Last Wednesday I blogged on this month's calendar at my mother's Alzheimer's home. On the 20th of May, residents will experience Hawaiian culture, and on the next day, they will remember Christopher Columbus. (Irony is perhaps the trope in writing about Alzheimer's.) Today I got an invitation to a Mother's Day celebration on the 20th, a Hawaiian Luau that will feature "Hawaiian & Polynesian Entertainment." Too bad that I'm not arriving in Virginia until later in May! The flyer alone presents us with the pineapple and the plumeria, both signifiers of Hawai`i on the east coast. I would be interested to see and hear the program itself. For now, I present this odd doc as part of my mother's story, and the culture of the Alzheimer's home. That culture is proudly, even necessarily, simulacrous. It could not possibly be real because it is never perceived as part of the reality from which it comes. History's witnesses cannot remember what they saw. Is a history without witness still a history? That's a question I do not want to touch, at least for now. I'll think more about it on this coming trip.
1 comment:
It's remembered history, which may or may not have a witness.
Post a Comment