The Cavern Between Them.

*** He ***

Nobody was there save the two of them. Somewhere Indirect in the deep autumnal south. Submissive and afraid, tender grasses flattened. They were whistling tears.

Monsoons beat upon the quiet white cottage. And squished heads of purple spindling heather, crooked bud tipped branches, splayed in brackens and rushes all over the place, Orange lights glowed out of the storms eye.

  Frank was shouting from the half dead old shed. Clasping a red tin kettle with his cold knuckles, ‘Why the fuck am I holding this?’ and flinging it out of his grip so that it clanged onto the cold cement. 

He felt safe in his rain jacket, looking up to the mass of swirling clouds heaving in the isolation. Dark, soft movements in the sky. Pelting the heavens in icy, sudden sheets. He froze, shuddering as howling winds screeched grey caping curls. A yelping pup was thrust inside the clamouring front door. 

Frank looked above with open disbelief at the grand spiralling shapes, marbling and warped cauldronish in the sky, Creaking indiscretion.

  ‘I wanted to live here, nature, just get away…’ he gasped, stamping his feet. ‘But with her it just seems so, desolate...’ and the gales whipped him ferocious.

  Folding his arms stiffly he blinked in the rain at the memory;

  ‘Stumbling into her, she was shot. Through. Confused; but smart. She was smart. ‘Help me’ she’d said. Barely, a weak request. Like a little prayer, Scribbled on a screwed up receipt. I was curious, to be sure. She was delicate and full of needs. Me, I was drunk, I know, but; All of a sudden I’d just wanted to shake it all off and see her clearly, this little creature. Yeah smashed glasses and tears, I suppose, but she just moved in. Curled up on my settee, a colourless kitten with unset bones. Sobbing aching. It didn’t look human to cry that much. Mistrustful. Of anyone, seemed like’

  He shook off his coats soaking, and felt the veins in his legs bleeding trails and territories. The human map of his life. His toes were thumbing into the earth as he tried to ‘think sober’

  ‘But I did want to help her’ he mused.

  His eyes glinted now and lowered with passionate regret. ‘Shirpa, Just get the jeep started and don’t take it out of gear’, the muscles in his throat coarsing with the sound of his own voice, relishing the energy pulsing out. Cursive. In the rubble and tack he spat out a flew of bitter cold tea, then shot his gaze intensely upon a single gleam of setting sun.

  He noticed it streak like a pure goddess, golden in the fates aghast up above and slapping his skin.

He tried to soften and smile at Shirpa, but was trembling and gloomy, so he winked at her instead…

  ‘It’s gonna be fun, Loads of music, your thing baby, hah! We can do a bit of this!’ he scratched pebbles under tan shoes as he jived and crowed, crumpling his body to arch cross-bow like.

It hurt him to move like that. He wasn’t used to, accommodating. Though somewhere in the fresh recesses of touch he supposed it would be good for him, to care.

  ‘We’ll be close later’, his breathing appeased him, as a cool wind fled to a wire basket, hurling it into a perimeter fence before it was mercilessly dissolved by the horizon.

  Head rocking back in agreement, thighs rushing with life. From the solitary tones of the countryside and hollering of the raging atmospheric sphere; He pulled his cap down close and stiff, pleased with himself that they would finally go out. Together.

*** Her ***

  ‘I’m trying!’ Shirpa yelled. Punishing on a green welly, her pink socks pushed inside; Softening like her hands that coaxed her streaming cheeks. Tiny waterfalls dissolving her foundation. ‘Damnit’ she cried. ‘I can’t even hide it anymore…’

  She was choking, aloud to herself now… ‘I don’t know, if I want to, sleep with him later,?’ As unashamed desperation, flicked the square little key with a snap of her fingers. The engine was relieved to roar gutturally. Warm and thuddering her whole body. Black leather seats shook as she clapped gloved hands together. ‘Yess’ in approval.

