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epitome of incomprehensibility
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End of choir. I'm putting my boots back on and overhearing people talk. An alto, a woman with an accent I couldn't place, places her past self on a world map: she's telling Matthew-the-Tall from the basses that she came from a country that was part of the Soviet Union. And she remembers parts of that past as constrained and maybe dreary: "They told us where to live," she told him as I tied my bootlace.
Matthew-the-Tall has a short tale too: his mother also grew up in the Soviet Union. But her forced (dis)placement came in World War 2, when the German government sent her with a bunch of other young people to work on farms. Basically slave labour. Then with the war over, her home destroyed, she was in refugee camps and such until she got a chance to emigrate to Canada in 1948. (And eventually Matthew-the-Tall was born, presumably not tall yet.)
My boots were tied. My hands weren't. I reflected: better to want to go places you can't afford than to be plonked somewhere with no choice in the matter.
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240122
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