Thursday, March 09, 2006

Ok, so I am on the plane, and we just flew over the Alps and they were huge and beautiful and next to me is an empty seat, and in the seat by the window is Ramsey Clark, and I know that he has been “an advisor to presidents” but I can’t quite remember in what context or anything in particular but I know that he is probably the most important flying companion I have ever had.  At the airport in Paris I met four of the US team including Susan (head honcho from Philly) Judith Chomsky (yes, related, very closely) and Anthony (both human rights lawyers from New York), and Teresa (a journalist from Washington).  They all seem serious and professional and they know what they are doing and my first impulse is to run, and if not to run, to somehow excuse myself because obviously as an artist I have no business being here or participating in such a serious endeavor. 

Ok so I am on the plane, and it is very high up in the air and I am extremely tired because last night I woke up several times when Vincent called because the cut switch in our car in Philadelphia was accidentally turned off and he couldn’t find the code and he was frustrated, and I was worried about him and I really miss him and then I was in Paris and right after my phone ran out of units I remembered the cut switch number and knew that I couldn’t tell him until the morning when I could buy new units at a newsstand.

So I am on the plane and it is a bit bumpy but not really and most of the people on the plane look like people anywhere else, just going on a plane trip maybe to Cleveland or Seattle and nothing at all is freaking me out so I am happy but tired and looking forward to getting to Amman, a city with a citadel in a spot where the mosque was built on the foundations of another mosque which was built on the foundations of a church so old that the city around it was called Philadelphia so I guess that made it Greek but I have never heard of it.

Here on the plane I think about the conversation and emails that told of the long and arduous voyage of the torture victims as they made their way over the last 3 or 4 days from Baghdad and elsewhere to Amman, and they were stopped for 9.5 hours at the Jordanian border and one may not have gotten over (it is a bit unclear) and the Iraqi drivers did not get over, and the whole group got to Amman between 3 and 4 in the morning and they are sleeping and resting at the hotel and waiting for our arrival.  When I was at the gate and I met Susan and Anthony and Judith and they talked about this incredible voyage and whether or not the Iraqis had arrived; it seemed like somehow I had walked into the wrong movie, that I was put in a class too advanced, for anyone that had made such an extraordinary voyage couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me and my 8 copper plates and new diamond point stylus and 10 sheets of folded paper and a desire to make books.

So right now the film, what was it?, is ending and the credits are rolling and Ramsey Clark is marking up papers with a blue bic pen and the papers are printed out and hand written on yellow legal pad pages, and he is so thin, that I now remember that when Judith Chomsky first said that he was Ramsey Clark I thought, “But he can’t be because he is so thin,” and she came back to tell us that he is going on to Iraq and it is all very exciting like living inside the front page of the times.

And I started a book by a British author I don’t care about since I want to read “Close to the Knives” which I left on the very fast train from Quimperle to Paris. The plane is going down and we are crossing over into Israel, between Nazareth and Jerusalem on the inboard map and there are a lot of storm clouds as we are crossing, and the plane is very bumpy so I can’t help thinking that it is stormy over the holy land and that things get bumpy in the middle east and Ramsey Clark is talking to me about the trial of Saddam Hussein and how the Americans set up the court, passed the statues and offer protection and advisors, more than a hundred a day, and how he thinks that if Hussein is executed it will be a further destabilizing act.  It isn’t until later, in the airport, after I change money and buy a visa and have my bag searched because the 8 copper plates must have set off some kind of reaction that Judith Chomsky explains that Ramsey Clark is Saddam Hussein’s defense lawyer, and that he is doing a very dangerous thing, and could be killed at any moment.  The whole thing is a bit weird, and I have a bit of a metallic taste on my tongue.

On the way to the hotel it is raining hard and cold, and then it sleets, and we pay 18 dinar for the ride (split between two people) and I am not sure that I really know how much a dinar is exactly.  I doubt that I will actually every really know.

-Daniel