authorities (the latest was that he’s prepared to do so to the national security adviser), FVR said that the RAM slogan "Our Dreams Will Never Die" was an invention of Diana Ross, and so Gringo must give it up. This despite the fact that FVR’s favorite song is "It’s a sin to Tell a lie," but no one has told him to give it up because he was not its inventor either.

FVR reportedly also said that RAM’s dreams were valid for idealists and romanticists, which means they’re invalid for realists. And yet today’s reality was once a romantic dream. And wasn’t it just 20 years ago that Ninoy Aquino and the so-called crusaders sang "The Impossible Dream"?

Were he and then Minister of Defense Enrile, backed up by RAM and quickly supported by crowds, being realistic when they defied Marcos in 1986? FVR could say now that it was a realistic option but one wonders if during the first three days, they were sure of succeeding.

Their success was explained later as a triumph of "strategy." Was the EDSA shrine to the Holy Mother just a pandering to the superstitious or the recognition of a miracle?

Indeed, an Oedipus is needed to unravel FVR’s meanings just as a Socrates was needed to interpret the Delphian serpent’s pronouncement about the wisest man in Greece.

But in fairness, the former president may simply be reflecting the volatility of the times. After all, the other side of "Our Dreams Will Never Die" is Zolio Galang’s "For Dreams Must Die," a pulp novel on Rizal. Our people dream again and again of saviors and again and again are disappointed, so they pray for another. Now there is the danger that they have been rendered indifferent or cynical by disenchantment.

FVR may be quite right about dreams, except that we dream even in our sleep.