 The sky, it broke like rust in thunder. Crackling cacophony, engaging confusion. A perfect chaos for some distant, fragrant time. Where worlds could be composed, indoors, away from it all.  

But, she needed to fucking sort this out. And the only way she knew how, was by going out, and turning it up.

  Bandying down the window, ‘Come on then!’ she squealed, and bore precious white teeth. Pearls and innocence reckoning him, though he was already up close. She could feel his furrowing brows, deep and angry looking in the hail. They were guns pointed at her dreams. He was crossing the front of the jeep staring straight into her eyes. Slamming the door with a rackety finish startled her. His hand slung ‘Go’ in a gesture of forward. Commanding.

  ‘He always makes me feel so powerless’ she thought, in silent feelings as their wagon skid and swerved in delicious indecision to pooling mud and rocks.

  ‘When we first met’, she cooed...

  ‘I had so much affection for him. He was so, well, Frank. Gorgeous, yeah, but just practically, so, present, he was, warlike. But fuzzy then between the sheets. All smiles and bear hugs, he was. With the tender bites and scratches,’ her breathing became soft as she relished the bliss of their coming together. Kind of like a Sheik’s veil, she thought… It hid some brutal coalition. No one was aware of. When they kissed it was like thrilling paradise, Indian spice and sweet scents. Their Blending helped.

  But there were risks. High, risks. She slammed the accelerator with fear, and folded back into the sudden reality of the storm.  Still clinging to her dreams; With hope that there was some lost encounter, out there somewhere, guiding their car, from a lonely, vibrant universe.

**

  ‘You okay Shirpes?’

  ‘Mhm, I’m fine, really’

  But when he spoke she drowned in the night images again, Clawing for her. Stroking the lines on the side of his face before they drowsed. His long hair, warm tongue, soaked in red.

  Swaying onto the road, out of this fragmented silent chemistry between them, 

In the distance, a fat close shaved pig of a man was twitching the radio and trying to put out a Marlboro at the same time. 

His mind was full of the snowy capped mountains surrounding the track. 

He was used to the elements flagging his truck and wanted to turn up the jinkety song he could hear, a beach boys classic, little bells of pop joy. To keep his synapses firing on the long road.

                                                   **

  Squinting, cold, and not where she wanted to be, Shirpa thought to herself, ‘Useless thoughts..’ as she hashed at the accelerator. ‘I wish we were home, stayed in, I know. He’s drunk, again. And it’s just less time for me to tell him...’

She was angry and glimpsed at him wondering if he knew the pain she felt right now.

‘What’s wrong?’ he finally drew, countering the whiskey clamped in his feet.

‘Fuck it.., I want, to go home…’ it was her voice. apparently.

  Disgusted by his solid relaxing, swarming in alcoholic hives. ‘How is he so am-bient?’  She pursued… the fucking world is collapsing! Look at it!’ as she winced in the storms heavy unusual sounds.

They were speeding in a collage of trees and wrecked earth.

‘For fucks sake?!’, Frank had roused to Look at her blankly. Then surrendered…

‘Fine. Just, turn around, but, you can’t, keep… doing this...’

   Soup panted in whirling slams on their windows. Rasping at the Jeep.

‘I just, need to talk to you, properly…’ she gained,

 Frank braced for what she might come at him with suspicious looking eyes.

  She rinsed out the words like dirt from a cloth. ‘Look, before, we were … I just wanted, someone to, help me’ she atoned. ‘Before, I was here. ‘I was selling…’ she just sighed as grief would, ..‘Love’.

The cars wheels were threatening to come off. Spinning in the rain.

  ‘I was selling, oh I don’t know’ she flickered, ‘Dependence!, time and an ear… to just,  just to them jacking off and slamming the phone down.’ ‘Fuck’, She deadened in the wood that had captured them and his strange reticence..

‘Seriously’ He paused. A minor smirk tracing his body. 

'Why are you telling me?’ as he exhaled cigarette plumes. ‘Do I need to know? Haven’t we… played this all out, when I fuck you ?’ and he  tossed the burning embers away.

