I Am A Simple Soul. I See A Babbling Brook In The Forest, And I Am Content To Stare At It And Listen

I am a simple soul. I see a babbling brook in the forest, and I am content to stare at it and listen to it for the rest of my life.

excuse me if this makes very little sense as i have been drinking and it is almost eleven pm on a wednesday but today i walked into my favourite cafe and the frenchman who makes my coffee, didier, told me about how he had just discovered that the woman who had left as I came in happened to live on the same street as his brother, “isn’t the world remarkable?” he said to me. I laughed, “don’t you wonder about how many people you meet on a daily basis that you have something in common with without realising?”

Tonight I had beers with a couple of guys, they were old friends. “How long have you known each other?” I asked. They laughed, “guess!” Turns our they shared a wetnurse, a connection their mothers didn’t discover until they became friends years later.

As I walked to the train I texted my housemate to ask where she was, if she wanted to meet up before we headed home. Suddenly I heard my name called as she ran across the station towards me. “Oh how strange, I just messaged you!”

Sometimes the world feels very large and our differences seem unbridgeable. Other days we run into one another over and over again, and I am glad to recognise friends.

Do you know what this is? This is The Heart from Auschwitz.

An act of defiance. A statement of hope. A crime punishable by death.

On December 12, 1944, locked inside Auschwitz, Polish teenager Fania turned twenty. After spending a year in a concentration camp, Fania didn’t expect her birthday to even be remembered - but her best friend, Zlatka, risked everything to make her a birthday present, a paper heart. 

Simply making the heart - or carrying it - could get either of them killed.

The heart was signed by many of their friends, bearing notes in Polish, German, French, and Hebrew that announced "When you get old, put your glasses on your nose, take this album in your hand and read my signature again,“ and “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” It was an act of great sacrifice and love for a friend.

Less than 40 days later, they began the Death March from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck, and from Ravensbruck to freedom. Fania carried the heart under her arm the whole time. And survived.

Fania donated the heart to the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center in 1988, where it is a featured piece of their exhibit. You can read more about the story of Fania and Zlatka Meg Wiviott’s Paper Hearts, coming September 2015.

Detail of Pea Blossoms, 1890, by Edward Poynter (1836-1919)

not to be fake deep but this is for the lions living in the wiry broke down frames of my friends’ bodies

yes I DO live under a rock and her name is the Moon and she is always smiling but she teaches me nothing