Joshua Cohen - Witz

A new world.

One day, one night soon, in our time — we await.

A lone long, thin reflecting pool as if a finger accusing in the image of which you only encounter yourself and your failings, though placid, usually — if not for the drizzle slowly descending; an eruptive fountain beyond, its hot, vitreous bubbling burbling the surface of the pool into which it flows sharded freeze, liquid glass smashed over, again, reflecting in sharp tawdry lights the limousines and taxicabs lately arriving, depositing, departing, dropoff; this melt of miniature ice floes, too, sounding like the joyous tears of attractive, in shape, wellinsured widows, loudly through the overprivileged, entitledly adolescent whine of the sirens: police escorts driving into skids, then straightening out again at the curb of the narrow redcarpet unfurled, soaked then shod dirtied halfway to black…at least the snow’s stopped, for now, heavy weather relented, RSVP’d regrets only, leaving us all with only the belated consolation of spring, its droolingly lazy rain not doing the least to distract Security’s athletic attention: strong menschs blondish and big, earpieced, vested and armed, crowded in a circle at the helipad up on the roof, readying the site for its arrivals due in from behind the clouds, any moment; snipers with scaleless eyes and snakeskin gloves hold down their rooftop positions; every available soldier’s either plainclothed on the ground or inside and dressuniformed, stationed Uptown east, to secure the Museum for tonight’s homecoming gala. A flow of fluttery dresses, the funereal austerity of blueblack tuxedos…who’s the corpse, he’s my husband, you have my condolences: notoriously bowtied bodies, they emerge from rare leathers to the fire of bulbs, a crowd mouthed mad for a glimpse or a grope. Menschs hold umbrellas for these guests, for the distance between door and carpet kept dry, then up the stairs, the landing, the stairs again and then in through the doors, into the specially decorated lobby: the thought that maybe they’ve got weather there, too, interiorly, those dim monstrous skies of galleries and halls leading to galleries further, with their own weather coming down from the ceilings, cathedrally vaulted, the swirling atmospheres of high domes.

A Museum, whisper insidevoices — a question, is there anything more indicative of the decline of the universe than a Museum, you think? too many reporters here tonight, watch your words, mind your mouth — though the universe, that’s a Museum itself, a Museum unto itself, isn’t it, wasn’t it? Questions, too many unanswered…is there anything more horrendously depressing, I’m asking? Who’s awake who would know? A Museum isn’t the end of the world, no, it’s the world itself ending, dying, happening as we speak, here and now — the as slow then only more terrifying murder of everything; the lightblind casechoke, display’s duststrangle, the peccant poison known as culture — which itself ’s only to be preserved, to sterility, never to engender again.

And then there’s nothing more repugnant than a fundraiser for a Museum, especially if it’s a formal night like tonight, a tails with a tie and an evening-dress everything down to the pearls affair, out with the jewelrybox, out of the safedeposit box, then the bowtie you tie by hand not the clipon, God forbid, how there’s nothing optional, never is. Mothballs roll their ways down the slick marble stairs, bouncy chuckles, they tripup the salaried slaves in attendance. Take pity, this is the first night they’ve dressed up in a while, have permitted themselves the luxury of…to become the lover of their own sin, an embrace black and cuffed, its enjoyment — how to explain it? please, provide us their thinking. How lately, they’ve reached this permanent stasis, nunc stans and all that, the fat reunited with his brother happy again, in the middle of the metropolitan desert — the goy showing up bearing gifts in the form of simple household solutions, such as variously blinking and beeping organizational helpers, it’s said. Call it another Enlightenment, call it a selfemancipation, a realization, an actualization — call it what you will, you’re already late.

Aleph is for the Alist unfurling up the stairs, each entried step a dark scrawl of angular socialites and their squat, loopy machers being checked off by the door…reformed representations of oldtime Division Street fabricants here with their brotherly cousins, a host of warehouse winners grew up in Midwood now officed in the Army Terminal, Brooklyn, sitting on a pile of home furnishings both used and likenew, the repentant scion of Bowery pushcart poets and their whorish, redheaded Pomeranian landladies I’m talking sixfloor walkup ugly, with socialist leanings escorted by their daughters become correctly cold Yorkville obgyns, explain that — their own daughters, married into the Battery’s recharged investment bankers, corporate moguls in from a Siburbia beyond Connecticut and with kinder of their own lately heiresses doing the dos, jetting the charity circuit, balancing balls — selfmade menschs in every racket and trade that can be legally listed, so far I’ve written over five grand in new business and I don’t even read, can’t even spell; them and the women who made them, they slowly slacken their pace to meet the press just assembled in a row on both sides up the stairs, always upward, Uppermost and then what, you expect a brass ring, take your coat…journalists pent behind cordons like pedigreed livestock who talk, who ask too many questions, too many of the wrong ones, at least, squawky without answer: who are you, who do you think you aren’t…they’ve come in hordes, to barren the buffet, to drink the fountains dry and then the mooned pool, skinnydip, eclipsing in their spectacle what’s hung high from lunettes — entering under a raft of tautblown, entablatured banners proclaiming an exhibition, an eternal exhibition, it’s said, of the way it was, sentiment, nostalgia, Ostalgie if you must from that language itself an exhibit (besides which, we’re kitsched in the East after all—82nd & Fifth), a Museum of an Extinct Race, of a not quite Unconditional Surrender…gevalt, it’s okay, only richtig, go ahead and admit it, of their old lives just skinshed in this very pilgrimage Uptown, up from the overhauled system, the redone 6 Train if they’ll take it, anything green…or trekked on over from the West Side across the darkling Park upon the wings of the crosstown bus, M86 be its name blessed forever and ever — pulled up in their commissions and liveries, not as guests anymore but as hosts, not as visitors of late but at home, masters of ceremony and the attention attendant, making their last adjustments after stepping to sidewalk’s sopping carpet, a remnant of a God’s tongue gotten for a good price right off the floor, off the rack (one woman mortified at how her husband’s schlock satin pants they have too many pleats and break only down by the heel, that and his shirt it’s pleated, too, or maybe just wrinkled, showing a full two inches of cuff, is how crazy, how far we’ve come), them tugging, pinching pulling, a flush wind, hair askew, blown big and unstyled, these gusts of dress exposing scandal, toupees with their yarmulkes still pinned go flying like demons through air. A sweep of light stains the night, swirling carbon arc searches…all turn their heads to the judgment descending, a buzz, a whirr, the noise of skykashering knives: Shade lands on the roof ’s helipad; nothing can begin without him, he’s a sponsor of the evening, the guest of honor and the honored host both, as reelected Head of the Sanhedrin, turned out for the occasion in a slimmingly fitted white tux, frilly lapels baby blue, a matching blue & white kippah atop, alternating colors seamed to its quadrants; it’s trimmed so heavily in platitudinal platinum, it’s amazing he can still keep his head high.