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

[cmcmck]

Such depth, as so often with Rosenberg.

'What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?'

[lauradi7dw]

It's not Remembrance Day here - that's in May, an artifact of the Civil War cemetery decoration day. But enough people remember to be confused, at least.
We'd like you to be more ringing-adjacent than you are. The Brits etc. are still quite observant - not all of the "performances" yesterday and today were Remembering, but most of them were
https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/list.php
The footnote on the quarter at the National Cathedral is representative of the confusion often felt in the US, I think
"in remembrance for Veterans Day"

Today I saw a short video of Viet Nam veterans marching toward the memorial in DC, and was struck by how old the marchers were - how could they be that old, when they should be just a little older than I am, and *I'm* not that old? But whatever we say about how long people have been fighting George W's wars, the US part in the Viet Nam "conflict" seemed like forever, too - by some definition from August of 1964 through at least January of 1973, and two more years if one counts time until the dramatic "fall of Saigon." 1973 was my high school graduation year, so my exact cohort didn't go, but older guys who graduated a year or two before were eligible for the draft, if not actually drafted. My age, but then again the career army father of a college acquaintance had also fought in Viet Nam, as had the father of a later co-worker, so really it was a good chunk of a generational age spread. The guys who were 21 in 1968, just as an example, would be 72 now. Not so old in some sense, but it's my impression from trips to the VA with my (WWII vet) father that a lot of the Viet Nam veterans have had a hard time, medically.

[selkie]

*hugs*
The remembering is important.

[sholio]

I appreciate that most of those who serve in war have no choice about it, but at the same time absolutely hate our country's valorization of the military, and I feel as if the metamorphosis of a commemoration of the end of war, into an occasion to further valorize the act of fighting in war, says a lot about our culture as a nation, none of it good.

[movingfinger]

I was discussing Día de los Muertos with a friend recently and realized there is no commonly-observed holiday for remembrance and commemoration of non-military dead in the US or indeed most of Europe. Nothing like e.g. All Souls'¹ or O-Bon. There are religious observances, but they tend to be individual and not communal.

This may be one reason Día de los Muertos is starting to get traction. It will be interesting to see if ofrendas become more common, if only on a community level. So far the Pinterest side seems to be the point, for average Americans.

¹ All Souls' is observed in Catholic areas but the intensity isn't widespread, as far as I've witnessed.

[brigdh]

poppies are the flower of the dead, but also of forgetting

What an excellent – though sad – observation. Apparently in France they use the cornflower instead, but I don't know of any mythical resonances for it.