The trees are thick along that road, and I can remember clearly the interplay of sunlight and shadow as we raced along that stretch of road, the radio talking about a curious development in China.  Students had been protesting for some time.  Hundreds, thousands of them gathered in a strange place called Tiananmen Square.   The news had been abuzz for weeks about the curious stand off between these idealistic students, and a government struggling to control it's response, aware that to a certain extent (in a pre-Internet, pre-blogging world) that the world was still watching, and that what course of action it chose would have repercussions for years.  A decade earlier, the protests probably would have been ruthlessly crushed before they could have ever gained momentum.  But the world was changing in 1989 - the Soviet Union seemed strangely open and vulnerable.  In only a few more months the detested Berlin Wall would crumble against the sledgehammers of idealists and then tourists.  

The action that began 20 years ago today is still only vaguely understood, shrouded in secrecy, tempered by official media reports and history books on both sides of the Atlantic.  I've had the opportunity to meet and talk with many people from China in the intervening decades - bright people, doctoral and post-doctoral students and researchers along with their husbands and wives.  People who were too young to participate in Tiananmen.  Some asserted that there was no violence, that Western media had allowed itself to be manipulated by a small group of malcontents.  Others asserted that the violence was far greater than what the West suspected.  Tiananmen is likely to remain a poorly understood and confused event.   

I don't remember the camping trip.  Only that fragment of memory, of staring at the dials of a car stereo talking about sudden movement on the other side of the world.  The quilting of sunlight and shadow moving rapidly over the vinyl dashboard and gear shift.  The transient concerns and thoughts of a 20-year old returning with friends from a weekend of relaxation.  The competition of sunlight and shadow in our eyesight is hard to track, especially in a moving vehicle.  The two inevitably blur in a kaleidoscopic brilliance that our minds even out to an acceptable and handleable fuzz.  The sunlight is real, and the shadows are there, but our minds simply aren't able to differentiate them quickly enough, with enough certainty.   Ultimately, our minds reassure us that there is no such need for that much work.  The impression of distinctness is enough.   We can continue our own thoughts, allowing our minds to wander to the next song on the radio, or the next news report.  Alternations of drama and delight that dapple our lives until neither one is as distinct or impressive as it might be on it's own.  And neither the sun or the leaf is aware of how their interaction is played out in the car passing below, so very far away as to be unnoticed, unheeded.