Saturday, 06 April 2002 | Attica and Afghanistan

The slogan of the documentary film festival I'm living through this weekend is "How much reality can you handle?" Today I discovered the answer to that question is about eight hours. From nine-thirty to five-thirty, almost like regular job duty, I traveled from Afghanistan to a World War II Japanese internment camp to Pittsburgh in the 40s to the financial district in New York City on September 11th to Attica Prison in 1971, and, finally, to 1985, to a seven-by-twelve room in Beruit somewhere near the airport.

By the time I'd taken pictures of the question-and-answer sessions after each film, I had an average of fifteen minutes to stand in the sun, squinting, and digest what I'd just seen before being yanked into another time and place. My brain began to make connections between the films that weren't there; during the Attica film, there was a shot in which I could see the Twin Towers looming above, and I half-expected a plane to crash into one of them, which of course didn't happen.

The antidote, of course, was to wear a t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms underneath a few pounds of blankets, sleep for two hours, wake up to Back Porch Music playing on my alarm clock with my cat sleeping next to my hip, and to listen and think in the dark, so that's what I did.

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Today my parents have been married 34 years. So, happy anniversary to them.