Four Days in Washington

A great boy at the feet of a great man. 

I should have said something about my impending hiatus, but I still operate under that bit of modern wisdom that it is not good to advertise on the Internet when you are going to be away from home...but I was, indeed, away. The family headed off to Washington DC. Now you have to pay the price of a churned-up writer's head...

Where to start? I may have been to DC as a kid, but, if I was, I remembered nothing. First, the city itself...

Weird. Not bad, at all (despite a few run-ins with drugged-up street people in Chinatown) -- just weird. I was pretty shocked by how un-historical the city felt, for on thing. This may seem like a ridiculous statement, but I think the Greek and Roman architecture, everywhere, makes the city feel timeless -- which might well have been the aim of the planners; the duration of the Republic and all that. This same end is achieved in the paintings in places like the National Archives and in the Capitol; the ones that show the Founding Fathers in neoclassical/Romantic settings that echo paintings of the Greek heroes and philosophers congregating and conversing in their animated groups, all in the act of debating or of feverishly passing paper documents around... It all works to elevate the city to the perceived level of Democratic Mecca, which, I suppose, is not a bad idea.

But Washington DC feels somehow slightly cold to me. I read, on a placard somewhere in the Museum of American History, that George Washington, in trying to find his niche as president, had humbly asked only to be called "Mr. President" (some had suggested he be the emperor, to give you perspective) and that he had decided, as president, not shake people's hands, but to bow formally, when he met them, in order to maintain some separation and to not seem either too aristocratic or too egalitarian. And the city that bears his name feels the same way; it doesn't really shake your hand; it bows a not-unfriendly bow; it welcomes you but it asks, politely, that you not put your feet up on the coffee table.

Some months ago, I fell deeply and immediately in love with Boston. With DC left feeling intellectually stimulated, culturally fulfilled and accomplished, but not in love.

One couldn't help, though, whirling away mentally into a million philosophical questions. The monuments were as powerful as advertised, especially the Korean War Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. The Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial are so ubiquitous in photographs, one feels he has already "seen" them, though they were wonderful to see. The Vietnam Memorial was moving simply because of the visual numbers of lost and dead...but, Jefferson and the Korean War Memorial were different.

At the Korean War Memorial, I felt my usual spiritual schism: two separate but strong feelings running in parallel: a deep pride in the men who fought and did what they believed in and a deep revulsion for the heinousness of war; especially of a war that achieved absolutely nothing and in which the soldiers were poorly equipped and inadequately supported by their government. Yet, there the men were, in the memorial, in rain gear and helmets, walking in formation and carrying their battered, poorly-functioning World War II reissued rifles, moving in formation through the dense vegetation. The lump in my throat was there in pride, but the anger threatened to push it out to the embarrassment of my family...

The staggering Korean War Memorial. 

We'd walked the entire National Mall on the first day and we were bone-tired by the time we reached the Tidal Basin. (My overused bass drum ankle was aching with staggering intensity.) Across the water, we all looked out at the Jefferson Memorial and I asked my wife and the boys if they felt up to it. Everyone nodded. (I'm glad they did, because any excuse to turn back would have been hard to resist.)

Thomas Jefferson has always been one of my favorite historical and philosophical figures and his monument could not have been more perfectly imagined. Looking back out over the city, the Tidal Basin sparkling between his statue and the White House, the water undulating as if to represent the silver thoughts of  democracy that Jefferson was so instrumental in promoting; as if the city had emerged from his rippling and twinkling ideals like Atlantis reborn, it was hard not to feel patriotic, in the real sense. It was cool, up there, as well, under and on the marble, the breeze blowing through and making the monument an oasis from the ninety degree heat and giving it the feel of a place of sanity, sheltering us under the column-lifted dome from the barrage of modern noise. I could have sat there for days.

Arlington, of course, was dramatic and moving, but it called up the same philosophical and emotional schism in me: a mix of pride and disgust. As we watched the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, I found my eyes brimming. I'm still not sure if it was a result of the mechanical beauty of the ritual created by the soldiers themselves in honor of all of their lost and fallen brothers or whether it was because of the keen sense of waste of life -- the sense that the man in the sarcophagus was someone's son or husband or brother who died for -- what? Did he really die for the old boilerplate "freedom," as in WWII, or is that ubiquitously applied word just a cover up for lives wasted as they were in Vietnam and Korea? In those wars, did those guys die for "freedom" or did they die for the incorrect political calculations of men in suits and brass-studded uniforms? I honor sacrifice either way. Deeply. But I hate that they died for nothing. (I have friends who -- and this baffles me -- just cannot understand that position.)

At any rate, we came home back pretty tired, as if traveling through portals: from one stone-columned city into a stone-columned train station at Union Station and exiting through another stone-columned portal at Philadelphia's dramatic Thirtieth Street Station and then into a car and back into the tree-lined suburbs of home -- a home that would not be possible without human sacrifice and without that which occurs in those lofty Greco-Roman buildings in DC. None of that means, however, that I accept the absolute need for war or that every war is a battle for freedom or that I believe, wholesale, that America is a perfect place. Thomas Jefferson would surely scowl down upon me if I did. Blind patriots are fools.

