99 Luftballons
I turn the little innocent looking chunk over and over in my hands, studying it. It looks so frail, so incapable of keeping anyone a prisoner inside its grasp. Yet it is a genuine piece of the Berlin Wall, brought over to America by friends of my parents. They found a small standing part of it in some distant field, took a hammer to it, and smuggled a piece home. They honored us with two pieces of it tonight - one for my parents and one for me.
The feeling I get when I hold it in my hands is indescribable. There are floods of dark, of tears, of hopelessness, of death, angry shouts, fear. But enveloped in all those emotions is something else. Peace. Quiet. A serene feeling of a time gone by.
The small shard reminds me of things I often forget in my own life. There are walls that seem forever impenetrable. There are times of pain that seem they will never, ever end, that the darkness that falls will forever cover the sunlight. It reminds me that the power of the small can sometimes overcome the power of the great, that all insurmountable obstacles, like any lifeform, are all condemned to one day grow old, weaken and die.
I put the piece of the mighty wall that kept people separated in a small box, lest its frail edges crumble to dust in my hands. That fact alone I find ironic.
I wonder what shards of my lifetime will future life find someday among the ruins.
The feeling I get when I hold it in my hands is indescribable. There are floods of dark, of tears, of hopelessness, of death, angry shouts, fear. But enveloped in all those emotions is something else. Peace. Quiet. A serene feeling of a time gone by.
The small shard reminds me of things I often forget in my own life. There are walls that seem forever impenetrable. There are times of pain that seem they will never, ever end, that the darkness that falls will forever cover the sunlight. It reminds me that the power of the small can sometimes overcome the power of the great, that all insurmountable obstacles, like any lifeform, are all condemned to one day grow old, weaken and die.
I put the piece of the mighty wall that kept people separated in a small box, lest its frail edges crumble to dust in my hands. That fact alone I find ironic.
I wonder what shards of my lifetime will future life find someday among the ruins.