  Shirpa shook her head and braced for the turn fast appearing,

‘Uh-huh, yeah…but it’s not what I want, I don’t want a, substitution,’  struggling with relief and desire; ‘I wanted something, more, you know?, … better?’

  Frank just bore it,

 ‘Isn’t that what we are?, lovers?! He exclaimed, ‘a subs.ti.tu.tion?’ savouring each syllabl like he took the piss out of all intellectual 'stuff'...

So fluently, how could he just do that, just be something so poetic…

  And she flustered for a thing stashed inside the door, a token for the little voice grasping, ‘what about me?!’ searching, trying to find, a bracelet, phone, anything…for the small person she now was.

‘Well, you just seemed…you weren’t hiding anything. I mean you weren’t lying, I mean, fuck I think I’ve heard every lie there is. You know? You were just alone, and so was I’.

  They were closer to the lake now, by the corner it would appear in peaceful eloquence. Glittering with calm, wide reflection. ‘We’re nearly there Shirpes’ his knees nudged her gently.

  ‘Let’s just have a good time’ He smiled, beams of playful kindness. ‘It’s your favourite band’

It would be just past the lake. 

Three shops and a bar. Fairy lights and growling men with laughter. The fiddles music.

*** They ***

  Her feet shocked with an archaic might as the brakes slammed with such intensity, it spun the car with sharp and stabbing screeches in an unending circle of metal. They were hooded by the force.

  The other, had a look of unbelief on his poky eyes; in the tall dirty lorry, its tail careening in caterpillar motions towards the trees.

    Shirpa slung her head around to push all of her intent and love upon Frank.

  Her brow felt full of all the loving thoughts she felt for him. Like Flowers just blooming all right there in the front of her skull, for him. Pinks and purples, silent peach blossoms with the white and mint ones, all flourished together like her soft tongue folding up to her lips in open quick acceptance; She saw how she had chosen him, a bizzare man, a frozen man, really. Warm blooded and male, yes. Pumping with red fluid that mapped his arms and hands…but, distant from its rays somehow. Apart from her…Rough; already defined. Complete, a package. A beautiful toy, she dared admit it.

  And he was thinking now too, and drew in a breath of peaceful delight, ambivalent to ends. There was no sound now, anyway…

  Much darker now…He was aware of the rain. That he’d given her everything he could. His instinct and affection. And he could see in the slow shadows from the way her lips were now licking in sweet, mad, too bright for own spooks head, her soft gentle surrender, the terror of what was happening. Her futures departing as ghosts regardfully fade…Her secure, incessant puzzlement. It was glorious and magnificent.

‘Maybe it’s over’… Frank mulled, in slow, timeless thoughts… ‘Everything?’

  The windows smashed in perils and screams, Shirpa was halted and dropped in strong waves of breaks. They could hear the lorry swinging loud horns at them as it gaphooned by, edged up above like a high note, whilst they fell in vivid dark turns, down, towards the seamless lake below.

  …She could just hear the echoes ring and ring like church wedding bells. ‘It’s just a natural disaster’… voiced Frank, …and aghast at the cavern between them.

The Island of Authority.

The Theme of Authority & Ntshona and Kani’s play, ‘The Island’

WINSTON: I must leave the light of day forever, for the Island, strange and cold, to be lost between life and death. (The Island, Scene 4).

This epigraph, ‘a quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme’ (Meriam Webster dictionary)

Is found at the end of the final scene of this play; 'The Island'. It illustrates the hideous South African’s  apartheid era.  Apartheid being an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness"

The play emerged in June 1965, When amateur actors ‘The Serpent players’, were rehearsing a production of ‘Antigone’ (Oedipus’s daughter) Which is a tragedy about Institutional, natural and supernatural forces and authorities. The play by Sophocles, a famous Greek dramatist, continues to be performed worldwide (Richards, et al. (2014) pg. 283) 

'Antigone', (60 sec.) Summary. http://plays.about.com/od/antigone/a/antigonesummary.htm

 The actor playing Haemon was arrested. There is no reason given why, other than a ‘racial segregation of the apartheid regime’ (Richards, et al. (2014) pg. 284) He was sent to Robben Island Prison, Cape Town, South Africa. Nelson Mandela was also a prisoner there at the time.

