I remember when we all jumped at once. Shy, red leaves glided in the wind like paper airplanes that never land. Smiles on the horizon of our eyes met faces we knew were out there but could not see.
It was summer. We were young, fruitful; an unlikely collection of flowers descending boldly upon a world which would have liked to believe we were mutants. We weren’t mutants.
The water was freezing. I was the first to dip my feet in because no one had summoned the proper courage to do so and because I knew the sun would break. So sitting on the dock, locking my knees with my hands, I met my fears at home and stretched out my legs to meet my reflection. It was numbing, liberating, tantalizing, except that Sarah conspired with Khalid to make my encounter with -15 degrees more intimate. They pushed me in, those weasels.
Days like those made me wonder what we're all really doing here. The four of us were never supposed to be. We were not allowed. We came from different sides of the same war zone—a bloodied, wretched place where children are dissuaded, disenfranchised, derelict. It dawned on me one night here that our very existence communicated a message that no tank or anti-tank ever could.
We were Muslim. Or maybe Jewish. No, seriously, what were we? Our elusive aura deluded even the most perceptive. We made no apologies. This frustrated the compartmentalizers, I'm sure. Not because they wanted our apologies, but because they didn't: they wanted to figure it out for themselves, but they couldn't. We were confusing. We were proud. We were just us, without conditions or preconditions: self-made heartbeats who thumped and longed for the impolite.
After my body recovered from the trauma, I shouted this to Sarah. I said, Hey, Sarah, what makes us beautiful? She held her head high, clearly still reeling from the success of her mischief, and, gazing outward in my general, ambiguous direction, yelled back: We don't apologize!
When the sun broke, I butterflied back to the base where the others were chatting. Opening my eyes after the last stroke I saw Khalid, Sarah and Amra lying on the plywood and staring at the caricatures of the sky. They were arguing with one another about the personification of the clouds. I spotted my moment. Yes, that's right, I attacked, splashing them with some of their own medicine in the form of ice on bear skin. Who ever said that revenge wasn't sweet?
Soon, we were freezing together—laughing, diving, spitting in the face of tanks and anti-tanks. The expanse of the lake was rejuvenating. We couldn't see its end but we imagined it. We embraced it, like a young love whose capacity it is to hurt us, but which we’d never fail going to bat for.
G-d promised us pneumonia, but we didn't always believe G-d, we only trusted Him.
And I remember. Purple flirted with orange above us when Khalid suggested it, that we'd all jump at once. He said it'd free us. That is, if you want to be freed. We scrambled back to the dock and readied the cameramen who weren't there to greet us, but who we hoped would take a photograph for the compartmentalizers to mull and choke over. We wanted this one imprinted in our minds. Like that time Amra crisscrossed a farm in India running from a cow she was charged to take care of but which refused to be milked. Like all those times when we'd choose dairy she'd suddenly complain that she's lactose intolerant, and how we'd always know that she's really just a coward. Coward, get it? Amra said we weren't funny.
We lined up symmetrically along the rugged floor of the last refuge point that still imprisoned us, and jumped.
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Monday, July 18, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Time We Let Free
Fear is not the only thing that hides in closets. Nor are shadows.
Memories, too, hide in closets—masking as old, worn-out jeans and rumpled t-shirts. Memories we may at some point wanted to deal with, but want no longer. Maybe these memories are in fact fears, or maybe they are romantic imaginings we had in our youths but which we have tucked under our beds at 14 or 15 because we were afraid of some shadows haunting us in the form of ghosts.
We believed in ghosts, then.
But sometimes memories are long and gone, their conception far and before the time that is now our own. Sometimes memories are histories, whether real or imaginary.
And often these histories precede us. They develop in generations different in thought and influence than what we have perceived of as familiar, and have become emblematic of transformations we perhaps once read of in glancing fashion but know very little about. As it were, these histories existed before we knew what was or was not in our closets or under our beds: before we first donned our baby body-suits and our size-zero slippers with teddy-bear patterns; before we knew of girls and boys and crushes and heartbreaks; and before we could consciously be scared of anything, let alone shadows that creep around in the dusty corners of our bedrooms where sunlight is—at best—a casual visitor (intruder?).
