The world isn't bleak, it's thrilling.

There was a conference at school tonight. It was a screening of excerpts of Rwandan genocide survivors called "Voices of Rwanda" and then a question and answer session with the executive producer.

I joked to a friend that this was one of the two topics about which the New School teaches. This and Walter Benjamin.

The testimonies were somber and quiet, usually. The video was only of the faces of three survivors with subtitles and an explanatory caption between the stark, grave images. It was graphic and sucked the air out of the room.
It was similar to the Fortunoff Archive at Yale, more so than the Shoah Foundation at USC, both archives of recorded Holocaust testimonies.

Fortunoff doesn't have clips online. It only gives out full interviews. Shoah has clips as if to simplify the experience of each survivor into a buzzword, but that isn't in Rwanda.

After studying genocide for a year now, I have made it so that I can picture atrocity and breathe at the same time. It's a feat. Withstanding the truth of the testimony is a juggling act of rationalizing and unfocusing, disassociating.

The footage ended and I asked a question about courts. He gave an answer. Other people asked questions and he answered. The shocked witnesses of witnesses stewed in their chairs. The inquisition was ending and a woman stood from the back.
"I just want to say Thank you, Taylor. Thank you for your work. As a survivor it was hard to watch, but thank you."

It's easy to pretend that the world is split up into different universes and traveling to the African world is as crazy as traveling to the Moon.
But she was in the room with me.

I couldn't pretend anymore and cried for the first time in a while.

I wanted to tell her that I was glad she was alive, but I thought that didn't make a difference.

I talked to her afterward, anyway. There was a reception with food and drink.. A woman in the elevator spoke truly: "There needs to be lubrication after something like that."

I may have a career in this.