Wounded
The problem is that any pile of stones is passive, or dead, whereas the Holocaust is still very much alive for many people. In fact, I�ve striven -- how successfully, I don�t know -- to keep it alive for my children. When they were three, I read them Maus, at four Elie Wiesel�s Night. By five they knew that the best wooden toys and tastiest �gummy� candies were frequently made in Germany and therefore forbidden in our house. At six, they�d rather walk than ride in a Mercedes. The Shoah was mother�s milk to my children; the sun rises in the east and the Germans kill the Jews.
Mr. Eisenman's plan is designed to reflect upon some of that feeling, and so far it has succeeded in its mission precisely because of the intensity of the debate about it that has ensued for more than a decade. Now, ironically, the very construction of Mr. Eisenman�s ideological dream will bring the debate to an end, and I worry that his memorial may provide closure for the wound that I�d prefer remain open.
Apropos, I suggest that a symbolic recreation of the Shoah be enacted, perhaps something along the lines of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, or call it performance art. Each year a Jew should be sacrificed on the altar of Mr. Eisenman�s elegant plaza.
link from BookSlut, who purports to love this person's work.
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It is called An Immodest Proposal. But it defaults on its claim. Swift had compassion driving his satire. There's no compassion here. And Swift himself was well-fed and in no danger, which made his complete lack of self-interest further evidence of his compassion.
This guy has only bitterness. And not even toward the right place.
Or he's being so deeply ironic it's completely opaque. A quick survey of his online work makes that seem unlikely.
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This is the spirit that will kill us all. I'm having trouble seeing an alternative.
They won't turn around, and they can't win, and they're armed with nuclear weapons, and they're insane.
Not that most everybody else isn't progressing steadily down the path of madness. It's contagious.
I have no idea where it began, I don't care either. There's no one here who's sane now, I know that. No one.
It's starting to become clear that there are more than a few people in the Jewish community for whom the Holocaust was the ultimate in horror because it happened to so many Jews, not because it happened to so many innocent human beings.
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Humility and compassion, courage, and the willingness to sacrifice everything we have so that some as yet unborn people can live. That's what's needed.
What we have and what we're getting is greed and selfishness amplified to the level of metaphysics.
What we have are people so given to vengeance as justice they've lost all sense of the future as something fragile and in need of care.
What we have is the inverted bitterness of a creature that knows it's unworthy, knows it's going to die, and insists that everything that is worthy die along with it.
That's textbook evil. Right there. Masquerading as reaction and outrage.
