Since I see this was posted on September 11th, I'm going to read it in light of that. Actually, I read through the whole thing before looking back and checking the date it was posted, but already I sensed that it was related to the tragedy of the World Trade Center.
Since this is a short work, I'm going to grammar nitpick like crazy and point out every little thing I notice. Maybe it can become perfect with regard to grammar. After the nitpicks, I'll write about my overall impressions of the narrative. I'm also going to try out the "beige-background quotes" for the first time! Yaay!
Gaze upon the still sea, what do you see?
That should be a semicolon, not a comma.
I see land far off into the distance.
"In" the distance, not "into". The word "into" implies motion, but the land here is still.
Fire will not wrap his fingers around ice cold bars
"Ice-cold" would have a dash too.
no longer the politicians whom which stuff their pockets with my hard work,
Whom which? I believe just "who" will do.
(Wow, only four...Okay, then. Great job with your grammar.)
~~~
This narrative--a soliloquy, I might call it--definitely deserved to be read twice. There's a lot here, and I feel as if a person could take time to pick apart every sentence and get much more out of it. You must have thought it through very carefully when you wrote it.
It's very rich in analogy, so that makes it difficult to understand exactly what many of the sentences mean--but that's good, in my opinion. As long as YOU know what you were talking about in each sentence and the narrative as a whole, it's up to the reader to study it and figure it out.
My guess is that this isn't about September 11th specifically, because it's full of universal statements, but that it is related to September 11th in a way. Almost as if the speaker started out pondering the horrors of the attack on the World Trade Center, and his train of thought brought him here.
Yet when he (I'm think assuming "he" for no reason, just because it's easy to write) brings up his mother, it then becomes more specifically about September 11th. Fourteen years, and this was posted in 2015 on September 11th. At that point, there's no doubt...This person's mother was killed on September 11th, but because so many died on that day, she became just a number in a statistic.
There were many lines here that I found to be very powerful, but I suppose I'll specifically mention just two:
not a single musing given for a loved one.
That is true. When people commit murder and massacre, do they not even think of how each person killed is dear to someone? Don't they consider how they have people who they love, who they couldn't bear to lose--and yet they put others through that very thing! Even if there was a person in the world who was unloved by everyone around them, that person would still be loved by God, and God's heart would still break at cruelties done to them. Just this morning, I was reading the story of Cain and Abel: the first murder after sin entered the world. After it happened, God said to Cain, "What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!" He showed such individual caring and righteous indignation. Every single person is a "loved one", then--and what an evil it is when people will not consider that!
Once again, history repeats, and once again my voice is paid no heed!
It was the exclamation mark that really struck me here. I could hear the narrator's frustration rising throughout the sentence, coming to a peak at "no heed!" I've felt that frustration. Even in a republic, what can an individual do to be heard? There are so many voices out there, and the people in power always seem to have their own agenda. It's frustrating.
I am curious as to whether you were referring to anything specific when you wrote, "history repeats". Can you tell me, or is it a secret?
I never entirely figured out what "Fire" and "Ice" meant. I have a general understanding of it, I think, but what does the world look like when it's "at its iciest"? I don't fully understand.
Overall, another excellent and profound piece from you, Tigeraye. It made me think, and I'm glad I read it.
~Songy
Better formatting achieved.
Points: 59
Reviews: 125
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