I left New Zealand mid-2003, bound for Istanbul and a new lif. After two years, a Belgian guy lured me into his world, deep in the heart of Europe. For a long time I was an in-process immigrant. One day we married. These days it's about photography, a little red wine and wandering ... and so the journey goes.
You're right Anil and yes, I had forgotten in some ways. There is a real sense of peace in those commonwealth cemeteries but for me, it was very much mixed with ideas of who those young men were way back then. I can imagine them young strong and vital, out for the adventure of it all.
I've also visited a German cemetery in Belgium and there is no peace there ... perhaps the commonwealth soldiers gain what they lost as they died.
Being there for those 5 days, I felt accompanied by ghosts, those curious, happy, mockingly humour-filled boys and men from New Zealand and Australia and other places too and I found myself wondering what they would be making of all the fuss over those days of commemoration.
2 comments:
The symmetry must surely give lie to the chaos of their parting.
It is almost as if the serenity of the cemetery glosses over the violence of their end!
What an irony!
You're right Anil and yes, I had forgotten in some ways. There is a real sense of peace in those commonwealth cemeteries but for me, it was very much mixed with ideas of who those young men were way back then. I can imagine them young strong and vital, out for the adventure of it all.
I've also visited a German cemetery in Belgium and there is no peace there ... perhaps the commonwealth soldiers gain what they lost as they died.
Being there for those 5 days, I felt accompanied by ghosts, those curious, happy, mockingly humour-filled boys and men from New Zealand and Australia and other places too and I found myself wondering what they would be making of all the fuss over those days of commemoration.
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