No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
I am not asleep, but I pretend I am. Clenching my face, eyes tightly shut and breathing loudly, as a 4-year-old this is my best impression of being asleep. It isn’t a terrible performance, but it is unlikely that I am fooling him. I hear him shuffling in his pocket, the coins weighing it down heavily. The pockets are as deep as his generosity.
“You’ve got to see this,” Sullivan tells me as he unwraps the newsprint from his latest treasure, an unremarkable dessert plate he picked up at the thrift store this afternoon.
“I participated in the book burnings at the university last night!” my brother Peter exclaimed.
“Where books are burned, people will eventually be burned,” I retorted.
We were students at Berlin University. He had joined the Nazi German Student Federation as many students had. The Depression dimmed prospects for employment. Hitler seemed intent on reducing unemployment and dealing with the Depression.
There had always been and would continue to be refuge in a life lived close to the words. There was and would be refuge in friendship and letters and in writers like Ruhl.
My experiences growing up Anglo in separatist Quebec had prompted me to study Canada’s history and reflect on my own sense of belonging in the modern world. But I had neglected to ask myself whether Canada had belonged to me in the first place.
Dear Writer...