The Serpent Players continued their production with John Kani playing Haemon, whose brother was also a prisoner. He sent letters letting them know that the play was also being performed as a two man piece on the island, by ‘memory of the play they were to have done when they were arrested’ (Fugard, (1993) p. xxviii)

Thus evolved ‘The Island’ a play about two men, Winston and John, deserted on Robben Island. The play pulls us into this bizarre existence, where their fate is at the mercy of prison wardens and judges who ‘didn’t even look me in the eye’, when he gave that sentence, ‘blew my life away like cigarette smoke, ten years’ and their struggle to find meaning in their lives, in part through their performance of 'Antigone' on Robben Island Prison.

 'The Island', Plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(play)

There is so much to consider in this dynamic of existence that it is hard to imagine or find places of sense. These men were arrested for rehearsing a play on their homeland that they are permitted to perform on Robben Island Prison.

A play which had represented their struggle under apartheid by its virtue. Now became a ‘play within a play’ (Richards et al. (2014) p. 289)

The play shows dramatic expressions of the men’s intensity of feeling, through displays of emotion. They speak in colloquial human terms,

‘[shouting the other man down]. Will you bloody listen!’

‘Hodoshe’s talk! (Their prison warden), That’s want he wants us to say all our lives. Our convictions, our ideals… that’s what he calls them…child’s play. Everything we fucking do is ‘child’s play’, when we cry, when we shit…child’s play!...I’ve had enough! No one is going to stop me doing Antigone’

Our epigraph therefore, is a dastardly revelation of the bitterness of isolation from the human society and interaction. Along with being under the oppression of racist segregation.

In Antigone’s case, her banishment in Sophocles play was to a cave, to die at the hands of the gods for giving her brother a burial suitable to the Greek gods.

‘The Island’ brings us vividly into the experiences of oppression from ‘authoritative institutions’ The desire for self-expression of truth, personal and human, through the acting out of a ‘play’ which is despite this critical personal need for expression, ridiculed. ‘They will laugh at me’… ‘Who cares about that as long as they laugh in the beginning and listen at the end. That’s all we want them to do…listen at the end!’ Just like King Creon heard the truth, in ‘Antigone’ in the end. Plucking out his own eyes, as he could not bear to see what his own ignorance had done to the kingdom of Thebes.

The arts allow us to express thoughts, experiences and emotions that are perhaps difficult to explain or reduce to academic or institutionally authoritative form. Texts cannot suffice. Voices need to be heard. The experiences we have in our lives which are subtle, intangible or hard to make coherent when we live in organised, authoritative or state based regulations, are ones which find expression and receptive resonance in this way.

 Imagine what it feels like to live in a world where you are oppressed, your freedom of action, thought and mobility, restricted by state authorities. The impetus to express these worlds of humanity becomes stronger. In 'The Island', through the ‘heat of the sun’ the sound of their ‘grunts as they dig’ and the direct language conveying depth of emotion, ‘I hated you'. Expressions of layers of feeling, ‘Winston’s anger and outrage are now uncontrollable’ ‘explodes with joy’ and the descriptive language of stage directions, '[mention of his wife guillotines Winston’s excitement]’ we feel like we are really living the actual experience.

Being able to ‘bear witness’ in this fashion, finds us a more valuable version of authority than the oppressive authority of the apartheid regime. This kind of self-expression shows us that authority is in fact a virtue coming from within the experience of being a human being. By this I mean the authority of the truth of a person’s dignity, rights and humanity. Which can be expressed via creative impetus and self-regulated action. Is wonderfully composed in Winston and John's interaction in the play, 'The Island'.

