warpeace everywhere

And of course, today is when I stumble upon this article.

To sum it up:
"Mr Lavryonov, the official behind the controversial new project, said he wanted to give Russians a place where they could come and remember 1812.
  "Finding the remains will really be complicated because two hundred years have gone by. <...> But I think if we want we can find them. <...> There is now no place where people can come and bow down and lay wreathes," he said."

You know, I just got this vision of all these Russians who've been all torn up inside because they haven't anywhere to put a wreath in commemoration of the War of 1812...

C'mon guys, just re-read your favorite passages from War and Peace while listening to Overture to 1812 and snacking on some Borodinsky bread (it's quite good, I promise).

      Jokes aside, I am all for remembering history. Really. I've spent many days and nights writing unsuccessful verses about the dangers of collective amnesia, neglect of history, and misunderstanding of memory and its powers.
     But scrounging up some remains, taking them from the place they've been, however messily, buried for 200 years and moving them in an attempt to ape the French... that's not remembering history, that's making things up. Not to mention that it is also a great expense, and most of the country lives far below the poverty line.

     Borodino, the place where the incredibly long and bloody battle happened and from where the remains are to be transported, is about 75 miles from Moscow.  That is where all those soldiers fell.  That is the place that everyone should know about. You can't just decide that it's inconveniently located, and move some bones over to Moscow, so everyone can come tip their hats. I mean, one can do all that. Maybe that's the whole point: it's a yet another bout of "look what I can do," except now nobody's really looking.

*

location: Butler library, 8th floor

 

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decelebration

 "May 1945. Zwettle, Austria.
The war is over."

       May 9th is a grand ole holiday for people like my grandmother, who fought in World War II on the Soviet side. The Russians are, doubtlessly, attempting to outdo last year's parade. To me, the spectacle gets sadder year after year because first of all, the people who survived the atrocity are becoming considerably more scarce, and secondly, somehow, it feels that celebrating peace with a gun and tank show is perhaps a bit uncouth.
      Then again, the argument could be made that it is not peace we are celebrating, but military victory, and so the tanks and the guns and the marching soldiers are a demonstration of power and a way to tell the world that Russia's still got those World War II-style chops  But the diminishing handful of frail veterans that march along, or frequently, wheelchair along, should be a reminder of utter shame; these people are poorly taken care of, especially now, and especially if they don't live in Moscow. (And here I must add that I am fully aware that Russia is far from alone in putting on such parades. Everyone does it; this is just an example that came to mind because of the date, and it is equally as unpleasant to me when any other country puts on similar shows).

Tucson, AZ. 2005-ish

       For the fiftieth anniversary of the war's "end", my grandmother got, from the government, a set of spoons that are made of such crappy aluminum that they bend with the lightest of pressures (I've even made these spoons take on lovely spiral shapes) and have cheap, bright silver glaze on them, akin to the eccentric shade of paint that covered the mandatory statue of Lenin at my childhood railway station.
       So what is it that we're celebrating, exactly? A lack of collective memory beyond the obvious demonstration of brute force and the soon-to-be-holy relics? To my grandmother, this day means more than most days. But so long as we continue to celebrate ends of wars with tools of war, the happiness and relief this day brought to people like my grandparents sixty-six years ago, is, in my mind, dampened.

Where It Comes to "Who the Hell Are You?"

It has been a few years since I last went for a walk with my father.

At two I was learning to walk up a little hill outside of our house under my father’s instruction. To his great dismay, I wasn’t a great walker, though I excelled in all other toddler disciplines. To anyone who knows me now this would seem odd, for I have become a truly avid pedestrian, but as a child, I most certainly lacked an athletic streak. 

photographer unknown, family archives.

My father grew up near a forest and often headed there right after or, on occasion, instead of, school. With a slight blush he still tells the story of ditching school with his friends just to go to the forest and exchange the new curse words they had learned. Upon getting home, he says, he promptly demonstrated his improved cursing abilities to his parents. It seems that their reaction was rather uneventful.

My father got to run about and climb a variety of old agricultural machines, which lead to a few scars and naturally, stories that left my much more careful mother in horror. There wasn’t a forest anywhere near where I grew up, but the red brick apartment building constructed in the 60’s under Khrushev’s command was, thankfully, surrounded by various greenery. There were cherry trees near the dumpsters, and a few apple trees, which never really gave much fruit. Somebody had planted gooseberries and red and black currants under their window. As far as playmates went, girls were scarce, so the boys had no choice but to include me in the game of war. When it rained, we played with Styrofoam, though I cannot recall where we acquired it, and why it seemed to be of any interest – all it did was float aimlessly in the puddles.

photo credit: V. Popov

There were no climbable trees in our garden, so at least once a week, my father would take me to The Pond, which was about fifteen minutes away. On the way, my father would unfailingly present me with either historical facts or math problems about Peter and Basil who went to the store to buy various quantities of kerosene. The reason he used kerosene and not milk or sunflower oil was because it rhymed with the word for “store”, and therefore entertained me, as did the fact that kerosene was no longer in common use, and hence had an air of olden mystery to it: it was something my father had, in fact, bought in a store, something he had had need for, but I could imagine no circumstance, apart from perhaps camping, under which I would require it. In fact, no store, to my knowledge, sold any kerosene, though I never failed to look for it. In retrospect, I suppose, it is fair to say that I owe my knowledge of simple algebra to Peter, Basil, and kerosene. When we got to The Pond, which was exactly what it sounds like, a pond, surrounded by a park, which in winter provided decent skiing lanes, we would always go to the same tree. I would climb as high as I could reasonably go, and then go down to a certain branch that was about six feet above the ground. Every time, I would hesitate before jumping off the branch, but my father encouraged me and gave me instructions on how to best go about it. After I succeeded at jumping off the branch the first time, however, the fear hardly receded with each subsequent attempt. I was just as afraid the third, fifth, twentieth time – something my father found silly. Unsurprisingly, when years later I was diving into the Volga river from something like 10 or 15 feet, the same thing happened. Despite having done and enjoyed it, I was still afraid to repeat it. As it happens, this illogical fear persists still, only my father’s calm impatience no longer motivates me; it has been replaced with puzzled faces of my friends.