“Unreal city,” wrote TS Eliot about London in his 1922 poem The Wasteland. If London induced feelings of bewilderment in Eliot one struggles to imagine what he might have thought about Washington DC. Between M Street in Georgetown and Independence Avenue on Capitol Hill are a couple of square miles into which many of the world’s most rarefied institutions are concentrated. Here decisions are taken with resounding affects both across the US and the world. Yet the institutions are cocooned from the actualities over which they preside. There is an air of unreality about majestic Washington.
In truth it’s a bit like Disneyland for the intelligentsia. Bright young kids from the provinces are told that if they study hard and mind their manners they too could end up in the pleasure park of their dreams and never be bothered by reality again, except occasionally in taxi cabs. You pay for an admission ticket and from then on all the rides are free for life.
What shall we go on first? I know – a white-knuckled congressional committee where some red-neck Republican from the mid-west is feeling dizzy, trying to make sense of a million unconnected factoids that have just entered his life. “On Margate sands I can connect nothing with nothing,” wrote Eliot. On the banks of the Potomac is surely where he meant to set this line.
But let us wallow in the congress member’s confusion over UN funds for the restoration of Polish castles destroyed by Nazis and communists: should appeal to the folks in little Warsaw and put this way doesn’t commit anyone to anything. It gives you licence, it keeps the night oil burning and nothing changes. Now give me a break Bambi and go back to Deersville.
Yes and there’s a much better ride to take in Aladdin’s treasury where one rub of the lamp can realize wishes for sports complexes in Pennsylvania, health centres in Colorado and a vague idea for a self-help project in Burkina that will never get marked up. I like it here. Dispensing largesse is a much more serious business than rabble rousing in congress which is why the treasury is housed inside a veritable cave.
Security on Bambi Hill is almost non-existent and the throng of summer tourists includes scout troops from Idaho, the Pittsburg chapter of the antediluvian order of buffaloes and off-duty majorettes from Maine. They turn the place into a zoo. Remember how awful that was having the trippers sprawling down the corridors of the Rayburn building, knocking over the state flags, barging in unannounced, demanding to see their members, if you will excuse the phrase. We didn’t mind representing them in an arm’s length sort of way just as long as we didn’t have anything to do with them. Ugh.
Not the case, thank god, in treasury where unless a visitor’s name is pre-entered in the computer he doesn’t exist.
At last I’m on the ultimate roller coaster. This ride is really something. I think I’ll stay for all time. It’s called never, never land and it takes place in Foggy Bottom. There are simply miles and miles of corridors, a thirst for unreadable reports that the financial architects who built the place promise can never be quenched, and, gosh this is so exciting, people from all over the world. Yes that’s right, pooh-bahs from 100 acres wood, Alices from blunderland and lots of hangers-on from Aladdin’s treasury and Bambi Hill.
Some of them are famous too! In the lift I overheard a conversation between Cruella de Vil (CV) and Pocahontas. “Love, truth and beauty is it my little Poca,” said CV jamming a stiletto heel onto poor Pocahontas’ bare feet. “See what good that will do you. That’s all right for the big picture my love but wait till you to get to England. There’s no race relations bill there, not for another 400 years.”
To be honest I think CV might have lied to get into never never land. She should have explained to Pocahontas there were three departments dealing with her case – gender issues in development, preservation of traditional cultures on non-negotiable sites and extra assistance for COWADSIEs (countries with appalling debts that stretch into eternity). The departments are being reorganized geographically to reflect the new Disney-Aladdin’s treasury-Bambi Hill consensus. Pocahontas’ case must have fallen down the cracks.
CV didn’t impart these subtleties, she spoke too plainly. Could be that she used to work in the White House, opened her mouth out of turn and got shunted off down here. That happens a lot. There are also stories of bad casting when a leading character loses the plot and starts making up angry dialogue. There was a case a few years back at the North and South American Institute for Mutual Tension. Only when EuroDisney explored the theme was it all sorted out. But don’t worry. Usually we are not bothered by reality here and there is always another free ride. Reality is only for the birds.
Oh my god terrible news. The director has come up with a hare-brained scheme to send us out to live in African villages and experience poverty first hand. Apparently some Bambi has given him a hard time about how our salaries are out of sight and we all have private jets. What a nerve, only those above assistant deputy assistant dormouse status do.
This is really terrible. Think what might come about if this reality-check idea caught on. We could be sent out into Washington suburbs to experience life. Yes, you heard correctly, life. I gather it’s still going on out there. Only the other day the newspapers were on about operation gun abyss. A couple of thousand guns were handed in over a two-day period in a gun buyback that cost the city zillions. But that is only a fraction of the total stock. They’re still all out there shooting each other in what we called, in the only report we ever did on Washington, “a highly effective method of population control”.
Things are so bad between here and our dormitories in Maryland and Virginia that there is talk of building a private tunnel. That’s why you keep hearing the mantra “supporting private financial flows”.
Going underground wouldn’t spoil the journey. There is nothing to see anyway, only bombed out slums and dead bodies. It’s now so serious that businesses (you know, those kinds of producers who always dodge their taxes) are calling for a rise in the Virginia state sales tax to fund new schools and roads. They could even start charging for Disney life passes. The park could be closed down and the money used to renovate the slums. It would certainly solve Washington’s problems but what would become of us? I guess we could always move to Brussels. Apparently it’s more Mickey Mouse there than the real thing.