The Island was performed in ‘The Space’ Theatre in 1973 for the first time. Named ‘Die Hodoshe Span’ Meaning, ‘Hodoshe’s, (the prison guards) work team’. To intentionally distract potential apartheid dismantlement of the performance.

  The venue was set-up under the guise of being a ‘club’, therefore attracting a wide variety of attendees.  Not being state funded meant there were no apartheid rules as to who could attend, perform, or write content. People could perform works that ‘reflected contemporary South African society’ (Richards, et al. (2014) pg. 286) albeit under smoke and mirrors.

 It seems as though, out of the ‘light of day’. Their performance was made at night, under wraps, when it deserved and even needed to be heard in the light of the times of South Africa. These expressions of humanity were made, the natural authority of them were performed and received. But in a similar way as to ‘strange and cold between’ the day and night or of ‘life and death’.

Initially shrouded in the night, events performed so that we could not such commit crimes of humanity on our consience again, were held from a distance to our daily lives and personal responsibilities. Though these authoritative expressions were not, most importantly, ‘lost forever’.

When first performed, it had come from memory of improvisations from a two week workshop, Directed by Athol Fugard, a white director who had worked with The Serpent Players since 1963, despite apartheid laws.

The text that we read of ‘The Island’ at its first public appearance ‘was not written down’ (Richards, et al. (2014) pg. 287) it was too politically sensitive.

 This leads me to consider how apartheid as an understanding of social constructs is an important discourse. However what else was evolving, socially at this time?  In this way, the record of history has an authoritative notion that only apartheid is considered relevant from this time.

What we have learnt about authority being a natural and value based human experience, contradicts this idea of historically recorded authority.  In its academic form, it is isolating of unique social identity developments of the time. Reducing the experience’s to that of apartheid, white and black separation; 

Is of progressive thought when companioned to the statement ‘between life and death’.Which is a dualistic experience, of one or the other, rather than more complex attributes. For example there is more to life than being alive and then being dead. The arts teach us that we have an essence, a humanity, a real personal life, at whatever time or situational context we live in.

These plays, Antigone, and The Island, in fact live on timelessly by exposing how state authority is flawed and prone to corruption by not valuing these personal humanities, as they naturally exist and arise.

There is no beauty in a re-written, falsified history. There is also nothing to learn from it and this is demonstrated by the play 'Antigone' who was listening to her inner authority of values, when she acted. King Creon was listening to his state version of authority, different to the respected worlds of Antigone’s Classical Greek God’s.
As the chorus ends up reconciling Antigone as the one with virtue and a real understanding of the heart and soul of the city of Thebes at the time; this suggests that true authority comes from our inner humanity, as the use of state based authoritative power led to the ultimate ruin of their kingdom.

When state or institutional values, clash with our own, our lack of humanity leaves people ‘lost forever, between life and death’. Their complexity and inner beauty as stories were lost to the worlds which do live forever, and withstand the test of time in its essential, personable core.
Stories and tales, plays and books, such as which inspire transformation of exploitative, or authoritative institutions without eternal values, actually give us something worth living for. A ray of light, and insight, an inner acknowledgment of what is real, and what it not.

For example, in Britain today, a person not receiving care dying in the winter months. Who is accountable?  

What about the rights of children? Migrating families who are sent to their deaths? A lack of compassion in state systems? Funding given to state memorials that would be better spent on education, research or resources for the current struggles of humanity in our everyday lives?

Any person who has committed suicide must have felt oppressed or unheard. Misrepresented or bullied. Their stories are also ‘lost forever’.

 Insanity, the extreme of mental health problems, so closely linked to dehumanisation. Hidden in state hospitals. ‘Strange and Cold’ places. All are results of a lack of respect for human experiences.  Along with, our lack of humanitarian response, or responsibility to them. Our governing states need to work for us. What we believe in about ourselves and need. Not the other way around.

