Oh, wow, haven't posted on here in a while. Hello friends, I've been back from a trip across America called Etgar 36 for a couple weeks now but blogging about it is such a daunting task that I've put it off. But no more! I went on adventures and I need to write about them. This particular post is about two memorials I visited, though I saw quite a few more than these. Feel free to share your thoughts in comments!
The Names Project Foundation is an organization dedicated to spreading awareness and providing education about AIDS through what is known as the AIDS quilt, a constantly growing memorial quilt to those individuals who lost their lives to the disease. Each panel is dedicated to one person, and the wonderful thing is that when I first walked into the Names Project headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, I didn't understand why these people were stitched together at all. It was our first meeting and I was fixated on my inner monologue of
"Shit I don't know anyone, no friends, friendless, must make friends...," so much so that I hadn't cared to ask anyone why we were there.
When I walked into this place, I assumed it would be something of an office building with cubicles and coffee only to find these gorgeous quilts adorning the walls, with more panels folded on shelves or flat under humming sewing machines. I looked for a trend across the colorful squares: Ethnicity no, gender no, religion no, race.... Except for the actual lines and shapes that made up the fabric, no such pattern existed. And then I figured it out: AIDS. How appropriate is was, the woman speaking with us explained, that a quilt so big and diverse be created to educate and spread awareness, because AIDS can infect anyone and affects everyone on a global scale. The quilt was different from some the memorials we would visit later on. It celebrated the life of individuals, not the death of HIV positive victims. The quilt requested that I mourn and remember, but it also asked that I live and grow.
Almost a week later I found myself at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, a distinctly different experience from the one I had at the Names Project, and I think much of that comes from the way the memorial is structured. Two gates stand at opposite ends of the memorial, The eastern gate with the time 9:01 and the western gate timed at 9:03. The gates of time symbolize the minute before the attack and the minute after it, the the last minute of innocence and the first minute of recovery. Between the gates stretches an expansive pool of water, hardly moving at all. The unequivocal stillness of it reminded me of a heart rate monitor that flatlines, like the dead hearts of those 168 people at 9:02.
We visited the memorial that morning but after a couple of hilariously pathetic rounds of bowling we went back to experience it at night, all lit up. I got a chance to walk up the rows of chairs with glowing glass bottoms, each bearing the name of a victim. A few people with brains and hearts that should have objected to their plan were responsible for those lives and the empty chairs that should be filled with working adults on important phone calls and gossiping parents with children fidgeting in their own miniature seats or climbing down them to play and giggle with each other.
After a few minutes the group gathered together with our director. He said he didn't have an explanation for why the chairs are empty, or why our shoes are full. Some people live and others don't get to and he said he doesn't know why. It's okay that we don't either, that no one does. It was okay to be sad at the time, okay we goofed off at the bowling alley, and okay to feel happy again tomorrow. So I figure it serves us well to overcome the guilt and grief of our existence. God only knows why, but we are alive and that is much more than okay. If we don't learn how to live, we might as well be an empty chair, or the panel of a quilt.
http://www.aidsquilt.org/ - These people are really incredible, check it out if you have a few spare minutes
http://www.etgar.org/ - The trip I went on has a website! And
this post is me explaining what the trip is.
Photos are not mine, they belong to a couple of my friends. Thanks guys :)