Yet they implicate us. These memories bind us. Much like traffic lights do, and systems of governance. Beehives and the instructions manual for kite-flying. (And what to do when your string gets tangled.) The law of gravity and that of cause and effect. Frustrating yet steadfast rules of sport. Baking bread and braiding hair. Skydiving. Tap dancing. Tap water. Snow days.
And love. And hate. And hate out of love. And love of hate. And the kind of hate that really makes us love a person, even when all we want to do is let them go.
Yes, these are memories, too. Perhaps they are learned, but so too is the history of war and the history of peace. So is the history of everything in between.
They are unspoken ghosts—these stories and statutes and smells and smiles of yesteryear. And still, in the closet they lay. And under our beds. Alongside the old notes that we used to pass in class when we first learned the rules of engagement. What was allowed and what was less allowed. Flirting and playing and wishing and dreaming. Alongside the titanium tennis racquet in silver (which no one had seen, but us) and the deflated tennis balls with faded, dying print. Alongside the grade reports and the old CD's. Alongside the children's books and the decks of cards. Alongside our deepest secrets, which the sun told the shadows when they rendezvoused.
It's time we let free. That we learned how to disentangle the kite and let it soar with a wave of the wind—ride the shape of a cloud and maybe kiss a raindrop or two. It's time we faced history, and time we faced ourselves.
No, I'm not only talking about the bad history of the world. Also the good. The happy. The charming. The refreshing and the audaciously creative history.
Like that painting you made one day in 4th grade, came home—through the kitchen, up the stairs, into your room—and threw away for whomever would catch.
Like that moment in elementary, middle, or high school that you wanted everyone to see but which no one was there for.
Like that picture of how it could have been to feel the fountain's water splashing against your face on that immaculate summer day when her friends were playing outside—laughing, living.
But how you dropped it, once, and how it shattered.
And how a new picture, with a new fountain, with a new summer day, and with laughing, and with living, and with water—how that would have set you free, and still can.
Memories, too, hide in closets—masking as old, worn-out jeans and rumpled t-shirts. Memories we may at some point wanted to deal with, but want no longer. Maybe these memories are in fact fears, or maybe they are romantic imaginings we had in our youths but which we have tucked under our beds at 14 or 15 because we were afraid of some shadows haunting us in the form of ghosts.
We believed in ghosts, then.
But sometimes memories are long and gone, their conception far and before the time that is now our own. Sometimes memories are histories, whether real or imaginary.
And often these histories precede us. They develop in generations different in thought and influence than what we have perceived of as familiar, and have become emblematic of transformations we perhaps once read of in glancing fashion but know very little about. As it were, these histories existed before we knew what was or was not in our closets or under our beds: before we first donned our baby body-suits and our size-zero slippers with teddy-bear patterns; before we knew of girls and boys and crushes and heartbreaks; and before we could consciously be scared of anything, let alone shadows that creep around in the dusty corners of our bedrooms where sunlight is—at best—a casual visitor (intruder?).
Yet they implicate us. These memories bind us. Much like traffic lights do, and systems of governance. Beehives and the instructions manual for kite-flying. (And what to do when your string gets tangled.) The law of gravity and that of cause and effect. Frustrating yet steadfast rules of sport. Baking bread and braiding hair. Skydiving. Tap dancing. Tap water. Snow days.
And love. And hate. And hate out of love. And love of hate. And the kind of hate that really makes us love a person, even when all we want to do is let them go.
Yes, these are memories, too. Perhaps they are learned, but so too is the history of war and the history of peace. So is the history of everything in between.
