There are three thousand tiny American flags planted on a hill at Syracuse University and above them a sign says “Never Forget”.
I’m predisposed to not forgetting. I lost friends on 9/11.
Walking yesterday and finding the flags and sign I wondered what the display and admonition meant.
William Gass wrote: “culture has completed its work when everything is a sign”—surely a dark irony as a “completed” culture would likely be wholly propagandistic. Wisdom fares best in uncompleted cultures, the ones with porous boundaries. Tomas Transtromer the great Swedish poet has a poem called “The Half Finished Heaven” that speaks to this:
The Half-Finished Heaven
Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.
The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draft.
And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the Ice Age studios.
Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.
Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless ground under us.
The water is shining among the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.
Excerpt From: Tomas Tranströmer. “The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/WAORD.l
Planet of the Blind 