in canada, today is Remembrance day - a day when most of the country's 9-to-5ers get the day off to remember. (there are a few notable and disappointing exceptions to the observation of remembrance day. for some reason, new year's day merits a holiday, easter merits 2, but our nation's soldier's get barely a nod from 2 of the country's provinces - one of whom houses the nation's capital. it says something, doesn't it. but i digress.)
at 11 am, i dedicated a minute of my life to the memory of theirs. the classic rock station wrapped up its minute of silence with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. cbc 2 featured a very impressive organ and a very earnest choir. cbc 1: bagpipes. of course. (and why not; i love bagpipes.) i finally settled on the alt rock station's offering of the Pogues' Waltzing Matilda. and i stood there as i do every year, tears insistently silently streaming down my face as i contemplated the horrors humans relentlessly unleash on each other.
and as the planes flew over toronto, i remembered. or, well.. pondered memories. as best i know, nobody in either of my families has ever fought in a war. i have no grandfather stories, no sacrificed uncle after whom a brother was named. and yet, there are memories. maybe they are the memories of a universal consciousness, a glimpse at the blossom of our humanity. because my heart feels heavy with a hundred thousand memories. a hundred thousand tears. a hundred thousand souls lost in battle. and i mourn for each gasp, each drop of shed blood. and i mourn because we're still doing it.
and yet, world war 2... hitler... how to not fight such a war? are those deaths not well earned? unlike our new wars. when did wars go from being important and noble, to fucked up and begging for protest? did they change or did we? did the nature of the beast change, or did our perception of it evolve? devolve?
i don't know. i guess it's not supposed to be easy. i guess that's kinda the point.
1 comment:
Hey Little Lady,
After realizing how long it had been I figured I'd comand check out your site... like I said, it was a lot easier to do when I was working from home and not trying to write.
As for this one, well, WWII had obvious "villains". People who wanted genocide and the like. But the people of those countries in question supported their leaders, because it is so impossible to look at yourself and admit that somethinng which is a part of you (due to intense patriotic fervour), is capable of such attrocities.
Presently, the "villain" is us. Or not us but the neighbour who is similar enough to us to scare us. So what do you do? We know it's wrong, so we don't support it, but then he's taking down a leader who has committed the same sort of attrocities (genocide) as Hitler, so is it bad? In my opinion, there was nothing right about that war, but you know that. However, many people question it, because who wants to admit that their brother is a serial killer?
As for the protests, well that happened with images. As soon as Vietnam was televised, people wanted it to end, much louder and with much more fervour than ever before. Up until then you would have ghosts of men coming back from war and never talking about it again... the ones who had seen the true brutality anyhow. My own grandfather never told a war story, other than his love for flying the planes. That lack of assoctiation creates a romanticism which by definition never existed.
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