They are unspoken ghosts—these stories and statutes and smells and smiles of yesteryear. And still, in the closet they lay. And under our beds. Alongside the old notes that we used to pass in class when we first learned the rules of engagement. What was allowed and what was less allowed. Flirting and playing and wishing and dreaming. Alongside the titanium tennis racquet in silver (which no one had seen, but us) and the deflated tennis balls with faded, dying print. Alongside the grade reports and the old CD's. Alongside the children's books and the decks of cards. Alongside our deepest secrets, which the sun told the shadows when they rendezvoused.
It's time we let free. That we learned how to disentangle the kite and let it soar with a wave of the wind—ride the shape of a cloud and maybe kiss a raindrop or two. It's time we faced history, and time we faced ourselves.
No, I'm not only talking about the bad history of the world. Also the good. The happy. The charming. The refreshing and the audaciously creative history.
Like that painting you made one day in 4th grade, came home—through the kitchen, up the stairs, into your room—and threw away for whomever would catch.
Like that moment in elementary, middle, or high school that you wanted everyone to see but which no one was there for.
Like that picture of how it could have been to feel the fountain's water splashing against your face on that immaculate summer day when her friends were playing outside—laughing, living.
But how you dropped it, once, and how it shattered.
And how a new picture, with a new fountain, with a new summer day, and with laughing, and with living, and with water—how that would have set you free, and still can.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Life in Death
Sometimes, when I stroll along the cracked pavements of city squares and pavilions on a cold New York City night, when I breathe and then watch curiously as the water condenses to fog, when I pass a perfect, silent stranger painting smiles on the faces of passerby, I pause and think of them.
I think of victims. All victims of an unknown time who died in an unknown place.
Perhaps the sky is their graveyard, or maybe the open field at Treblinka, or the forest of Sobibor. Or maybe it's the streets of European towns that bear the marking of their deaths.
But, particularly, I think of the victims whose memory has been ingrained in my heart—those whose stories I have read and whose personal, but universal messages I have come to know. And to cherish. And to cry over. Sometimes, when all around me I see vivid signs of life, I think of death.
And then the death haunts me and when I sleep it chases me. In the morning, I awake, and it awakes with me. I wish not to overcome it, for I fear that I will forget it. And then, who will be left to return to the open field at Treblinka? Or the forest of Sobibor? Who will be left to teach that bystanders are as complicit as killers? No, I cannot forget.
So, instead, I look for ways to keep death. To enshrine it. I carry the pain of death with me. I tuck it in the pocket of my consciousness when I walk and talk and run through meadows where lilies sing and dance before the knowing sky—the sky that remembers all that we cannot—above a graveyard somewhere.
Today is the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, designated by Resolution 60/7 of the 2005 UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, member states, communities, and individuals everywhere renew their commitments to the values of human dignity and reaffirm their resolve to fight the forces that would do away with us.
On its face, it seems that, though late, the world has made progress—that which can be measured, poured into a cup and quantified. Yet, while the establishment of this universal memorial is to be celebrated, it is not to be taken for what it’s not—a sign that the countries of the world have dealt adequately with the past and are working together in common purpose to build a better future. Many, in fact, are not nearly. Many have failed—as evidenced last week, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a report of nations’ grades based on their efforts to bring former Nazi criminals to justice. Many literally failed.
Holocaust memory—fancy it a species—faces the threat of extinction. In America, two states out of fifty have instituted high school curricula focused on the rise, atrocities, and moral implications of Nazism. Record counts of antisemitic acts have been recorded in communities across Europe over the past year. Neo-fascist groups bent on the indoctrination of youth have surfaced all over the internet. And while it may seem plausible to some, no—Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not stand alone in his denial of the Holocaust. Nor does Venezuela’s Chavez.
A "Day," no matter how "International," will not prevent the ultimate reality if each of us does not step in and speak out on behalf of the victims. If we do not take to the streets and call for the extradition of those who had consigned them to their deaths. If we do not build a foundation upon which their stories can rest and teach and inspire our contemporaries not only to learn about the perils of intolerance, hatred, and bigotry, but to make meaning of them in these changing, difficult times; arrive at mutual understanding through dialogue; breathe life in death.
