Monday 30 March 2020
The Toilet Roll Archives (3) - ft Anne Frank's Diary; yes, there's a point, I promise!
Ft. Anne Frank's Diary - yes, there's a point, I promise.
It’s been 14 days of self-isolation and, I’m not going to lie, I’m thriving. I’ve washed my hair approximately twice (disgustan) and cleared out my wardrobe. I’m a lot less stressed out about Zoom conference calls, I’m a whole lot more Vitamin D-deficient and somehow have managed to rediscover my passion for WW2 documentaries and Anne Frank’s Diary - yes, the line between self-care and self-destruction is a fine one, but god I walk it hard. Bare skills @ 63. xoxo
When I first (and last) read the book, Anne was just a little older than I was. I was 11; it was the summer before I started secondary school. I picked up a battered copy off my grandmother’s shelf with the promise that I’d return it when I was finished. I never did. Ten years later, Anne’s diary has made its way down to London with me, shoved on my windowsill in between a second-hand copy of The Bell Jar and the chunky-yet-funky Moby Dick.
Until this weekend, I hadn’t read it since that summer. But I could never part with Anne’s book. I could never really let it go; sounds well stupid and eye-roll worthy but I have always had a connection to the young diarist. I say ‘book’ too, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s a child’s diary that has somehow stood the test of time and become a piece of classic literature – and that’s what makes it so meaty. A teenager carries the weight of literary culture on her shoulders. The book is hardly high brow literature and it’s as unsophisticated as they come, but that is probably what makes it so touching. It’s more of an artefact than a conscious work of art. It’s not Ulysses; it doesn’t try to be. It’s a girl’s story. And it’s beautiful.
There is something so valuable in a young person’s perspective. They know everything yet understand little and their view on the world is as naïve as they come. Their insight is incredible. It is so precious because it lasts for a very short amount of time because, as they grow, their minds expand, as do their horizons, their opportunities and, thus, their worlds. More doors open and experience tarnishes that naïve insight of simultaneously knowing both everything and nothing.
And then you get Anne: a typical teenager who knows everything and nothing at the same time, who’s mind is opening, and world is expanding – at the same time as being confined to the walls of an Amsterdam attic under a Nazi regime.
I think of this hook and immediately picture roses and vines mounting brick walls. A trapped young girl who’s thoughts bloom and blossom against the rock-hard density of confinement. Obviously, it’s a lot deeper and far more problematic than that. It’s a deeply romanticised metaphor and I’m obviously not trying to offend anyone by suggesting that it is as simple as this. But this was always the image that came to mind when I thought of Anne and her diary.
I remember devouring Anne’s entries the weekend I stole* it from my Nana. I loved her. I was fascinated and moved by her experiences. She seemed a lot more grown up than 11-year-old me and she used big words and long sentences I would have to read two or three times to understand. She sounded so mature and wise. I used to wish I could write like that.
I always knew Anne died at Belsen, but knowing that as a child is not the same as knowing that as an adult who has stood on the grounds of half-destroyed chambers and who has read the heart-breaking eye-witness accounts of Anne’s last days, covered in lice, feverish with typhus.
Reading Anne’s diary as an adult is a very different experience. Now she seems incredibly young. And the concept of a child hiding from Nazis in an attic with 8 other people is a lot more harrowing at 21 than it is when you’re 11. Yet, the ‘vines climbing walls’ image still springs to mind. Anne’s words climb out of the pages and hit you over the head with that precious, short-lived teenage perspective that you almost forget she is living in the midst of crisis.
That image is probably why I am so attached to Anne’s diary. It’s all about the idea of perspective.
I won’t go into Anne’s story. You most likely know it. If you don’t, look it up. The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most widely read nonfiction books in the world. Translated into around 70 languages, it's been adapted many times for stage, film, and television and used in schools across the world to help children understand the meaning, and horror, of the Holocaust.
It seemed only fitting to pick it up this weekend. I had just finished a stale Churchill documentary which was not as promising as it had sounded (obvs it’s Churchill :/) and, with nothing better to do, I gave Anne’s diary a second go. This time, I absorbed it in less than 24 hours.
Flashforward to today: Monday. Day 14 of self-isolation. Early this morning, I went out for a run during my allocated hour of exercise a day. It was freezing but beautifully sunny. I finished up and was stood outside my front door, looking out from the balcony, and I remembered one of Anne’s sentences that stuck with me over the course of the weekend.
“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”
I began to think about the many complaints I have heard since the government shut down businesses and public places, forcing us to stay at home as much as possible. I thought about my initial remarks regarding the virus way earlier this month, unsure as to whether I was underreacting or whether everyone else was overreacting. I thought about the vulnerable people in my life at the moment who are victim to COVID-19 on either (or both) a physical and economic level.
Those thoughts took me back to a young girl who, 80 years ago, was forced into hiding for two years, and who still had the hope and wisdom to see beauty in her dire circumstances.
The memory of the time her story stole my heart ten years ago encouraged me to dust off her book and read some of her most encouraging quotes to find a bit of light in a very dark world:
“I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.”
“Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”
The question I’m asking today is this: are we choosing to spend this time complaining and acting in fear or, like Anne, are we determined to find gratitude and purpose in this trial?
Anne’s story is more relevant than ever. Her timeless words are the vines that climbed the walls of the Nazi regime that took her life. They grew out of the annex they were discovered in and outlasted the evil that took her life by spreading their blossoming thoughts across the world, into 70 different languages, into thousands upon thousands of editions. The everlasting petals of her words were the ultimate triumph over the brick walls that confined her.
Today, all of us are also surrounded by a brick wall that’s deadly impact is weighing us down. And complacency and apathy aren’t going to help us. While remembering never to put others at risk, we also cannot be paralysed by fear. Striking the proper balance is a fine line but, like the line between self-care and self-destruction, we have to learn to walk it well J.
I don’t really know what I’m trying to say fully, I guess. Anne’s spirit captures it perfectly, though, in this one small paragraph:
“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can live! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”
We are all enlisted in the effort to minimise the danger to those around us by looking to ourselves for accountability and responsibility. Our full potential as humans is to be scrutinised in the most trialling of times – our potential being, I think, the most human of all things: caring for your fellow human.
As Anne writes, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
I think about my friends on the front line, waging a health war being the incredible medics and supermarket superheroes they are. I think about my morning runs and appreciating the cold fresh (and cleaner - London is thriving rn!) air that hits me. I think about keeping my vulnerable family and friends safe. And if fulfilling my potential in 2020 means helping my fellow humans out by sitting at home and watching Friends, I’ll do it.
Random one, I know. Makes no real sense but, hey, can you blame me? 2 weeks of self-isolation? I’m going slightly deranged J.
Anyways this blog felt cute but probs will delete later. All the love and stuff; keep safe and stay inside! xoxo
