I Like To Be...Part 1

The American Blog.

My whistle-stop tour of the DC-New Haven train line this past week has taught me two new and reinforced one old lesson:

First, it is now apparently impossible to function without a cellphone.
Second, if you want to make yourself feel loved, attempt to see as many people as possible in too little time.
Third, Timing Is Everything.

What did people do before cellphones? Answer (because I remember those days perfectly well), they made arrangements in advance and stuck to them. My poor sister was an undergrad before email and mobile phones, so she had to undergo the barbaric (if healthy) process of walking to people's rooms, finding them out - in whatever sense - and leaving a message on the door. The flipside of all this convenience is, I suspect, an over-reliance on the medium; although to be fair that doesn't excuse my extreme stupidity in waiting for ten minutes on the corner of 43rd and 5th when I should have been at 42nd and 5th. Sorry Greg. But then, I may be (at least, I hope I am) the only Cambridge and Yale student to lock themself in a disabled toilet at Geneva Station.

That display of incompetence wasn't what I meant by timing, of which more in a later blog...suffice it to say that I think I may have met him, were circumstances different. Sigh.

But regulars will recall that I had struggled past the obnoxious Spence into my adopted country, the country that persistently shows no signs of going to the dogs, despite what my Yale friends tell me. That said, there's a not infrequent strain in American public life that, like a precocious but erratic child, essays a long word with borderline accuracy. My 'plane ticket carried a small sticker calling itself a 'SECURITY ADMONISHMENT'. Admonishment? I hadn't done anything. Presumably it was a pre-emptive admonishment in case I had any uppity ideas about leaving my baggage unattended.

So I got to DC on a very good train and was met by my altogether splendid friend Dolphin and her manfriend Ben, who live in a splendid town house in the splendid suburbs of North Virginia, on the trail of the Lonesome Pine, or somesuch.

I hope you've had those days in which everything goes right, and life is coated with a layer of happiness that, maybe, offers a glimpse through the clouds of what heaven might be like? I had one such day last week. It was a beautiful day in late Fall, and the Dolphin and I walked to the National Cathedral, a monumental building in every sense. It's huge - the sixth largest cathedral in the world, to be exact. It's a vast temple of cream Indiana marble, a triumph of neo-Gothic; and if you're yawning in the knowledge that Britain has quite enough magnificent Gothic cathedrals of greater antiquity and charm, I stop your mouth with stained glass. The vivid colour of the Washington glass not only plays on and with the marble, and dazzles where the light from two windows combine, but radiates a power that apprehends the divine creative energy as well as any form I've seen.

In the afternoon was the National Portrait Gallery, or as much of it as could be accomplished, which frankly was very little as we spent all of our time admiring the exhibition of the Presidents. Every last one was represented, John Adams looked understandably pissed off and Theodore Roosevelt straining to leap from his frame and get on with something more exciting. Apart from the artistic appreciation of the styles of representation, it's also useful to push the presidents back into context, to remind ourselves that reputations rise and fall, are made and remade and the 'best' presidents attracted some of the harshest criticism and vitriolic opprobrium at the time. This should come as no surprise, I guess: the leader beloved of all at all times is probably only a myth. After all, who wants a Hattifattener as President? (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattifattener for some sort of explanation of that most cryptic reference).

And then in the evening was dinner at the Watergate Complex, which particularly appealed as Watergate played a cameo role in the Cold War course at Yale, during which Professor Gaddis, to the bafflement of his graduate student-teachers, declared that the Watergate burglars wouldn't have been caught if they were smart enough to know the right way to tape the doors. Apart from Ben, the Dolphin and myself, at dinner were Max (of previous entries, and also, according to a Yale friend, of 'gay eyes,' although Max is entirely straight) and Alan, another Yale friend, with his boyfriend Lee.

To relate all the stories would take this blog to unimaginable lengths as well as being impenetrable to anyone who wasn't there, but a rather alarming story was told of a thumb grafted onto a chest after an argument with a water moccasin. Considering that Max works for Secretary Rumsfeld, a job with as much public appeal right now as snow-shovelling in the Irkutsk, he was on excellent form; although Max always did work best when stating his case in the YDN against the howls of public opinion. He was, however, annoyed at having failed to spot Secretary Rice at the table next to us. Only when she sashayed out, glamorous in green to the accompaniment of six double-takes, did any of us know she was there. That's probably a useful skill in diplomatic circles.

Despite being dismissed as a 'bland, white fish,' the John Dory was excellent. But the most endearing part of the evening - to me, at least - was when Al thanked me for something, and I said 's'alright'. He, who hasn't seen me in eighteen months, reminded me that I always say that, and he's remembered it from the first time we met. It's that sort of unexpected detail, which suggests that you have played a part in somebody's life, that can not only make a day but somehow convince you, on a much bigger level, that things are going okay. Truly, one can never know the full repercussions of one's actions - and inactions. If we knew everything in advance, there would be no room for hope, nor faith, and I suspect precious little for charity. As I've said before, ignorance is one of the divine mercies.