My Conversation with Shadows

The human condition is teetering between darkness and hope; good and evil; half-full beers and half-empty ones. There is a skeleton of a building that is surrounded by a black iron fence. I walk around it with my camera, trying to get a picture of it against a cloudy sky. It’s not easy to do. The buildings have sprung up over the years. Tall windowed offices and merchant venues that reflect light and the images of a society re-sowed.

There are not many places you can say have been built from near total destruction. This city, over half a century ago, was leveled by one of two atomic weapons used against mankind. Some 140,000 people lost their lives here, 70% of the cities buildings were destroyed. Yet, today I walk through downtown Hiroshima and it is no different to me than most downtowns I’ve visited: there are kids running around with their parent’s chasing them, tourists look out of place and confused, high school kids move in packs, and couples ask you to take a picture of them, and you still have to ask which button to press on the camera.

There’s new concrete on the ground. It covers the ground that had shadows of people burned into it like some gothic Peter Pan theme. The trees are tall and thick again, too thick in my mind. It’s like they got fat off of all the human souls nourishing them through the ground. Maybe they’ve sucked up a shadow or two in their time.

We worry about all these things of today’s time. Politics, cancer, AIDs, mad cows, Georgia, steroids, twelve year old gymnasts, World Series, sex, money, diplomas…it’s nobody’s fault you know? There is just too much for us all to think about that we have the luxury of forgetting. And if we were close to tragedy we’d remember, perhaps a bit longer. But even New Orleans has new children being born. People don’t just give up and hide when in all respect they should.

Every evil person in the world is enough cause to damn the human race. Every sick psycho, pedophile, serial killer, deranged dictator, rapist, and school bully is enough evidence that people will always be people. If you want to see hate, just look through any well traveled blog, or the comment’s section of a Youtube video. Narrow-minded people are the backbone of civilizations don’t you know?

It seems illogical that when faced with crisis, a species like ours would respond positively. We’re like the prairie, or the forest. The prairie needs to burn to encourage new growth. The same with forests. It seems like the human race believes itself to be the same as the plants we eat. Creation through destruction.

Yet we travel onward, some of us dreaming of something called, “World Peace.” And yes, that’s the answer to the one-wish question in beauty pageants, but is it so wrong to dream a silly dream? Because dream aren’t something you take in the context of reality, but rather dreams are that stuff that drives children to grow up. I think that if children’s knew the truth about dreams then they’d all refuse to grow a day older. I know if I knew then what I know now then I’d still be eight years old.

Now I’m a school teacher. I guess I see grownups as gardeners of some sorts, cultivating our children’s dreams. Somehow, that idea makes me want to do as good a job as I can. Even though I never became an astronaut, or pirate, or marine biologist I can’t say I’m disappointed. And it seems like I’m cultivating lies if I’m a dream gardener. But you know, if just one of those dreams takes root and stretches branches past my own then I think it’s worth it.

The Genbaku Dome sits lifeless, surrounded by thousands of people, both dreamers and cultivators. I guess they want it to remind people about the horrors of war, but out minds are so full of other things we will soon forget its message. This is the horrible sacrifice that we consciously make. We acknowledge our affinity to destruction and have the audacity to look down upon the dregs of society.

One summer day, saw then end to over 100,000 dreams. Can you understand that number? So who is there to comfort those whose bodies were vaporized and only left their shadows in this world?

I finally get in a position where I can take a picture of a part of the building without any modern noise in the picture. But it is just the illusion that I wanted. Time travel. A chance to glimpse that summer day long ago. This is my attempt to remember what I will soon forget…and for what? Even the shadows covered by new concrete will forgive me... if I forget how expensive, unused dreams really are.