So, Friday night I went to a talk given by a new neighbor of mine, who I’ll refer to as V. He’s Czechoslovakian (yay I spelled it right on my first try!) by birth, and escaped the communist regime when he was just 19 (he’s about my age). He divided his talk into three essays: When We Were 15, What It Was Like to Live Under a Dictatorship, and Beneath the Surface.
When V’s grandfather was 15, WW1 started. When his father was 15, the Czech republic became communist. When he was 15, the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague. When his son was 15, 9-11 happened. Four generations, four defining moments.
V was clear at the outset that he didn’t want to make his talk partisan, nor did he want to convince anyone of anything. He had just been ‘talked into’ doing it by friends who constantly asked him about it, probably because of the current political climate. That didn’t stop him from drawing the obvious parallels, however.
He choked up only twice—once at the end of his first essay and the second time when he talked about his father. When V was 15, his father sat him down and explained to him that in order for him to continue good schooling, his father would have to sign a pledge of support to the communist party. That was the way things were, then; to get anywhere, to do anything, to get anything, one had to be a member in good standing with the communists. V’s father explained to him that he couldn’t do that, not and keep his conscience clear. It meant that V wouldn’t be able to get into the good schools and would probably end up like his father, a man of letters who had been reduced to being a gardener. He told V he hoped he understood, and that maybe some day he would, if he didn’t now.
V’s last essay was about the underground movement in Prague. As a teenager, he was heavily involved. To my surprise, there was no ‘formal’ underground, the way we’ve been taught in movies or TV. It was just people; artists, musicians, poets, meeting in secret and having fun in secret. Having fun is prohibited in a dictatorship, as is most of the arts. The arts are subversive and can lead to actual thinking, another thing that’s prohibited.
He was 19 when his father managed to get him on a bus to Nuremberg, Germany (he still doesn’t know how). Once there, he evaded the police officer stationed on the bus and escaped with nothing but his passport and the clothes on his back.
We talked for some time after his presentation, and people asked about the current political climate and what he thought of it. He stated he was appalled by Project 2025, thought it was authoritarian (duh), and a checklist for dictatorship. When asked if he sees parallels now to what he went through as a teen, he said he did. And, tellingly, when asked what we can do, he was blunt: be prepared to sacrifice in order to maintain freedom and democracy. The “No Kings” marches are nice, but ultimately ineffective. Real change comes from real sacrifice, and we may be asked to do that, especially if rump tries to derail the midterms.
I’ve already talked (and talked, and talked) about how much I despise this current administration. Am I prepared to lose it all? I don’t know. I guess I can’t know until it happens, until I’m asked or until it’s demanded of me. Joseph Fasano said: “Yes, the wars and yes, the hell and wreckage. But you cannot save a life if you are broken…you are not betraying anyone by choosing joy.” Until it happens, I’m choosing joy. I’m choosing as much as I can physically do in this moment, as little as that is, as little as that impact will be.
Which brings me to my second topic, my disintegrating spine. I’ve already gone through a fusion and laminectomy in my lumbar spine, now my cervical spine has joined in the fun. I asked the PA who’s treating me about it, told her that it felt like the only thing holding me together was the arthritis. She didn’t disagree. I have facet arthropathy, degenerative disc disease, and who knows what else will be popping up in the future. I imagine I’ll be in a wheelchair in ten years, which fills me with dread.
On Wednesday, I undergo another procedure, this one in my c-spine (my neck, ugh) to anesthetize the nerve that’s causing me fits. If it works, they’ll try to ablate the nerve in a future procedure. It won’t be permanent, the nerve will grow back, but it will (hopefully) make me pain-free for the near future. I would like that. I would like that a lot.
So that’s what I’m facing—a procedure that will hopefully work short-term and an authoritarian regime that’s trying to take from me everything that I hold dear.
But for right now, I’m choosing joy.
Closing with a poem, which I believe V wrote.
GOLGOTHA, “The place of the skull”
Ages have passed over this place,
and only wind remains,
leaving behind unknown messages in dust,
covering stones
marked by the fingerprints
of hands that killed.
The hill still waits beneath the silence.
Golgotha.
The Place of a Skull.
A name shaped not by poetry,
but by memory.
A mound of death outside the city walls
where empire displayed its warnings
like banners nailed into flesh.
There they lifted crosses
against the burning sky,
not only for thieves and rebels,
but for prophets, wanderers,
for anyone who threatened
the fragile order of frightened men.
And crowds gathered.
Always crowds.
Faces hidden inside righteousness,
inside laws,
inside slogans shouted loud enough
to drown the trembling conscience
of the individual soul.
Some came to witness.
Some came to mock.
Some came because everyone else did.
And stones flew easily
from hands convinced
they were serving justice.
How simple it becomes
to wound another human being
once a story has been repeated often eough.
Once fear is given a uniform.
Once hatred learns the language of virtue.
The dust remembers this.
It remembers sandals stained with blood,
mothers collapsing into themselves,
soldiers gambling beside dying men,
and the terrible silence
that follows public cruelty
when the crowd finally goes home.
Even now,
beneath centuries of sand and ashes,
the ground still carries
the weight of those voices.
Because suffering does not disappear.
It settles.
It sinks into walls,
into roads,
into the memory of cities.
And every age
builds its own Golgotha.
Different flags.
Different uniforms.
Different accusations.
But always the same theater:
a crowd taught who to fear,
who to blame,
who deserves humiliation, exile, punishment, death.
The names change.
The machinery does not.
And somewhere, even now,
someone sharpens nails
while others rehearse the chants.
Perhaps that is why the wind still circles this hill,
lifting dust like restless spirits,
whispering through the cracks of history:
Remember.
Remember what people become
when compassion is surrendered
to ideology.
Remember how easily humanity forgets itself.
For the world is covered
with places like Golgotha—
Places of the Skull—
where beneath the dust of centuries
the echo of injustice
still refuses to die.