Thought of the day---- Elie Wiesel" "Night"

I just began reading tonight Elie Wiesel's "Night" and I want to take the time to blog my thoughts here on passages that I find moving, relate-able and just down right terrifying.  I am not sure where this journey talking about this book is going to take us as I am four pages into it and already wanting to talk to an audience that I know will listen, based on the number of readers I have.

" Convinced that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew that I must bear witness.  I also knew that, while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them.  Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle.  It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language.  But how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?.... Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his testimony would not be received .  After all it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man.  Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.  Others will never know. BUT, wile they understand?

Why this book, why now?  In all honesty it goes back to a question I was asked a little over a month ago by a new friend over lunch.  Why or how do you feel you survived so long?  Meaning of course the upcoming 20 years with AIDS.  I was blown away no one had ever asked me that before, ever.  With that and being asked this week by a new therapist I started to see short term at school.  She asked if I was angry, sad, mad or any other emotional word because I had survived so long?  Again something I had never been asked before.

I am still not exactly sure of either answer, I just know that like Elie Wiesel I feel I HAVE to tell my story of AIDS, I have to tell the overall story of my life---the good , the bad, the ugly, the painful, the beautiful, the lovely, the romantic.  I am not saying it is anywhere near the story or the horrors Mr. Wiesel experienced during World War II and the Holocaust, but in my own life AIDS has been my generations Viral Holocaust and you know something it seems as if NO ONE IS TALKING!  No one is speaking, no one is being the new Paul Monette's or Randy Shilts'.  Why is this?  Is apathy so rampant?  Are we that burnout of thirty years of living with it?  Are there that too few long-term survivors left wanting to speak?  Would anyone listen?  Does AIDS matter to those not living with it?  What will the next thirty years bring? Could there even be survivors then that could recall those early years?  Why isn't seem like anyone is saving our history?Am I the only one who cares?

Some new poetry---by me

Delicate snowflakes fall
The wind swirling them about
On cold cobblestone streets
Dressed in red wool coat
I walk from school
To our humble shetetl

Nazi's fill our streets
I open our door
Zeidy is reading Talmud
Yarmulke, Tallis and Teflin
In their rightful place
Makes my Zeidy a scholar

I cahnge into my best dress
Ribbons in my hair
Face freshly washed
Sitting ever so quietly
At the linen tablecloth

The sirens yell
The bimbs drop
Mamh lights
Shabbat candles
Ha-olam me-lekh
Elo-heynu Ad-onai
Life
Goes on for now