Home, sweet home
Jul. 23rd, 2002 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhI'm back. For good. For finally. Nowhere else that I need to go, nothing that I have to do until the end of September.
Washington was fun, even if this was my third time there in four years. We did a lot of stuff that I'd never had the chance to do before, like the FBI museum and riding the metro. I'm way too amused by subways. We need one in my city.
We also saw the Pentagon. It was kind of eerie, the way it's been already fixed. There's something in me that makes me want to leave it destroyed forever, always just as gaping and smoking and terrifying as it was on the first day. It looks the same as always, now. The only difference is that the new bricks are lighter that the old, and that will fade in a few years. I suppose that's why I don't want it fixed. I don't want to forget, I don't want to go back to the way things were before. I'm irrational, I realize that. But I like scars, I need them. Even if we move past the point where the scars are relevant, I want them there. I want marks of past pain as well as past happiness.
We went all the way through the Holocaust museum, too. Every group I've been with before just rushed us through the children's exhibit. Unfortunately, the people I was with hadn't realized just how big, how long the museum is. I've known for years that it takes about four hours to get through it all, so I didn't think to warn them. They were expecting an hour, or maybe two, so they hurried through most of it, and even skipped some parts.
I didn't saw anything, and kept mostly up with them, because it *was* Molly's trip, not mine, I was just the friend who got brought along, but I couldn't understand them. Yes, a lot of the writing on the exhibits was very small, and yes, it was very crowded, and the air conditioner was turned on much to high. But. How could you notice something like that? How could you complain about the size of the type or the number of people when the pictures they were standing next to were of a children's book about Jews called "The Poisoned Mushroom", a yellow star, burned bodies? How could you notice the cold when it seemed like the blood had long since ceased to flow to my fingers?
I destroyed the phamplets I'd picked up before we went in because I kept folding them, over and over, until the paper began to shred. I didn't realize I was doing it. The worst part, though, wasn't the pictures or the videos, however graphic and horrible they were. The worst part was the actual artifacts from the concentration camps. There was a bunk from Auschwitz that stood in the middle of a room, free to touch. Just a plain wooden bunk. It was worse because, for all the pictures and stories and information, this was real and still alive. You could feel it, touch it. It wasn't like something from a horror story, "I heard distant screams and felt something cold slither over my hand. I jerked away, but not before I heard a child crying." This was real. It was like being near an electric generator. A sense of energy and power and danger. It wasn't even sad or evil, necessarily. Just huge and powerful and _not_ safe.
By the last floor I was a mess. I had tears in my eyes, though I never actually cried. I knew that if I would cry, it would be all-out, tears and bawling and heaving gasps and shaking and sitting on the floor. So I walked around, staying on the verge of crying, not talking because I was afraid opening my mouth would set me off.
And the people I was with- they just didn't get it. Not that they were rude, not that they were laughing in the museum, but all they had to say was how cold it had been. And "where to next?" While I kept feeling like I was shaking inside.
But I'm glad I did it. And I did have fun on the trip. I just wish I could have had a little more time, or been with someone who cared a little more.
The person on my card, the one you get at the front door- she lived. She never even went to a concentration camp. I wonder if she's still alive. I wonder if she ever saw the museum. I wonder what she thought of the people who looked at the pictures and touched the bunk, but who hadn't lived through it. I wonder if she hates us.
Washington was fun, even if this was my third time there in four years. We did a lot of stuff that I'd never had the chance to do before, like the FBI museum and riding the metro. I'm way too amused by subways. We need one in my city.
We also saw the Pentagon. It was kind of eerie, the way it's been already fixed. There's something in me that makes me want to leave it destroyed forever, always just as gaping and smoking and terrifying as it was on the first day. It looks the same as always, now. The only difference is that the new bricks are lighter that the old, and that will fade in a few years. I suppose that's why I don't want it fixed. I don't want to forget, I don't want to go back to the way things were before. I'm irrational, I realize that. But I like scars, I need them. Even if we move past the point where the scars are relevant, I want them there. I want marks of past pain as well as past happiness.
We went all the way through the Holocaust museum, too. Every group I've been with before just rushed us through the children's exhibit. Unfortunately, the people I was with hadn't realized just how big, how long the museum is. I've known for years that it takes about four hours to get through it all, so I didn't think to warn them. They were expecting an hour, or maybe two, so they hurried through most of it, and even skipped some parts.
I didn't saw anything, and kept mostly up with them, because it *was* Molly's trip, not mine, I was just the friend who got brought along, but I couldn't understand them. Yes, a lot of the writing on the exhibits was very small, and yes, it was very crowded, and the air conditioner was turned on much to high. But. How could you notice something like that? How could you complain about the size of the type or the number of people when the pictures they were standing next to were of a children's book about Jews called "The Poisoned Mushroom", a yellow star, burned bodies? How could you notice the cold when it seemed like the blood had long since ceased to flow to my fingers?
I destroyed the phamplets I'd picked up before we went in because I kept folding them, over and over, until the paper began to shred. I didn't realize I was doing it. The worst part, though, wasn't the pictures or the videos, however graphic and horrible they were. The worst part was the actual artifacts from the concentration camps. There was a bunk from Auschwitz that stood in the middle of a room, free to touch. Just a plain wooden bunk. It was worse because, for all the pictures and stories and information, this was real and still alive. You could feel it, touch it. It wasn't like something from a horror story, "I heard distant screams and felt something cold slither over my hand. I jerked away, but not before I heard a child crying." This was real. It was like being near an electric generator. A sense of energy and power and danger. It wasn't even sad or evil, necessarily. Just huge and powerful and _not_ safe.
By the last floor I was a mess. I had tears in my eyes, though I never actually cried. I knew that if I would cry, it would be all-out, tears and bawling and heaving gasps and shaking and sitting on the floor. So I walked around, staying on the verge of crying, not talking because I was afraid opening my mouth would set me off.
And the people I was with- they just didn't get it. Not that they were rude, not that they were laughing in the museum, but all they had to say was how cold it had been. And "where to next?" While I kept feeling like I was shaking inside.
But I'm glad I did it. And I did have fun on the trip. I just wish I could have had a little more time, or been with someone who cared a little more.
The person on my card, the one you get at the front door- she lived. She never even went to a concentration camp. I wonder if she's still alive. I wonder if she ever saw the museum. I wonder what she thought of the people who looked at the pictures and touched the bunk, but who hadn't lived through it. I wonder if she hates us.
