: ): STAINED PLACES-- MY TRIP TO EASTERN EUROPE

I've been likening my trip to the scene in Dead Man (< "jim jarmusch 1995" >) where johnny depp takes a train ride from victorian civilization (cleveland 1850s) to the deep wild west. the people who share the cabin with depp, slowly change in attire and cleanliness, the landscape through the window shows an abandoned pioneer wagon in the forest, and then later, destroyed teepees on a plane. . .the women all disappear. . .until finally, near the end of the line, only gruff men in furry hats crowd over to one side of the cabin to shoot riffles at the roaming buffalo. "government says, killed a million of 'em this year alone. . ." (Crispin Glover).

I always think of American history as being recent and unsettled. (I mean, we removed an entire civilization of American Indians, used slaves and raped a most precious well-taken-care-of land to build our new nation! what have we done about that? ) I think of the american west as being wild, where things are still playing out in the hinterlands, where the seams of society are not so tightly put together.

but clearly, one can still travel east in Europe and find a similar rawness of history being processed in it's hinterlands. my trip from Berlin, Germany through Warsaw, Poland, and ending in Vilnius, Lithuania this fall. . . presented me with another much more recent place where the murder and destruction of the past is still being reconciled. "(see my flicker page )" such is the story of humanity on earth. . . I truly hope we will outgrow this mode of aggression. in the meanwhile, what occurred in eastern Europe in the 40s, is much fresher and just as unsettled as the strong ghosts that linger in our own west. what are the choices a place makes in how it deals with the aftermath of such events? as advances in media technology makes remote places and cloaked atrocities more transparent, perhaps we will eventually have to banish this sort of violence to fiction. . . .

the land in particular plays a role in healing. people must do their part to remember, forgive and move on. . . .(and there's is a danger in strict, swift erasure, which denies processes of remembrance, for it is when a memory is denied that it haunts like a ghost! ) the landscape, especially in more country places, also participates in the healing of past wounds. I believe it is the slow work of forests and open meadows that can disintegrate leftover negative energy signatures.

this reminds me of a forest I discovered in Lithuania, way out in the hinterlands above a very small village. this was a place where thousands were murdered. . .and yet the forest existed in a state of magical softness. clearly there was a sense of healing here.

-kt