'Untitled Washington Essay'

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Temporarily Untitled2

Just one minuet earlier Rabbi Gluck, the smartest man I’ve ever known, had said that I had done the finest lobbying job he’s ever seen.  He tells this to the whole convention & I stand up and shout “That was me!” amidst a hail of cheers.  This is how the game worked: Everyone in the convention of reform jewish students chose a job to do, I was a lobbyist in favor of raising fuel emissions standards.  Once the game was over and we had won it was time for the news.  A space shuttle had exploded upon re-entry, killing 6 Americans and one Israeli.  And I am stultified.  This just came so out of the clear blue, both figuratively and literally.  Later this girl would tell me to put it out of my mind, that’s what coping is.  I tell her that’s the opposite of coping, and just walk away.  I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for her “gravity-doesn’t-exist” bullshit.  So I sit solemnly expecting the same of others.  And while they sat talking about who had called whom and who had “hooked up”, I couldn’t help but wonder what makes a space shuttle disaster in which 7 die, more tragic than an airplane crash in which 10 die.  Ultimately it’s this: to take flight and conquer the cosmos is the greatest dream of man, to have this dream dashed is the greatest tragedy.  I tell this to Sean and he says the greatest dream of man is to get laid by 2 chicks at the same time.  I got the news and felt hurt; despondent.  No one else seemed t.  And some how I get the feeling that I’m in the wrong place.3

So after that it was off to the holocaust museum.  Most depressing day ever I kept saying in the hotel room.  We get there and it is a place that begs of silence.  But I knew there were those among us without mercy, to whom begging meant nothing.  This is how I ended up almost getting into a fight in the middle of the National Holocaust Museum.  In the first hallway Louis made some snide comment or chuckle or something and all of the sudden I’m screaming at him, screaming loud and hard and about I don’t know what.  Screaming until my throat turned bloody, screaming so loud people in other parts of the museum probably thought it was a recorded attraction.  Screaming so loud my larynx was permanently scarred and I’ll never be able to talk normally again. Well not really, okay not at all.  In fact I stayed behind and watched a 13 minuet short film entitled “Nazi Rise to Power” just to avoid a scenario like this one.  So I got a chance to walk through the museum mostly alone and undisturbed.  Throughout there were horrible things; burnt corpses, bodies cut apart like armor.  But the one thing that disturbed me the most was this glass case, inside which were pages and parts of pages from old torahs.  In every other scenario we are forbidden from even touching the ink on the scroll, not by but by custom, out of a desire to preserve the sacred scroll.  But here the sacred scroll was soiled and sat in a pile in the same condition they were 50 years ago on Kristalnacht.  Why couldn’t they have repaired them, cleaned them up, given them a proper burial the way you do with Jewish artifacts damaged beyond repair.  Though I knew they were doing a great service here, greater than they could ever do in the ground, I couldn’t help standing over it completely alone, saying “that’s not right, that’s not right”.  Something so beautiful amongst the horrors, and it didn’t belong.  So every were you go in that museum there are stairs, and on the way out and down the longest flight I’m walking fast and for every step I take, I say the phrase “I’m done”.  “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done...”4

So after the museum they thought we could all use a chance to cool down so they took us all over to George Town just outside Washington.  Six of us went to some crappy bar and I had chicken fingers.  If we were there to unwind, it certainly worked, I completely forgot that a couple hours ago we had been in the most depressing place on earth on the most depressing day ever.  On the way back to the bus there was this blues musician blowing the hell out of a harmonica, with a tambourine on his foot.  As beautiful as he was he wasn’t at all out of place.  For what ever reason he was in complete balance with the place.  Perhaps it was because he played with such commitment, but for whatever reason it was out presence that made the scene not work, it was me, once again, that didn’t fit.5

So after that we went to the Lincoln memorial.  It was serene  and perfect at 20°’s or so.  We all went down to the reflector pool to see is it was frozen.  “Yup it’s as solid as ice.” I say tapping it with my foot.  It felt good to laugh, not that we didn’t do plenty of that in Georgetown.  We all sat on the steps of the Lincoln memorial and lit candles and sang Jewish hymns we’ve known our whole lives, and it was perfect.  Nothing more beautiful than anything else.  Perfect.  A joke or a laugh, someone walking away or having not been moved at all could not have ruined this moment, they would not have been cause for screaming, they would simply have blended and become part of the moment.  It was one moment that realized a potential none else had.6

I spent the next day in bed with food poisoning.  From the chicken fingers most likely.  A day of riddance I like to think.  Getting rid of all the pain and dehomogenized love and all the meaningless shit that had run through my head.  The wounds of a battle between me and all the unfeeling people of the world.  I’m the only one who knows about the battle, and the only one who cares.  No one else is fighting and I’m the only one who’ll ever lose.7