BRATTLEBORO — I was not huddled around a radio on the night that threw darkness upon souls. I did not stand in a silence that paralyzed my voice and crushed my breath.
But I know that moment. I feel it as if it were my own.
I was raised in its shadow. Even on sunny days, its pall can lurk just beyond the brightness of a day that was not encumbered by war.
We have seen the unleashing of hatred and privileged ignorance of oppression. Antisemitism is raging, right along with political and medical discordant and violent relations. Racial and gender harms are too commonplace.
I am of a generation born when lived horror still clung to time and chastised memories to remain present, even as that past was fading toward vague memory for most.
But for many of my age and faith, there is no past. There is an opacity of remembrance woven into a shroud of broken hearts whose blood, heavy with history, remains around me.
My place in the world, the presence, and the imprint I make are often inhabited by memories of the Holocaust that still fill my footsteps. I have no choice. It was, without my consent, melded to me in a cellular, embodied way.
And now, war is here again.
* * *
The missiles sent to Ukraine and the air raid sirens are in my home just as they are in the land so far away by geography but not by technological presence. I watch. I hear. It is morning there, night here. But their rising day is shining into my dark sky.
I think about how Covid has shown us how connected the world is. What happened “over there” - as we say - also happened “over here.” We do not create in isolation; we do not consume in isolation.
Unfortunately, many still think in the secretion of isolation and ignorance. We are estranged from the truth that we are deeply dependent on each other.
This time, the world will have to admit to seeing this war. We cannot feign ignorance about its implications. But we will.
* * *
Covid will recede, but the fragmentation created by it will not. These are deep chasms. The way we handled the pandemic created profound gulches between us.
How the world responds to this war - how large it becomes in this factionalized world - I cannot say. We are a fractured species. We are not a republic; we are not united. We are broken and, I fear, have learned nothing.
My tears become misshapen with the heaviness of my despair. They roll down my cheeks to the future that will catch them.
I taste the salty cries and wonder if the reason Lot's wife turned into that pillar was because the agony she felt for having to leave her land was too great to carry. Perhaps her tears were so strong that the only thing they could do was to congeal into a salty statue that was paralyzed by her devastation.