We must always remember these truths. That there is, at the end of every tear, a smile. There is, at the end of every tunnel, light. There is, at the end of one generation’s responsibility, another’s.
And sometimes, when the air is cold, I breathe it in and out again. And then I close my eyes and think of those whose breaths were taken from them. I feel the whistle of the wind around me and hear the clucking of distant steps. I see the open field at Treblinka. I imagine the forest of Sobibor. And the streets in Amsterdam, and Paris, and Prague.
I think of life. And then of death. And then I take my breath and slowly, between my lips, breathe one into the other.
I think of victims. All victims of an unknown time who died in an unknown place.
Perhaps the sky is their graveyard, or maybe the open field at Treblinka, or the forest of Sobibor. Or maybe it's the streets of European towns that bear the marking of their deaths.
But, particularly, I think of the victims whose memory has been ingrained in my heart—those whose stories I have read and whose personal, but universal messages I have come to know. And to cherish. And to cry over. Sometimes, when all around me I see vivid signs of life, I think of death.
And then the death haunts me and when I sleep it chases me. In the morning, I awake, and it awakes with me. I wish not to overcome it, for I fear that I will forget it. And then, who will be left to return to the open field at Treblinka? Or the forest of Sobibor? Who will be left to teach that bystanders are as complicit as killers? No, I cannot forget.
So, instead, I look for ways to keep death. To enshrine it. I carry the pain of death with me. I tuck it in the pocket of my consciousness when I walk and talk and run through meadows where lilies sing and dance before the knowing sky—the sky that remembers all that we cannot—above a graveyard somewhere.
Today is the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, designated by Resolution 60/7 of the 2005 UN General Assembly as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, member states, communities, and individuals everywhere renew their commitments to the values of human dignity and reaffirm their resolve to fight the forces that would do away with us.
On its face, it seems that, though late, the world has made progress—that which can be measured, poured into a cup and quantified. Yet, while the establishment of this universal memorial is to be celebrated, it is not to be taken for what it’s not—a sign that the countries of the world have dealt adequately with the past and are working together in common purpose to build a better future. Many, in fact, are not nearly. Many have failed—as evidenced last week, when the Simon Wiesenthal Center published a report of nations’ grades based on their efforts to bring former Nazi criminals to justice. Many literally failed.
Holocaust memory—fancy it a species—faces the threat of extinction. In America, two states out of fifty have instituted high school curricula focused on the rise, atrocities, and moral implications of Nazism. Record counts of antisemitic acts have been recorded in communities across Europe over the past year. Neo-fascist groups bent on the indoctrination of youth have surfaced all over the internet. And while it may seem plausible to some, no—Iran’s Ahmadinejad does not stand alone in his denial of the Holocaust. Nor does Venezuela’s Chavez.
A "Day," no matter how "International," will not prevent the ultimate reality if each of us does not step in and speak out on behalf of the victims. If we do not take to the streets and call for the extradition of those who had consigned them to their deaths. If we do not build a foundation upon which their stories can rest and teach and inspire our contemporaries not only to learn about the perils of intolerance, hatred, and bigotry, but to make meaning of them in these changing, difficult times; arrive at mutual understanding through dialogue; breathe life in death.
We must always remember these truths. That there is, at the end of every tear, a smile. There is, at the end of every tunnel, light. There is, at the end of one generation’s responsibility, another’s.
And sometimes, when the air is cold, I breathe it in and out again. And then I close my eyes and think of those whose breaths were taken from them. I feel the whistle of the wind around me and hear the clucking of distant steps. I see the open field at Treblinka. I imagine the forest of Sobibor. And the streets in Amsterdam, and Paris, and Prague.
I think of life. And then of death. And then I take my breath and slowly, between my lips, breathe one into the other.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)