Sunday, November 20, 2016

Considering My Shelves




My older daughter was up late, on Saturday morning.  The Mrs. and the little one were leaving for school event.  I fried some onion and mushrooms and tossed them into a lentil salad for her.  “It’s good.” That’ll do.  “What are you reading in English?”  “‘The Things They Carried.’  Did you read that to me before?  I feel like I’ve already read it.”  “I don’t think so.  I went through a period, I suppose it was twenty years ago when I read everything I could get my hands on about the Vietnam War.  I read it then.  It was powerful.  There is a memorable description of him killing a Viet Cong soldier. But there are other books about that war, that I liked more . . . “  

“What are you up to in Humanities?”  “World War I”  “Really?  Cool.”  I say with a bit too much enthusiasm.  “We are starting this week.”  “Think about the places you’ve been:  The Turks are on the loosing side and its the end of the Ottoman Empire.  The Irish War of Independence starts while the British are sunk into war in France.  The Germans loose and all their colonies are redistributed.  You remember the May 4th Movement?  All those students flipped out because Shandong was turned over to the Japanese for management.”



And as the discussion returned, as it must to the brutality of trench warfare thoughts turn to mustard gas. I imagined the old copy of “The Norton Anthology of Poetry” and felt a pang of remorse because while part of my mind was considering my shelves, another voice quickly shot down the idea:  You don’t have a copy of “Dulce et Decorum Est” here.  And it doesn’t matter, said a third voice.  You have the internet. 




Soon we were tired and deaf to the sounds of the “Five-Nines that dropped behind.  Gas!  Gas!  Quick boys!”  I'd never seen his photo before.  Poor handsome Wilfred Owen.  Poor world. 

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