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Hungover
History
There’s
an old expression that goes, “May you live in interesting
times, and catch the attention of important people.”
It’s a curse.
It’s a funny kind of curse, wishing prominence or historical
significance on someone, but it doesn’t take much analysis
to see how such a thing would have a serious potential for
suckage: Yes, power and prominence have their perks—we’d guess—but
also a much, much higher incidence than average of island
banishment, guillotine and politically motivated GSW, stuff
like that.
And—at a less personal, less bodily traumatic level—even involvement
on the periphery of an anointed historical movement or moment
can set you up for a fall. When you, ordinary nobody that
you are, feel the adrenal buzz of being involved in Something
That Will Matter, when you are actively engaged in something
larger than yourself, when you feel attached to greater humanity,
even in some way charged with its custody and care, when you
stand on the shoulders of giants . . . well, you make a pretty
easy target, even from miles away, actually.
This, I think, in part explains the current blue-state funk,
the Great Mope of ’04. It’s a crushing feeling to find yourself
on the wrong side of history—to be a loser.
Certainly, I was susceptible. It sucks to think that this
historical moment—freighted as it seemed to be with such “meaning,”
promising as it seemed to a sweeping statement about the nature
of America’s personality—passed me, and other ideologically
compatible folk, by. It sucked like the first Neanderthal
hint that the Cro-Mags (with their less-muscled frames and
their puny brains) were somehow—some- fucking-how—getting
the jump on us. It was easy to be cynically partisan, and
shortsightedly competitive.
But I’m feeling a lot better now: I’ve eased back into my
comfortable personal insignificance. This isn’t defeatism
or self-pity, by the way. And it’s no concession. It’s just
a recalibration and a reprioritization—and a refusal to view
history as a series of discrete and disconnected big moments
determined and dictated to the losers by the winners of those
moments.
The analogy that comes to mind is the roadside signs you see
from time to time designating a “Historic Area,” as if the
area you drove through two miles back was freshly constructed,
historyless—“Mmm. It’s still got that new-reality smell.”
Me, I’m a punk: I don’t want to be told what to look at. And
I don’t accept the evaluations of people who pronounce the
judgments of history on history’s behalf. And I’m embracing
a different notion of interesting and important. And I’m paying
attention to a different stretch of highway. And I owe my
restored balance to a road trip, a mild whiskey hangover,
a famous American author and a woman who’s been dead for 182
years. (Note: I’m not saying this will work for everyone.)
On a recent weekend, I traveled to suburban Baltimore to visit
some friends; and, after a night of gentle debauch, we headed
downtown for a stomach-lining greasy breakfast and to get
the nickel tour of the port city. On our way through one of
the rougher sections of town, my resident friend pointed out
the church where Edgar Allan Poe is buried and, at my sudden
prompt, made a hard U-turn to allow me a chance to check it
out.
Baltimore’s Westminster Church is an unlikely burial spot
for so iconic an author. The neighborhood is shabby and neglected—on
that particular Sunday, it had the feel of an unused movie-set
ghetto. Headstones and small monuments ring the church haphazardly,
as if those interred were buried where they fell rather than
placed purposely. This, even though a placard indicated the
Poe had, in fact, been removed from his original place in
the yard to accommodate the slightly grander headstone purchased,
in part, with pennies solicited from Baltimore schoolchildren.
The poor guy’s fared little better in death than in life:
a panhandled tomb on an overlooked little corner in a shitty
section of a struggling city. And who reads him these days?
Precocious ninth-graders? History’s just pounded this guy,
and he was both interesting and important.
Slightly stunned by this nearly random encounter with the
callousness of history, I found a seat on a small raised crypt
a few feet away from Poe’s slab and took in some of the other
markers. Behind me, a simple headstone informed of the passing
of young Fanny H. Peachy, “consort of Thomas G. Peachy.”
Fanny, we’re told, stoically, “was born November the 24, 1799;
and departed this transitory life February 11, 1822, in the
23rd year of her age.
“The
amiable qualities of this interesting female were such as
endeared her to all who knew her; she was a dutiful child
and a truly affectionate wife. In early life she bore the
cross of Jesus, and by that life has left ample reason to
believe that she has ascended to the bright realms of bliss.”
It’s a lukewarm and fading little paragraph on a worn headstone.
There’s not much to suggest that dutiful, affectionate Fanny
lived a particularly notable life; however interesting a female
she was in her own right, to the best of my knowledge, she
has escaped the attention of important people.
Maybe it was just the slow, pokey sadness of the end of the
weekend combined with the gauzy brain fog of the hangover,
but the whole scene had me a bit sentimental. Before we split,
I dropped a penny on the Poe memorial, adding one to the row
that visitors have left in homage; and while I left nothing
for unremarkable Fanny, I—heathen that I am—wished quietly
that she did in fact ascend to whatever bright realms await
those who avoid the curse.
If she needs the coin, she can bum it from Edgar when she
sees him.
—John
Rodat
jrodat@metroland.net
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