While you dream, all end scene

[sovay]

So now we remember the remembrance, instead of the war itself. Perhaps we should have chosen a different memorial: poppies are the flower of the dead, but also of forgetting, and what with one myth and another they will follow their original function if we are not mindful, which is hard enough to do with the living. Every year I think it's harder. Every year it has to be done.

I feel so restless and un-anchored. We have lived in such an elemental way so long, things here don't look quite right to me somehow; or it may be the consciousness of my so limited time for freedom – so little time to do so many things bewilders me.
—Isaac Rosenberg, 21 September 1917

Comments

[sovay]

What an excellent – though sad – observation.

It is the kind of thing I think about!

Apparently in France they use the cornflower instead, but I don't know of any mythical resonances for it.

That's neat. Perhaps it doesn't have any, beyond the war itself.