Instead of sleeping...

...I write. Today was the oddest of days. This morning I had my usual fight with my body about functioning (I say I need to do things, my body says no), and then we walked from the S-bahn station to Topographie des Terrors, a documentation of Nazi war crimes. Or, as I think is perhaps a better way to phrase it, a documentation of the absolute horror and mess Germany was in the period after WWI through at least the construction and destruction of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. I have always had a strange relationship to my German heritage. I'm simultaneously proud and full of guilt, because I love being German, and because a friend of mine "forgave me" for the Holocaust (I won't touch that one too much, but even as an American whose German great-grandparents emigrated before the war, there's always been some implication of guilt).

I picked up a ring at a flea market which has "Vaterland's Dank 1914" on it. Whether or not it's from 1914 or not is debatable, but the rings were given to the women who gave up their jewelry during World War I to the war effort. They received this simple silver band in exchange, and it became incredibly fashionable to wear one as a sign of patriotism. This ring, among others, was on my finger walking into the Topographie des Terrors. Internally, I had a debate. Was it right to wear an emblem of German patriotism into a museum detailing the very worst of German "patriotism"? But I decided: if I was claiming my own German heritage, and not just kidding about some day wanting to live here, I should face exactly what contemporary German society faces, and not romanticize a German identity.

I read nearly every sign. Had I read every sign it would have taken me closer to three hours to get through the whole museum, and given everyone else had finished, I felt some obligation to hurry up at least a little. Before getting even a third of the way through, I was angry. Justice was absent here. A man who helped plan thousands of murders, known to have done so, gets seven years in prison. Another, ten. Another, perhaps a year as a prisoner of war. Declared "permanently unfit to stand trial." Some are executed, and I, one who can't stand even fictional violence, who was even discomfited by the celebration at Osama bin Laden's death because we as Americans were celebrating the end of a human life no matter how terrible, had a single thought: "good." Far worse was confronting the fact that not only did a large number of those culpable escape severe punishment or punishment all together, many actually held continued positions in government. Somehow more heinous than this was the fact that one high-ranking Nazi official went untried-- and finished out his days as a real estate agent. Nothing could be more absurd. The detailing of the murder of psychiatric patients, especially children, only served to further my disgust and anger. I claimed my American-ness more than I ever have before.

And this was followed by the beautiful and upsetting Holocaust memorial. Walking there, I was disgusted with the Berlin I loved before I walked into the museum. Once there, I wandered, almost feeling like I was in a meditation labyrinth. And then I crossed paths with one person after another, who were taking pictures and smiling, or running through the rows. I was pushed over the edge by parents with two children- on scooters. Rattle rattle rattle went the scooters over the cobblestone-like pavement. It was clearly a happy outing, and I wanted to say in my s--- German, "this isn't a playground!" I felt like these parents hadn't said anything to their (albeit young) children about what this place meant, or stood for, and to them it was merely a very cool place to ride their scooters. I ran into Kristen, we talked quietly, and I told her this story. Tears started to run down my cheeks, and I wasn't entirely sure why or whether they were justified or whether my anger was justified or where I belonged. I was hot, dehydrated, and disoriented. All I could do was walk back to the S-bahn station and wipe the tears from my cheeks.

I ate. Worked on a script for my summer camp job, mindlessly retyping a script so I can edit it. Wondered if it would somehow be inappropriate to go to the pool as I had planned, since today would likely be the last day I could. I met my classmates in the lobby, and no one wanted to come, which was expected, and fine. I went back to my room, debated, and then decided to go. 

Allegra walked in just as I was about to leave. We went together, and had a pretty darn good time. I went to dinner by myself, and sat outside, facing the street, watching. Absentmindedly I ran my fingers around the stem of my glass, and felt immensely at peace and grateful that I could sit and have dinner, and a drink, and a beautiful day at the pool with a friend.

At the museum, I was reading the backstory of all of the various men who were profiled. It said where they were born, and where they went to school, and what level they reached, their professions, how they joined the party, etc. Hitler was a failed artist, and there are those who claim that if somebody had just let him be a painter, he would never have become a politician and thus none of the atrocities would have happened. This, I think, is largely wishful thinking and apocryphal storytelling. But I looked for art and education in the lives of these men. Many had little more than a high school education, but others were doctors. One was the son of an opera singer. My theory about how art and education could have prevented these men from becoming what they did (and the women who also participated, because I won't exclude them) went out the window. As an artist, certainly I like to think art has a great deal of power. It's why an actor was one of the many brought in for questioning and imprisonment by the Gestapo--because he was an actor. Because political regimes suppress art and artists because artists like Ai Wei Wei among so many others make statements about things too big to ignore, things that the governments would prefer to push under the rug. But in the face of such utter collapse of humanity (in the traditional sense, since I also noted that only humans have the capability and do torture and systematically eliminate each other), how does art stand up? How does anything have meaning in the face of this?

I'm directing Anouilh's Antigone this summer with kids, and part of that process will entail talking about what it means, and the historical context of the play (Anouilh got it past Nazi censors in occupied France in 1943, despite the fact that it's fairly clearly a challenge to authoritarian governments...). And just today I was re-reading a conversation between Antigone and Creon in which Antigone acknowledges how pointless her actions are, and Creon asks her to be practical, since clearly she can't accomplish anything any way. One person can't independently overturn an entire culture. And yet Antigone tries, just as the small numbers of people in the various Resistance movements fought against those with power. And sometimes each action is just an act of preserving some sense of humanity. Art, to me, preserves our sense of humanity, even if it doesn't have the power to change anything. It is not unlike being aware of the glass under my fingers at the restaurant, and tasting the liquid and feeling being alive. Perhaps this makes no sense at all, but theater in particular is an expression of what it is to be alive, and like that moment at the restaurant outside, is fleeting and only serves to open one's eyes, and does little more than that.

But that can make all the difference.