{"id":14,"date":"2008-03-28T08:35:32","date_gmt":"2008-03-28T16:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/?p=14"},"modified":"2008-04-04T11:12:35","modified_gmt":"2008-04-04T19:12:35","slug":"iwen-object-lessons-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"Iwen: Object Lessons: Flag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Flag\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>by Jayson Iwen\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"tab-span\" style=\"white-space: pre\">\t\t<\/span>Thirty six stars and four stripes left, it hangs like a dishrag in the wet grey sky. Now a sudden wind lifts it an inch or two, as if to inspect its underside, and, finding nothing, drops it again. How else could such a hyperactivity of symbolism come to an end, unendingly.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"tab-span\" style=\"white-space: pre\">\t\t<\/span>During the siege of Stalingrad, the German soldiers were terrified of the female militias they encountered. Whenever the women caught a German, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d cut off anything that seemed remotely phallic. Anything that protrudes into the world. Genitalia first. Then noses and tongues. Then fingers and toes and ears. Then the men were sent back to where they would beg their comrades, as best they could without fingers or tongues, for death.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"tab-span\" style=\"white-space: pre\">\t\t<\/span>Then the Germans captured some of the Russians. They drove long Russian bayonets into their birth canals and out their backs, then nailed them to the floorboards of a Russian truck and drove it back into Russian territory. Anything inward that requires pinning down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"tab-span\" style=\"white-space: pre\">\t\t<\/span>In such symbols they spoke to one another. And in such symbolism they understood one another, for, after that, they returned to the civility of simply killing each other again.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"tab-span\" style=\"white-space: pre\">\t\t<\/span>Beyond words lurks a fear too great for words. It hides in the blinding light of the obvious. Just now it hangs like something gutted, from the top of a flag pole before the VFW hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flag\u00c2\u00a0 by Jayson Iwen\u00c2\u00a0 Thirty six stars and four stripes left, it hangs like a dishrag in the wet grey sky. Now a sudden wind lifts it an inch or two, as if to inspect its underside, and, finding nothing, drops it again. How else could such a hyperactivity of symbolism come to an end, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emergencypress.org\/almanac\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}