Night and Fog

last night my yin and i went to a birthday gathering for a friend of ours, and arrived to find three Buddhists sitting around a table, drinking liquor drinks and eating chicken nachos. although this sounds like the start of a really awesome joke, it is also beside the point.

the point is that we left after 9pm, when the heat lightening began giving way to the heavy smell of coming summer rain. we biked home before the downpour, got chased by one dog, and settled in for the night to watch Alain Renais' Nuit et brouillard:

the film was recommended to me some weeks ago by a professor on my thesis committee and, seeing as how he is also the one who turned me on to Sans soleil, his suggestions have taken on a certain gravitas, comparable to that of Bazin or Benjamin.

but this, too, is beside the point.

the point is that i was unprepared for Nuit and brouillard, in spite of having watched Hiroshima, mon amour less than a month ago. the film is thirty minutes of Dachau - images far harsher than any i had ever seen before: a basket of human heads, a pile of human hair the size of a gymnasium.

even seeing these things, it is difficult to imagine the enormity of this evil, and even more incomprehensible to think of the infrastructure required to enact it. the film made these things explicit, making mention of the most mundane aspects of building a concentration camp: architects, building contractors, plumbers - an army of regular people making bids on the latest juicy government contract.

i tried to fathom an entire society mobilized in the name of warfare and killing. failing, i turned to math:

6 million/5 years = 1.2 million/year
1.2 million/365 days = 3288/day
3288/day = 137/hour
137/hour = 2.28/minute
2.28/minute = 1 person/25 seconds
every minute of every day, non-stop, for 5 years

how many 25 seconds have elapsed reading thus far?

[lapse]

i woke this morning with heavy, sore eyes and a rumbling anxiety in my stomach. i do not remember what images i dreamed in the night;

and yet, if we stop looking, how can we ever hope to remember?