The New Jerusalem, and: So Many Wows

The New Jerusalem

The mother and father turn the map over, confused,while their daughter checks her phone, so I say

This is my campus, let me help you, and after I tellthem how to find the admissions office, the father says

What will Patricia learn at your university,and I say We will teach her that beauty is something

she can recognize and master, that it’s on a scalewe understand and in this way differs from

the sublime, which is mysterious, even terrifying,and he turns to his wife and says Did you hear that,

honey? I knew we’d picked the right school.And the mother comes over and says Once she

learns this, will the Holy City come down fromheaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband?

And I tell her No, that won’t happen until she learnsthat you ought not distinguish where you cannot divide,

yet you must divide, or you will never grasp the whole.The mother fingers a tube of lip balm and says

And that will be the New Jerusalem, when Godmakes his dwelling place among the people?

And he will dwell with them, and they will behis people, and God himself will be with them,

with our Patricia and the others? And I say Yes,yes, that’s right, only they won’t know he’s there.

So Many Wows

    When I tell the desk clerk at the Delhi hotel we are goingto the Republic Day Parade, she jumps up        and down and claps her hands and says, “So many wows!”    In fact, that’s what everybody says when

    I tell them we are going to the Republic Day Parade,and sure enough, there are mounted columns, mechanized        columns, a t-72 full-width mine plough, a motorcycle corps    including one man who sips a cup of tea as he sits

    sidesaddle on his bike and another reading the newspaper whileperching nonchalantly on the back of his, helicopters,        jets, camels, elephants, folk dancers, festival floats, and tanks.    Indians say that, for a project of any size, one needs three gods:

    Ganesh to remove obstacles, Durga for effort, and Lakshmito pay for everything. Well … Ganesh stayed home        today! There are plenty of obstacles, starting with conflicting    directions on how to get to the parade site, traffic jams

    both automotive and pedestrian, an insufficient numberof water vendors which, come to think of it, may be         a good thing since there’s also an insufficient number    of portable toilets, and, most alarming of all on

    an otherwise very pleasant day, an insufficient effortto keep the crowd from stampeding, which it does        often with enthusiasm and much hilarity. Yet nothing stirs us    so much as the music: the skirling pipes, the trumpet

    fanfares, the drumbeats so loud you feel as thoughit is you who is being pounded, not the drum. James        Boswell told Dr. Johnson that music “affected me to such    a degree as often to agitate my nerves painfully,

    producing in my mind alternate sensations of patheticdejection, so that I was ready to shed tears, and of daring        resolution, so that I was inclined to rush into the thickest    part of the battle,” which is exactly the way I feel when

    the bands march by me in the Republic Day Parade.“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson in reply, “I should never hear it,        if it made me such a fool.” Okay, but sign me up, sergeant!    Why, I think I could face any foe if I listened to the right

    music on the right day. Yet many of the greatest wowsare silent: after the Republic Day parade, we take        the train to Aurangabad and from there drive to Ajanta    and Ellora, where dharma-crazed monks carved

    hillside temples in the middle of nowhere, buildingstwice the size of the Pantheon yet forgotten        and covered for centuries by vines until British officers    on a tiger hunt see their prey leap through the foliage,

    and, when they pursue it, find themselves slack-jawedbefore paintings...