Life and Breath and Everything Else
10:00am, Thursday, May 25th
Krakow, Poland.*
This morning has been an excellent reminder for all of us about the joys of group travel. In spite of our heroic attempts to run full tilt across the entire Krakow train station carrying all of our baggage, we missed our 9:21 train to Warsaw. I suppose you could look at this as a blessing in disguise: several of us wanted more time in Krakow, although the train station wasn’t exactly the location we had in mind. Tensions were understandably running a little high, but I am so impressed by the way everyone has been able to show grace under pressure and address miscommunications constructively rather than aggressively. The next train leaves at 11:20, and in the mean time we have built a luggage fort on platform 5 several of us are taking advantage of the opportunity to get some writing and reading done.
Communicating even a fraction of our experiences at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau yesterday seems entirely impossible. I know it is cliché, but it doesn’t matter how much you read or study: nothing prepares you for being there. It seems absolutely futile to try to write a blog post explaining, so I hope you’ll allow me to write about it by proxy.
Walking through Birkenau yesterday, the dominant thought in my mind was “I can’t imagine how this could possibly be worse.” I realized this morning that I was wrong: it would have been worse to be alone. I spent five hours in near-complete silence yesterday, but I never felt isolated. To walk beside Myriam exchanging nothing but a few words over the whole day was an experience almost as powerful as the site itself, and I am amazed that this field school affords us the opportunity to build such strong relationships in just a few weeks. And the most wonderful thing is that although Myriam and I needed each other at that moment, there is no one in this group that wouldn’t be jumping to do the same for anyone else. This isn’t an experience of really liking a dozen of the people I’m traveling with and pleasantly tolerating the other two: everyone needs to be here.
We always look for happy endings and the bright side of horrible situations, and perhaps my choosing to focus on the camaraderie that I experienced yesterday is just another attempt to put an optimistic spin on a terror I could never rationalize. There was no happy ending for the hundreds of thousands of people murdered at Auschwitz. I don’t want to trivialize the fingernail marks on the walls of the gas chambers: I can’t imagine the fear that would allow calcium to claw through concrete. These numbers and these lives are entirely beyond my comprehension. There is no comparison, and I hope there never will be.
*First posted on our iwitness field school blog
Never less funny!Did you really get hurt while you were filming? (X)
I cannot wait. Especially for the Crispin’s day speech. So much love!
(via whiskersonmycheeks)
My best friend is the best. There is no debate.
(some background info: she is off gallivanting around far-away places with no connection to the world wide web. This is an automatically scheduled e-mail to replace the dozen or so we send back and forth most days. Just about the best thing to wake up to ever.)
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Travel”
Travel begins a week today. Check out my blog!
Me: And now, “once more into the breech” (ie., The disasterous office)
My friend: “Dear friends, once more! / You few, you happy few [who can find anything in there]”
Me: “All the waters of neptune will not [put those papers in their proper files]”
My friend: Go go gadget Martha Stuart!
Tom Hiddleston Performs Henry V Monologue on Hoppus on Music
My life is complete. I can die now.
See my earlier laudatory comments about Henry V and Branagh for some context.
Must stop trip planning for long enough to read the articles, write the papers, and fill out the applications that will allow me to GO on said trip.
Forget that. LONDON, baby! (And Berlin, Cracow, Warsaw, Prague, and Hannover!)
It’ll all get done. It always does.