This explains how the theme of authority is a questionable one. Also oppressive when it stems from not listening to or caring about difficult or natural human experiences as being valid and authoritative, even in their uniqueness. Many valuable stories have been lost.

 It seems futile that in both plays the struggle ends with an impersonal semi-death like state. Mirroring how a lack of humanity in our subtle social interactions can escalate to real experiences such as this. But it also teaches us this. That our subtle and unkind lack of personal authority, our own inability to face our inner darkness, as our own responsibility, results in and creates these very conditions. 

Our shadow is real. We must own it. For the sake of our own happiness and essence of who we are, human beings. Nothing more, nothing less.

The plays show us how this struggle is not a new one, but a deep part of a collective psyche as human beings. We don’t want to be banished to a cave or an island, we want to have our own values, not oppressed, but expressed, heard and understood in the light of day. We want equality. We want the complex art of our living to be heard and respected as a creative will within us. Like the performer’s John and Winston. we are alive, and we are not afraid. 

 I have learnt that authority and validation are personal things, internal values, and not external sources; when you come down to it, who you are and what you feel is right and true enough validation for yourself. For example, Fugard’s inner authority compelled him to create the play, The Island, despite external authoritative voices. Creative activity can transform worlds. It speaks to our humanity.

Indeed it was the international reputation of the play The Island, when performed in 1985 in Cape Town, that was quoted as an ‘international call for the immediate release of Nelson Mandela’. It was this personal questioning of state authority, creatively expressed, which led to his freedom. (Weekend Argus, 1971)

And that is a story for us all, surviving the span of all our short existences.

Bibliography.

 Fugard, A. (1993) The Township plays (ed.D.Walder) Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Lynda, P., and Fiona, R. (2014) Ideas of authority, Milton Keynes: The Open University.

Meriam Webster dictionary (Internet) (2015) Available from: www.meriamwebsterdictionary.com.

Accessed 12/05/2015               

Plays.about (Internet) (Accessed 2016) Available from www.plays.about.com

 Wikipedia (Internet) (Accessed 2016) Available from www.wikipedia.org /wiki/The_Island_ (play)

 (Weekend Argus, quoted in The Open University, 1991. p.92)

The Holocaust & Migrating People today.

What are the functions of social memory? In discussion with reference to the museums and counter_monuments in memorial of the Shoah/Holocaust.

I believe the function of social memory is intricate in personal or ‘collective’ meaning (Burton, (2015) p. 217).Considering the abstract academic term ‘living memory’ (Burton. (2015) p. 204) implies consciousness, I am writing narratively with personal pronouns in this essay. This is because ‘social memories are formed through storytelling’ (Halbwachs, (1980). Which makes this academic essay its own Shoah social memory.

 In the context of atrocities or ‘the catastrophe’ (Burton, (2015) p. 205), social memory functions to serves societies with wishing to not repeat painful experiences. By discussing these memories, people construct amended values challenging their inhumanity.

D.H Lawrence wrote in the poem, ‘Healing’ it is ‘the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind has chosen to sanctify’ which causes illness. It describes a person as ‘not a mechanism’ rather as having ‘a deep emotional self’ (PoetryTherapyNews, (2015)

Dialogue of past events creates a human connection to the experience within us. The social memories become living, helping us to consider what we wish to change.

We learn to distinguish what is ‘beautiful’ or ‘bad’ through cultural views. (Burton, (2015) p. 206) Yet by loving what is ‘not beautiful’, we explore understanding teaching us about humane beauty. For example, the ‘ugly’ (Burton, (2015) p. 206) Shoah memories are especially competent at surmising compassionate attitudes. Perhaps this is why so many of the memorials are aesthetically unappealing.     
  

 Shoah memories are aroused vividly seeing these museums and counter-monuments, as their architectural design appeals to our humanity. Typically their cold, blank and looming spaces demand our remembrance of love. Colours, warmth, feelings of beauty and affection are cried out for. If it is only us there, we become those friendly colours.

