"In search of memory this Memorial Day."

In search of memory this Memorial Day

Is a line I heard on NPR

While I struggle to experiment with appam batter

-- A culinary art I never had a chance to learn

Nor miss

While still a child at home,
Co-existing with the Lost Generation.

This Memorial Day
I don't need to search my memory
To remember my grandmother
Who neither fought in a man's war
Nor has passed away,
But merely, enormously
Hovers
Between life and blessed death.

But this battle

For breath,

Neither old nor new for her,

Is a struggle she'd consider

Much less tortuous

And more welcome

Than the fight for dignity

That she has been losing

For more than half of her life.

Malathi, 5/30/2016

The Ethics of Aesthetics

The caption says, "30 unique photographs from 1959. Christian Dior in Moscow."
 
And somehow these photographs make me sad, sad, sad. Audrey Hepburns strategically inserted into the pages of 'Soviet Woman' for the sole reason of breathing life into the Hepburns alone.  No give; just take.  

Perhaps not as obviously stark and troubling as malnourished, bow-legged, rheumy-eyed children in remote villages serving as backdrop extras, but the ultimate effect belongs in the category of deprived people serving as props to sell a lifestyle that they could not attain at that time and in that space.  

The cringe-worthiness is made worse when I wonder, 'Did they know exactly what they were doing? Or did they not?'  

Which is more troubling?