Dear Memory and Future,
Let me whisper in your ears.
When I first met you—two massive stone twins flanking the National World War I Memorial in Kansas City—I wasn’t exactly sure what you were. Mystified, I orbited you again and again.
“Some sort of animal,” I murmured under my breath. A cloaked lion? Wait, I thought, look at those feathered details … I’d seen hawks protecting fallen prey and something about you reminded me of that. Perhaps you were a pair of griffins hiding beneath your wings? So strange … my curiosity smoldered.
It was late; the museum was closed. A few taps on my phone confirmed I wasn’t quite right, but I was close:
Two Assyrian Sphinxes guard the south entrance of the Liberty Memorial. “Memory” faces east toward the battlefields of France, shielding its eyes from the horrors of war. “Future” faces west, shielding its eyes from an unknown future.
At once I learned your names, and that you were indeed protecting something.
Yourselves.
I’ll bet people have had a hard time understanding you through the years. Why hide your most compelling features? The resident mortals didn’t even include a shot of you in this footage from the day you were introduced to the world some one hundred years ago.
It’s so much easier to gaze up at the benevolent Guardian Spirits atop Liberty Memorial Tower, or marvel at the northern facing Great Frieze and its commanding details.
Surely this is how to tell the story of war and peace: fierce war horses and soldiers symbolize sacrifice and service to the left, while sturdy oxen and an innocent babe evoke the promise of peace and prosperity to the right.
A winged goddess is the centerpiece of it all.
We humans crave beauty, particularly beauty as fantastical as that of a sphinx. We’ve been compelled by your grandeur for millennia, yet nearly everything about you, my dreamlets, is concealed behind your wings. So instead of soaring towards the sun upon them, here in Kansas City, those wings obstruct your splendor instead of defining it.
Tell me, is this how you look when you’re striding through your natural domain, looking down upon humanity? Do you long to stand and place one massive hoof in front of the other, your head held high as you snap and swing your formidable tail?
Of course you do.
If this is what you were meant to be, imagine how glorious we tragic humans would be if only we spent as much time and energy building one another up instead of tearing each other down.
If only.
Instead, the steely bayonets that carved you out of the war have disintegrated back into the earth, but the weapons that sprung from the blood they drew are far more deadly. They announce themselves with terrible fiery clouds that take the shape of all things—a mushroom.
But before all of that, there was this guy.
You remember him. After all, you were there when he crashed into the scene with his giant deadly hands. No one could blame you for shielding your eyes from the likes of him.
After he was beaten into submission, his evil persisted and the hate that fueled him is back and much like you remember. Your creators clearly foresaw this when they conceived you. And now that question mark from one hundred years ago is as relevant as ever.
Although we’ve managed to reproduce more than eight billion times, not a single person on this green earth has figured out how to achieve lasting peace. So, my sweet beasts, it’s still not safe to lower your wings, to raise your magnificent heads, and to look out among us.
You are made of stone and cannot weep. I am made of flesh and bone, so I will do it for you.
Love, Erin
View looking North from National WWI Monument, Kansas City, July 2023
Magnificently heartbreaking.💔
I love that you whisper to statues, to bad so many humans seem to be as deaf.