A different kind of memorial, the U.S ‘Tower of faces’ holds steep walls of familial photos of those who lived in Ejszyszki, Lithuania; When 29 of 4,000 Jews were left alive (Burton, (2015) p. 220). They stretch numerously, to impressionably remind us.

The Tower of Faces (The Yaffa Eliach Shtetl Collection) in the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust memorial museum, Washington, D.C photographed by Edward Owen. Photo: copyright USHMM, Washington.

 Other ‘transcendent’ media, such as music or films that ‘move’ people from every nation are also ‘emotive spaces’ (Burton, (2015) 206) where people can resonate with an emotional understanding.

Fairly, these monuments tend to harbour a tone of ‘absence’ (Burton, (2015) p. 203). If we respect the lives of those who perished, we can respect the lives of those who suffer today. Thus we fulfil an absent need, the call for our humanity. The space needs to be filled, the feeling of absence requires something of us, and what is that? our improved selves?

Difficult feelings about the Shoah can be expressed because the monuments are not hidden from view. Rather they are evident all across the world, inviting retrospection and consideration.

Visiting Italy with a group of friends, a war installation functioned so that we silently appreciated our human presence, amongst this ‘collective memory’ (Burton, (2015) p. 208)

 A long dark tunnel with light at the end, war sounds bellowed as we navigated to the light via tanks, bombs, uniforms and guns. The sensory stimulation provoked social memories.

The space felt overwhelming. Watching my friends saunter, respectfully through the museum, I sat down…

 I was reminded of my Polish ancestry, my grandfather I had never met. My mind raced with the stories my grandmother had told me. I could feel the way that she touched my hand whilst I soaked it in. She told me with joy, how they escaped. To ‘Rome! London! Cities! I love them! All the people!’ She told me her happy memories of Poland too.

Sitting there, experiencing these memories alone, I imagined what they must have felt when the bombs were going off. It was terrifying.

But the way she told me wasn’t frightening, it was powerful, it was a memory of our family overcoming this disaster.

In the museum, the dark tunnel reminded me of the low, swinging lights in my grandmother’s house in London; the curious basement. I thought of the exposed pipes, and the furiously loud hissing of a boiling kettle which crescendo’ed with a punishing scream.

I could feel the way she flung herself into the living room to see us, beaming with tears of joy twinkling in her eyes. She would laugh and cry. She got upset, and she got happy. A day with her was colourful, unpredictable, noisy, emotional, and full of stories of foreign lands. Social memory here sparked my imagination and respect for emotional life. It was okay to feel deeply, it was good to be alive! It was great to be together.

Most memorable was her loud delight at our presence. Her emotional responses, squealing, clapping of hands, kisses, gushing incomprehensible polish to my father.

‘Ohh, you are here!’ her spectacular greetings have emotional fanfare. It was like bells and trumpets were singing somewhere, fireworks were cascading in the sky…‘It’s so WONderful to seee you!’ And the intonations are real. She means it.

These memories comforted me. I felt like a child of this human experience. I felt so grateful I did not directly experience this atrocity. I imagined that my family had wished that their children would live in a better world.

So the function of social memory educated me, in an emotional way, to establish better values than that of racial terrorism. Social memory functions to remind me of the good efforts of education, story-telling, or narratives spoken and received in commemoration of past experiences.

This is because they encourage appreciation of life. As a teenager, Babcia clutched my hand again and said, ‘that’s what life is about, it is about appreciating beauty!’ and we were connected so perfectly in that moment.

Seeing the Danube Promenade memorial where 10,000 Jews were murdered, shoes bronzed upon the edge of the riverside; surely we are connected to this? Does it remind us of traditions that do work, so we may preserve them? Values of equality, fair economy, resourcefulness, creativity, education and reverence for humanity?

 Gyula Pauer and Can Togay, ‘Shoes on the Danube promenade’, Budapest, 2005.Photographed by Travel ink. Photo: Getty Images.

