Photographs from September 11

On this sombre day, I will refer you to an excellent post on the blog One Poet's Notes on Wislawa Szymborska's "Photograph from September 11." Our hearts and thoughts are with the families and friends of the fallen today.

Life Begin Again

It's a day shy of the 7th anniversary of the attacks on September 11. I wasn't going to write anything about this dark day in our nation's history. We have moved on and adjusted to a new way of life. We do not mourn in the same way or to the same degree anymore. When politicians sprinkle speeches with reference to 9/11, their tired words are met with yawns, rolling eyes and irritation by the public. We have once again returned to our cocoons and care more about the mudslinging going on in the race for the Oval Office than we do about each other. We are not unified as we were at that moment in time.

I was not in the New York that day; however, I was at work, 11 miles away, on the Jersey side, and watched plumes of dark smoke waft over the city, cutting into the crystal blue sky, in horror. I was a ball of nerves when I could not get in touch with friends who did work or live in the city. The music lover that I am turned her radio off for weeks. I had friends lose close relatives, neighbors lose spouses. We all have our stories. We have a shared yet individual experience. We have our memories of that day.

The Volume 3:Further in Time by Afro Celt Sound System was released just a few months earlier in June 2001 and was on heavy rotation on my CD player. It was eerie how the song "Life Begin Again", almost literally, captured the emotion and environment of those days immediately after the attacks. With simple yet poignant lyrics sung by Robert Plant, and interspersed with an excerpt from a traditional Welsh ballad "The Lark's Elegy" ("Marwnad yr Ehedydd"), balancing the thunder and soft sorrow over "Middle Eastern" strings, it still gives me chills. When I learned of the translation of the Welsh lyrics (scroll to the end of this post), my heart returned to my throat.

Listen: LIFE BEGIN AGAIN

This is the day, and the hour
The time where the changing begins
The land, and the sky, fall quiet
Silence moves over the plain

The heat of Cwymhr still burning
The heart still beating within
Her songs echoed the fallen
For life to begin again

This is the day and the hour
The time where the changing begins

Land and the sky fallen silent

Quiet moves o'er the plain

Quiet moves o'er the plain
The silence moves over the plain

The land and sky fall quiet
The heart is beating within
Her song echoes calling
For life to begin again
For light to begin again
--------------------------------------------------------
Translation of the Welsh verses from "The Lark's Elegy":

Mi a glywais fod yr hedydd
Wedi marw ar y mynydd;
Pe gwyddwn i mai gwir y geirie,
Awn â gyr o wŷr ac arfe
I gyrchu corff yr hedydd adre.

I have heard that the lark
Has died on the mountain;
If I knew the words to be true,
I would take a band of armed men
To bring the lark’s body home.

Life is Beauty

When we were in Montréal last week, I noticed green and white postcards stacked as we walked through passages to the Métro and the underground shopping malls. A sucker for "free" postcards with cool art, I stopped and picked one up. It had the face of an attractive - yet bald - woman applying makeup. I was intrigued.

The card was advertising Photosensitive: Cancer Connections, a photography exhibition promoted by The Canadian Cancer Society that displays cancer patients and those affected by the disease in artistic format. It's a traveling exhibition, with the current stop in Montréal. I would love to see something like this in the U.S.

As someone whose mother died of breast cancer at a very young age, the thought of the exhibition chokes me up with happiness and I think why hasn't someone done this before? Maybe they have...not to a national extent in the US, though - at least, none that I can recall. When my mother had a mastectomy, I remember that she felt like less of a woman, she felt unattractive, she felt the intense loss of something that, in our culture, nearly defines a woman. To me and all who knew her - she was beautiful, always. No matter what. I think she would have appreciated this exhibit.

I wish we had stayed long enough to see this wonderful art. It's provocative, it's beautiful, it's real, it doesn't pander or make a silly joke out of the disease for art-sake; it shows life at its most delicate and its most strong. It stirs emotion. It stirs memory. It stirs life, and reminds us how human we are. This is what art is supposed to do.

Nelligan

What a wonderful way to ease the summer into September - a leisurely trip to Montréal. From New York City, we took the slow-paced Adirondack train line via Amtrak, winding up through the Catskills , bending through the Adirondack Mountains, sliding along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain. It would have been more of a romantic trip had it not taken almost 11 hours and had the trees started to dress in their autumn best.

Still, for all the beautiful areas "envahi par les touristes" that we delved into, it was wonderful to retreat to a place where poetry was the rule of the day. We called the Hotel Nelligan - named after Montréal 's native son and one of its most important poets, Émile Nelligan - our home for a few days. In the lobby, a portrait of the poet and a copy of his "Le Vaisseau d’or" or "The Ship of Gold" (his most quoted, as I've read) hung nobly, and an excerpt of the poem blended softly in a frame on the wall in our room above the fireplace. With even the levels of the hotel reflecting names such as "Poésie" and "Sonnet," a person could not forget the hotel's inspiration.

As your average (no, not ugly) American, I had not heard of Nelligan before our trip, and we did not select our hotel based on this theme. So, who was Nelligan? I'm still doing research (and if anyone familiar with his work or history can add anything here, please do)...but from what I know, I admire how such a young man suffered the duality of his circumstances but chose to be a leader in the movement to renew French-Canadian literature. He was institutionalized when he was only 20 years old, but had left a legacy that continues almost 70 years after his death.

I both appreciate and am perplexed by Québec's struggle to define its culture and heritage and desire to earn independence from "British association." But, when I read words from poets like Nelligan, the desire is clear and the beauty is profound.