Afterword (Winter Solstice 2018)

Afterword (Winter Solstice 2018) - a reading (on Google Drive)

By the river in the returning rainforest, the camp stands empty, its ghosts cautiously creeping toward daylight like flowers on the razor wire. All conflicts end. But only after their suffering has become intolerable and indefensible. By then, too many lives, too much potential has been lost. The carnage cannot easily be undone. The old growth forest may have been replanted after clear-cutting but untold generations need to pass unhindered to recover what’s now missing. Generations of temptation to forget and resume that grim harvest, likely over some perceived or prejudicial slight. The distrust between trees and axmen run as deep as sap and steel. But columbine doves emerge from eagle claws in the artificial alpine meadows. Their green now camouflages the assembly ground between the towers even as their purple occasionally brightens or bruises the mounds tucked behind the weatherworn barracks, depending on the light. In the same shifting sense, the truth of what happened here remains as difficult to establish as reconciliation.

Witnesses needing answers to unlock their lurid past tour the inhumane monument which whispers: Are you seeking me? Are you seeking the key? For some, entry remains locked and barred behind an iron door of denial. For others, the maze of collapsed tunnels beneath the wire confuses them. Did the prisoners tunnel out or did we eventually tunnel in? Did the monsters reside before or behind the wire? Did they don the uniforms we remember, or simply raise hands to temples as blinders against the dirty, anguished faces they never seemed to see in some kind of informal salute? There is little beauty in this truth, and little truth that acknowledges their victims’ beauty. The ode inscribed above the entry celebrates artifice over artistry, a cruel joke cast in statutory iron. If that gateway opens into a gallery, it’s a theater of performance art. The somber enforced silence in the audience chamber echoes like a tomb.

Masked by greasy smoke, shrouded by dirt like a fresh laid grave, some look but cannot see as history complains: Your delusion's killing me. Distant visitors cast their eyes about in righteous pity, certain in their hearts nothing like this could happen where they live. They would never starve a population into subjugation. They would never abuse a child for the circumstances of her birth. They would never torture a woman to make an ideological point. They would never eradicate entire peoples to attain a little cultural living room. They would never claim their former friends and neighbors as anesthetic vermin or chattel. But they would fight. Always, they say they would fight. They would never board the buses quietly, only reddened tooth and nail, at least until instructed to rejoin the tour. Or they would stand to be counted, damn the cost, damn the consequences, damn their unrelenting cowardice, just like their mythic, iconized ancestors. Conveniently, they avert their eyes from the looking glass of their own past, too dark, distant and tarnished to be relevant. Empathy remains elusive. It’s easier to sympathize with pain received than to ponder pain inflicted.

In the shadows of misty killing fields and murky crematoria, the pain isn't real unless you invoke it, like the memory of a people's loss. Pain begets pain more often than its stepchild solace. Our pain is ours alone, not shared to be comforted. The specters of our allies become suspect because of they lack the magnitude of our suffering, the depth of our ragged scars. Never mind that they stood beside us against the advancing shield wall while most merely watched from darkened alleyways behind that thin blue line. Life feeds on life. Only fully sated does it pause to mourn what’s missing. The spell of each epileptic episode endures, casting an illusion over the landscape, softening its edges with night and fog. Phantasms move in moonlight, some heroes, some villains, some shifting between, often indistinguishable by the shadows they lay down. As we stand chained in the center of the maze below, they are all we have to distinguish their true nature, good from evil, right from wrong. Until we unbind ourselves from the blank wall before us and turn to face the fire behind. Momentarily its brilliance might blind us but eventually our eyes adjust.

Like the diamond that cuts the knife, the image of a mound of moldering, headless dolls slices through the gathered ignorance of men. Here lies all that remains of a generation of mothers and their daughters, a post-modern gravestone. Here their captors offhandedly piled the magnitude of their loss. Each girl had been allowed only one to give her comfort and keep her quiet through her journey to the underworld. What became of the doll heads, none of the meticulous ledgers say. Perhaps the oppressors feared those heads would speak and bear witness where none of their victims could. Perhaps they were afraid they concealed unclean thoughts that might be passed to the next generation. Perhaps they served as a warning only a child would understand. Or perhaps, like their owners, their usefulness was done. With no eyes, they cannot see. With no ears, they cannot hear. With no mouths, they cannot scream.

Tattooed by scars that will never fade, bystanders emerge into the light of reconciliation understanding the future belongs to the brave. Some testify against erstwhile friends and neighbors. Some recount small acts of kindness, the everyday heroics that offer hope. A few bear witness to missing martyrs, joining in collaboration to piece together the puzzle of their fractured lives where no one else remains. The most courageous admit their guilt and seek mercy but not through understanding. Their bare their shame for all to see like a red triangle pinned upon their chests. Their belated tears cannot wash the landscape clean. Even heavy rains now only muddy this once fertile ground. Unsatisfied with their suffering, the righteous mob exhumes stones from the exercise yard. Eager for retaliation and retribution, they mirror the other's tactics. Stained glass houses shatter like fragile crystal throughout the night.

Crucified by nails of complicity and silence, they swear an oath of Never Again, knowing promises, like lives, can be bought so very cheap. But each generation slips a little further from the memory that spawned that vow. First the survivors, then the witnesses, then the daughters, the granddaughters, all the aunties and the children who listened enraptured on their knees. Until the past shifts restlessly in its grave like a creature neither alive nor fully dead. We attempt to enshrine these events by erecting holidays as sacred monuments, convinced that one day, the oppressors will all wake up on the wrong side of history. Or, alternately, that one day we will all wake up in shallow graves.

But we have to ask ourselves, do we remember to help stoke the hatred of our enemies? Or do we remember to fill the holes in our hearts because of the pictures in our heads? If the latter, we will heal through our compassion. If the former, we would be better off burning this wine-stained book.

© 2018 Edward P. Morgan III