It didn't occur to me until rather recently that some of my friends from childhood, while I lived in Saudi Arabia, were around for the Apartheid. I could wrap my head around some of my peers being around for the Berlin Wall coming down, albeit I don't actually feel that I know too many Germans. I did think about the head German baker at my former job having grown up with that institution in place, but maybe I never gave it too much thought.
But that's just it, really: political trauma seemed to be symptomatic of older generations. And it's not even as if I really believe the world has become a better place to inhabit. With each problem solved, new ones seem to spring forth, like heads of the Hydra.
But anyway, even thinking of talking to Lithuanian and Latvian friends about their experiences of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc collapsing was bizarre, but it just didn't really hit me the same way as realizing that I had white South African friends that grew up with Apartheid as standard practice. What are we teaching ourselves?
This isn't meant to be a rant, or a PSA. Rather, it's an attempt for me to discern shapes through the translucent glass panes of their country's history, distilled through nothing more than some books and texts I've read. And there is no fiction that I can create in the face of what should never have been squeezed off of the paper into non-fiction in the first place. As much as we want that photo of black and white children holding hands, sharing toys through a chain link fence, I think they exchange nothing but skeptical gazes and taut silence.
But that's just it, really: political trauma seemed to be symptomatic of older generations. And it's not even as if I really believe the world has become a better place to inhabit. With each problem solved, new ones seem to spring forth, like heads of the Hydra.
But anyway, even thinking of talking to Lithuanian and Latvian friends about their experiences of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc collapsing was bizarre, but it just didn't really hit me the same way as realizing that I had white South African friends that grew up with Apartheid as standard practice. What are we teaching ourselves?
This isn't meant to be a rant, or a PSA. Rather, it's an attempt for me to discern shapes through the translucent glass panes of their country's history, distilled through nothing more than some books and texts I've read. And there is no fiction that I can create in the face of what should never have been squeezed off of the paper into non-fiction in the first place. As much as we want that photo of black and white children holding hands, sharing toys through a chain link fence, I think they exchange nothing but skeptical gazes and taut silence.
