In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

We're humans, all of us. As time passes, we forget things; the moments that were seared into our memories fade, one by one, into darkness. And we age, and grow old, and die, and memories with them.

It's been a hundred and one years since the war ended, and none now live who can recall it; and with the passage of the visceral memories of the time, the meaning of the events is changing before our eyes, and the value of the symbols. This is natural, this is how societies grow and change and evolve, and yet it is mournful, for the tragedy of the Great War is a tragedy we should not forget.

Let us take a moment, then, in this space, and remember.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.


We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.


Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The first act of the twentieth century, the act that created the modern world, ended one hundred years ago today. It was an act unprecedented in the history of the west. It was an act of destruction and horror which, though none now live who remember it, still haunts the west. Though it is fading into our past, as events do, the tendrils of its aftermath still wrap around us, squeezing us in ways we can barely see.

The war directly ended the existence of four of the world’s six great empires. It forced changes in one of the others, giving birth to Australia and New Zealand. The anticolonial revolutionaries of a generation later gave credit to it as the first time they believed European armies could be beaten, inspiring them to change their worlds. It gave birth to the fissure in the west that became the cold war; it lay the seeds for the most terrible European regime of the twentieth century. And it killed an incredible number of people in the most ghastly of ways.

Twenty million people died in the war. Phrased another way: some days saw more deaths, some days saw fewer, but averaged out across the length of the war, more than thirteen thousand people died each day. Each day for more than four years.

In modern times, Americans consider it a tragedy to have had three thousand people die in a single attack, and we considered the approximately four thousand Americans who died in the Iraq war to be intolerable (while not really noticing the approximately one hundred fifty thousand Iraqis who died in the same time).

Can you imagine thirteen thousand people a day, every day, for four years? In a world whose population was a quarter of today’s population?

Today is the day our forefathers set aside so that they could remember. They are gone, but today is the day for us to remember in their stead.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In flanders fields, the poppies blow.

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie.

In Flanders fields.

I have failed as a husband.

Jared and I were divorced, for 24 hours or so, in March. We got back together; I moved across the country for him. The marriage remains deeply, deeply troubled, and I am half expecting it to be over tonight.

Whether that expectation is right or not, I have failed, either way. That can be inferred from the fact that it got to this point.

And it's tearing me apart.

My birthday weekend was spent surrounded by Jared's family, who all were kind and supportive and loving, but I didn't feel like I deserved it, and it was surreal knowing that it can just cease to exist and go away forever if my marriage ends.

I have friends who love me, and I don't feel like I deserve that, either.

I have failed as a husband, and, I believe, as a person.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

--------------------

Today, we remember.

One of the unhappiest days of my life was the day after the 2008 election. My non-local friends and family were all thrilled: Obama won. I was despondent: the voters of California had just derecognized gay marriages.

In a drunk diary the other night, someone mentioned that growing up poor never leaves you. I don't know if that's entirely true; maybe I wasn't poor enough, but I've tried very hard to structure my life so that I don't have to worry about money, because I just don't want to, and I resent it somewhat when circumstances mean that I have to.

But there are other things that never leave you.

My birthday is Friday, and that always triggers feelings of introspection and backwards-looking at this time of year; another year around the sun, another time to take stock of my life and see how things are the same and how they are different, how I am growing and how I am stagnating, etc, and to look forward to a new year.

This year is particularly hard.

The last year has been one of the worst years of my life. I don't say that lightly; i'm comparing it to the year I got thrown out of school, or the year I got burned out and quit my job only to have my resignation rejected, or the year that my relationship with my mother and her fourth husband deteriorated to the point that I ran away from home. I can say honestly that this year ranks with them. It's been a painful, soul-wrenching, tragic year. It included the first time in my life that I've actually contemplated suicide, and it doesn't get much worse than that.

And at the same time, it's been a very good year. I have learned more in the last year - more about myself, more about the people in my life, more about how to live, and how to share, and how to be with people without trying to merge with them, than I have in any previous year. I come out of the year stronger and healthier and smarter than I went into it, more aware of myself and my surroundings, better able to allow myself to feel empathy and love and experience the beauty in other people without needing to sacrifice myself in the hopes of making them like me. It's been a great development, and I'm a much better person for it, and I think that my friendships and relationships will be stronger than they were before this year, because of it.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

A hundred years ago today, the German army, having swept through Belgium and into northwestern France, had been forced back from the Marne and had set up defensive trenches that they would occupy, across the killing fields of Flanders from the French and British trenches, for most of the next four years.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

A hundred years ago today, the Austro-Hungarian army had finally (after months of incompetence and failure) broken the back of the Serbian army and were marching on Belgrade. They would take it, but they'd hold it for less than two weeks, and it would take another year for them to recapture the city.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

A hundred years ago today, the initial Russian invasion of Prussia had collapsed, but the simultaneous invasion of Galicia had succeeded. Przemysl lay besieged, its inhabitants starving and dying of cholera.

A hundred years ago today, the Russian army and the Germany army engaged outside of Lodz, a battle which would see 280,000 killed, wounded, or captured in a meaningless fight that had no clear victor.

And this was just the beginning.