UNTITLED SPOKEN WORD
by Caterina Dumarre
Performed 30 Ches 1370. Second place winner.
by Caterina Dumarre
Performed 30 Ches 1370. Second place winner.
I was nearly six years old come the Ten Black Days.
Every day before that was golden. Vast, elysian fields of grass — a yard that seemed so large at that age, far as the eye could see. I could run. I could jump, and do cartwheels, and be a child; I could do anything.
The day before it happened, the sunset was so beautiful. Like fire on the horizon. The long arms of the sun reaching in all directions, touching mountains and plains, forests and seas. The mind fills in the details; a memory like that doesn't persist in its initial form. You relive it when you are confined to the estate and do not know why. You pine for yesterday, last week, then a year ago — five years ago. We were not of such means that our heads were first to the pike; we lived far from any town, further still from cities. 'Twas like watching the world close off around you, and then you are cut off. And you are alone.
I watched similar sunsets through a tower window for fifteen years. Golden days savored within a room confined and grey. I began to mythologize it; that evening before it all went to hell... Or was it the evening before? I couldn't remember. But, it was true. Truth, I learned, was not always factual. There is truth in fiction; little nuggets of truth of the human condition, of our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions unique to the individual. And there is a fictionalization of the self — the story one constructs in the mind, the mythology around one's history.
You go back to those golden days. As much as you have to. They become something else entirely; a symbol, a touchstone, a little spark of hope. A reminder that once, this was life. That maybe — just maybe — it will be again.
I am nearly twenty-nine now, and I am here before you, alive and free. Know this: what-ever comes, you must survive. Survive like those who lived to see the end of the Interregnum; survive like the many refugees who line these streets; survive like the poorest of the poor who yet live to see the next day.
Survive today, so you may live tomorrow. Perhaps one day — one golden, extraordinary day — the sun will shine the way it used to.
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