The Union Station Portal

The Thirtieth Street Station Portal...and home. 

An American Flag in a Canadian Gunfight

Yesterday, I went from a state of "hey-that's-pretty-coolness" into a state of complete bewilderment in about a minute and a half.

I commented on something on Twitter -- something that related to Wednesday's post, in terms of the idea of "bullying" and none other than Margaret Atwood was in the conversation. It started very civilly and I was giggling like a doofus to have been actually interacting with one of my favorite novelists. I even had a chance to tell her how much I am enjoying The Blind Assassin, at the moment. I thanked her for having written it and she thanked me for liking it...

...then, the fecal matter hit the rotational cooling device.

So, there I was having a perfectly good conversation with my close friend Maggie Atwood and, within fifteen minutes, we had been pushed completely aside and people were attacking her for complaining about the Canadian government "whose taxes go to her grants..."

It was insane. All she had done was question the Prime Minister's desire to ban Muslim head-coverings during citizenship ceremonies and, all of a sudden, the torrent of a raging conservative river was let loose. She bowed out and so did I, feeling like, as I even "tweeted," I had brought an American flag to a Canadian gunfight.

Old Glory

This morning, it was 95% by 8:30. As I was driving into work down one of the ugliest roads in New Jersey (and that's saying something) I passed a young woman who looked impossibly old.

She was lumbering along slowly and she wore a heavy jacket, probably layered underneath with every bit of clothing she owned. Homeless. She carried plastic bags that bulged with belongings and the sweat crawled down her ebony face. Her mouth hung open and she stopped to catch breath, looking up at the sun, offended.

In her hand that faced the roadside, she clutched a small American flag, tightly. Despite the many things she carried, she gave the flag her whole hand.

Recollected in Tranquility

There are things that embarrass me that don't embarrass other people. But these things always seem to come from inside. They always seem to involve things I see as intensely personal; something that should burn deep in one's heart and that one should reveal only in a controlled, dignified, selective forms. Wordwsorth called poetry "the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility." In other words, no one wants to read a poem written in the midst of an emotional meltdown -- it is too messy; too undignified; too close. I think a few things in life are like poetry. I think intense feelings need to be filtered before they are released to the world. If they are not, I get downright embarrassed for people.

Spirituality is like this for me. It seems this should be between a person and his chosen deity. I am embarrassed by unfettered displays of spirituality, not because I don't respect the passion of those who perform these displays, but because I feel like an eavesdropper on their spiritual conversations. It feels like I'm in the birthing room of a couple I don't know. Those moments should be intimate, to me; private, not public. (Yet another way in which I am weird, I guess -- people invite their lawn service guys into the birth room now.)

Patriotism is like this, too. Its unabashed, brazen display seems to reduce the profundity of something so important. When people trumpet about patriotism and paint flags everywhere, it feels like cheering at a football game. It is especially tough, for me, in wartime. Obviously, war is so much more than a football game. Unity as a nation is wonderful, but fist-pumping and scowls at cameras meant for anyone "dumb enough to mess with us" is puerile.

I am spiritual and I am patriotic in my own way -- in my personal way. In my heart. And if I am going to display these feelings, it will be with control and restraint.  In short, not like the first video, here, but like the second.

I want to make it clear that the following song is a parody of patriotic songs by a guy named Cledus T. Judd. He is described as "the Weird Al Yankovic of country songs" on You Tube. I did not want to insult anyone's favorite patriotic song. But this makes my point with no harm and no foul. It is called "Don't Mess With America."



"We'll beat you red, white and blue"? Classic.

Now, an example of sensitive patriotism and controlled spirituality in one song -- a song that, in its subtly, taps into the idea of bravery and sacrifice in a way that a million American flag-waving football fans couldn't capture in a century, Gino Vannelli and Roy Freeland's "None So Beautiful as the Brave." The video was made as a tribute to a fallen soldier and, so, focuses on people, not bombs and guns:




Notice the difference even in the images of the video when they are not playing: the first, soldiers. The second: a man who is a soldier. Clearly, a shift in focus.

Maybe my embarrassment is driven by shame for the ways patriotism and spirituality can divide us. One video here uses patriotism as a club with which to beat others; one defines it with real pride in the beauty of bravery and in the wide-eyed dedication to idealism that results in the bittersweet of ultimate sacrifice. But we can only really see the beauty of the human spirit by looking inward. Wearing a flag shirt does not make you a patriot, nor does screaming loudly, stomping your feet, having the World Trade Center airbrushed on your car or parroting "If you don't like America, get out." Loving the spirit of freedom does; really feeling and understanding that spirit does. For Americans, understanding the Constitution does. Voting (when informed) does.

If you love the spirit of freedom, you are a patriot and, strangely, a patriot who could easily belong in many of the free countries of our world. How mystically unifying that sounds.

Art can affect the world for better or worse. Above are examples of both effects. Dignity of expression and intelligence are the defining factors. And they are the elements that I ask for in the expression of others and that I strive for in my own.