E tenebras, lux dormiens

Session of sweet silent thought

I have a memory, have while it is mine, if some functions of my brain do not make me forget or someone does not steal or point out that they experience the same thing, of a trip to Ontario and Québec of Canada. In Québec City, my parents and I ventured into old Québec, a city of fortress within a large suburban area. The change was startling. Outside is the image of industrialization. Inside, an entrance into anachronicity. Of course, there were many babbling tourists that crowded up the pebbled street and houses, stores, and structures of stones.

It was, in the best possible word I can muster now, bland.

The street performers in Québec City were talentless, compared to San Francisco's street performers on Pier 39. Where San Francisco's performers were completely painted in silver or gold, and could remain frozen in place for long period of time. This Québec's performers were laughably touched with the ugliest of whitening make-ups and shorn mustache to look sharp like some ridiculous villain of a melodramatic play. And a terrible, terrible music player to boot. Not only that, while San Francisco's performers were willing to perform without request for financial sustainability. This appalling performers of Québec used a disgusting sign, as if to substitute for the usage of his voice, and pointed to it, robot like, that said as followed paraphrased:

You can't look at me without paying. It's good to pay for what I show you.

I do not remember the exact word, but I knew full well the meaning being exuded from this talentless and most abominable performers of French Québec.

If only that he could be damned! Unforunately, there is no Association for the Integrity of Street Performance Arts (AISPA) to regulate such idiotic displays of untalent.

Of course, I cannot blame that performer, who might have been good before, when he was younger. And I cannot claim whole-heartedly that all the performers in San Francisco are the talented leaders of the cultural world. Still, it feels good for me to criticize the francophiles.

So, in Québec City, I walked along the far outline of the fortress and have been intrigued by the history held within. That the French within the deepest interior of Québec should still be unwilling to be Anglicized by the government of Canada only show that this desire is reflected in all parts of the world. In the South of the United States, those that fought for states' rights in the Civil War will not forget the humiliation they suffered from the Yankees in the liberalization of the slaves and the stagnation of the economy as well as the Reconstructionist carpetbaggers.

What can we do to make those deep in Iraq, humiliated by the invasion and occupation of the American force, forget the history? What can we do to help those who remembered the glory of the Ottoman Empire to forget the actions that the Western World had taken to dismantle it?

The answer, I'm afraid, is that there is none. It should be counted as natural, that perhaps the more moderate of the populace will regard the United States as a good-intentioned and helpful friends, but there are many who would prefer that the United States, a Christian (or perhaps Godless) nation, get off the soil that have been consecrated by the Muslim world.

If we can understand the fact that France, having been invaded twice in two world wars, are still feeling the effect of the humiliation they suffered, we can accept that nothing is black and white.