I realise that being of split-national heritage gave me an early ‘emotional understanding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 252) of the ‘pedagogic’, or ‘teaching’ (Dictionary.com, (2015) of Shoah museums.

As a child I experienced my family from different historical perspectives; I was imbued with the realisation that people are just individual people, of individual natures, regardless of their heritage;  A person is only ever who they are on the inside. And atrocities are atrocities, wherever or to whomever they occur. This is how the Shoah museums function.

 I was also made aware that painful memories can be forced into being ‘forgotten’. Because the desire is simply to move on, (Burton, (2015) p. 252) to start a new life and believe in something better.

This is a way that social memory has collectivised to avoid the pain of recognising Shoah traumas;

However, this function of ‘hiding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 252) the atrocities was not realistic for me or my brother who this year visited Warsaw together.

We wished to embrace the stories we were told by our grandparents, British war children, afraid of foreign lands that seemed to drop bombs. And the story of Warsaw. Memories of Trauma, relocation, beauty, love, loss and philosophical musings all combined.

Together we commemorated and integrated these aspects of our youth, attempts at understanding our family, piecing together their stories. We visited churches, memorials, graves, parks, café’s, music nights, museums and shops. We constructed a social memory between us, of our independent identities. A strong function of this social memory.

We were sort of lost there, but we both found something new, that social memory of the Shoah can be complex, especially in its ‘absence’ as a memory which can hold tensions. (Burton, (2015) p. 252)For example it has always confused me that our family home which we visited, now a restaurant and expensive flats, was the ‘family seat’ for generations.

Yet the Shoah caused so much diaspora how can we ascertain who really owns it now? The rightful family who relocated? or the new occupiers who patiently restored Warsaw?  At other times it appears simple, we are all connected to this event in some way.

As a function, however emotionally painful it can be, social memory can be ultimately ‘healing’ (Medical-dictionary, (2015) defined  as the process by which neuroses and psychoses are resolved to restore a fulfilling existence’ 

 I believe that the intention of Shoah memorials and counter-monuments are not to create further blame or shameful pain, but rather to serve this healing purpose, which is a unique journey for each individual and similarly collective in its nature.

Social memory functioned to educate me about what happened. I have been emotionally understood by the memorials, and my story is an important piece of a very large puzzle of humanity. This essay has become a living memory of the Shoah.

Thus, I genuinely feel the deep hopes and fears that many migrating people feel today, for acceptance, finding work, and a place where your children will live amongst educated values, These are the same experiences and as real as ever.

When we returned from Poland a document of nationality waved me in. Yet I can look on any news channel today (The Migration Observatory, (2015) and see mothers or fathers with children, fleeing catastrophe’s, hoping for civility.

Can we really claim England is this place? If it is so defined by nationalistic boundaries that informed humanity and ‘emotional understanding’ (Burton, (2015) p. 207) is not fairly represented? Is this not the same murderous attitude of the Nazi’s?

These people are experiencing the same pain as those who fled the Shoah; which is spoken of as abhorrent.

These questions are functions of social memory as an uncompromising, educated reflection upon current ‘press inhumanity’ towards migrating people (The Migration Observatory, (2015).

Reflecting upon this essay has caused me a deep sorrow and resurrection of kinds. In this way the Shoah monuments have functioned to give my family emotional, intellectual and ‘cultural healing’ (Medical-dictionary, (2015). 

With a resolve to question and intelligibly challenge the world I currently live in. For this I am grateful, empowered, and restored of hope.

Translation, Babcia, Polish, Grandma

Bibliography.

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Halbwachs, M. (1980) The Collective memory (trans. L.A Coser), New York/London, Harper & Row: originally published in French in 1950.

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Loftus, D and Paul-Francois, T. (2015) ‘The Tower of Faces’ Contexts, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Medical-dictionary. (Internet) Available from http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/healing Accessed 26/08/2015

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