5 April 2008

peace from thorns

Today I have been on a battlefield tour in the Monte Lungo area. It was interesting, the places are beautiful. It was also all in Italian so I understood only a fraction. That gives you time to become a people watcher, when the brain gives out.

I struggle with balancing a culture of peace with my work as a guide around battlefields. When I guide, my own messages are always geared towards peace.

When I see commemorations and history being sorted and saved I have no problem. When the tour group includes many in semi-combat gear, their preferred mode of dressing, I feel uncomfortable. Knowing that would be the case today I wore blue jeans, a bright water-melon coloured vest and matching shoes. I sketched the veteran soldiers as they told their stories. Later people drifted over to talk about the sketches.

I hope that talking about art and being a bright spot in the dark and camouflaged people-scape was helping to grow a culture of peace.

I'd dress as a poppy if I thought it would help.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Oh!
I hate when people say watermelon!
Does that mean green or pink?!
*standing in the isle of confusion*

Kay said...

That indescribable pink that is close to being red but not, isn't quite orange, and has an almost fluorescent clearity about it. I glow :-)

Today I was in poppy red...
we climbed Montecassino following the Cavendish Road that I have personal WWII links to.

Kay said...

oops... clarity... I can spell in English, it's just that my fingers type what they think my brain is saying, not what I want them to type. There seems to be an ever-increasing gap between thought and the word actually produced by my fingers. Quite scary really!