How Does It Feel To Burn?

I’m full. Overfull, in fact… I feel as if I contain every emotion that it’s possible to feel, all at the same time. I’ve spent a lot of the last day or so in a free hotel room, writing and journaling and moving with some concentration to make some kind of relative sense out of everything that’s happening, has happened, and is about to happen.

I Weep

Today is Remembrance Day in the USA and Canada, including where I now live in Vancouver. The day is a holiday in most of the country, allowing time and space for us to reflect upon the sacrifices of those fallen in battle during World Wars I and II, and other conflicts in recent history. Today is Armistice Day, the date in 1918 when war was declared to be over in Europe, heralding the close of four years of ceaseless killing of young men in muddy trenches.

This morning, along with a few friends, I attended the public service given in Vancouver’s Victory Square, where the city’s cenotaph stands.

In New Zealand, where I’m from, we take the 25th of April every year—ANZAC Day—as our day of remembrance. It marks the day in 1915 when Australian and New Zealand Army Corps forces were landed at Gallipoli, in the Dardanelles of Turkey, and suffered horrific losses in a catastrophic tactical blunder, before finally being evacuated later that year.

There are a couple of things that never fail to squeeze a few tears out of me. Human triumph against all odds or conventionality is one; the other is the sadness elicited within me by our loss of human life in armed conflict.

Neither Remembrance Day nor ANZAC Day are occasions to glorify war and death; they are times to cease fire, reflect, and remember the dead, and the reasons why we have, in their thousands upon thousands, sent them to die.