http://justrpg.com/reviews/god-war-ii I arrived in Washington in the afternoon. I stayed with a friend from junior high school, whom I had last seen while in college. She lived just off Pennsylvania Avenue, in a nice neighborhood where Foggy Bottom meets Georgetown meets Dupont Circle. We parked the truck and went for an afternoon walk, first to Rock Creek Park and then to the Mall, where we sat on a park bench in the rain. There was a lot to talk about.
Bayambang We enjoyed Washington the next day, spinning through a museum of American design – part of the Smithsonian – and the Botanical Garden, which was lovely. As we walked along the mall, talking about the show Friday Night Lights, who came down from the Capitol towards us but David Brooks, the New York Times commentator and cultural observer. It was an unusual moment, because I had long felt that one thing that Brooks had left out of his (excellent and insightful) book Bobos in Paradise is sports, and we had just been talking sports and I had just been about to mention that David Brooks needed to turn his powers of cultural observation to this topic. So I introduced myself to him, and told him that I thought he should think about this as a topic, looking at all its strangeness: $2500 seats at Yankees games, the link between athletics and income (and hence college education), the bizarrerie of the Super Bowl, the soccer vs. baseball vs. lacrosse self-definitions, all of that stuff. In about forty seconds I had said my say and we parted ways. He may have been thinking about how to solve the healthcare problem or Obama’s place in history or something far more weighty, but I balanced my brief seizure of his mind by being quick. And who knows, maybe he will write a book about it someday.
Encounters with famous people are very strange, because oddly enough it’s the unfamous person who has all the power in the encounter. I knew a fair amount about David Brooks, while he knew nothing whatsoever about me. Consequently I had all the power and could direct the conversation as I pleased – symbolized by the mere fact that I could turn his head by saying “David Brooks!” while he could do no such thing to me.
New Orleans had been a general topic of conversation, and later that evening we watched the first two acts of Spike Lee’s documentary When the Levees Broke. It is a very interesting and very worthwhile film – at least the first two acts of it (of four; it is very long; I will finish it while in the Catskills). It is not much about facts, but rather about the experiences of the people who suffered most from hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. As a result, it distances you from any possible reactions but sympathy. I found myself on the verge of tears most of the time I was watching it. Human experience is overwhelming when you let it in. The personal link I felt with New Orleans also made it all the more moving, but I couldn’t help but think of how I would react if such a thing happened to New York. (I did react very personally with the attack on the World Trade Center). And really, I don’t believe anything has improved in terms of our government. If New York City had to be evacuated – 8 million people, 6 million without automobiles, trying to carry with them their most cherished belongings as well as pets – would our government be capable of pulling off anything but a complete logistical disaster? Almost certainly not. And yet such an evacuation is a possibility.
On Saturday morning we headed up to New York. It was almost unbearably exciting to see its towers in the distance – how beautiful and grand it seemed. I was back home. I felt like a new creation, and that a new chapter had begun.
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