Paul Wolf Remembers

It's the kind of virus that crawls down into the depths of your soul and remains there to stay.

The world develops an unusual hue under the guise of a fever. Your mind retreats into itself in confusion.

Sometimes, we all need to be delirious.

The burgeoning flood of papers and due dates threatens to envelop my senses. So my body, in self defiance, unlocks the door for a nasty form of illness to creep in. My government teacher will soon be receiving my opinion of the Patriot Act as thought up by a 100 degree brain.

Mr. All Around inquired as to the lack of written appeals recently. I think many ponder the way in which I write. Contrary to the assumption that I spend moments worrying over metaphors, This writing is how I think. I talk to myself in synedoche and simile, and the sole occasions in which I realise I am different in that approach occurs when others remark on it.

The end of a period of time came knocking today. My involvement in a self written play about the holocaust came to a peak when I stood on that stage this afternoon, sweating with the exertions of the virus. Inga, the dear soul for whom we worked so hard, stood at that microphone and cried. Afterwards, shells of women shuffled up to me in their Chanel No. 5 and orthopedic shoes. In thick accents, they told us how they lived through it. These were the people on the cattle cars. These were the souls bricked up in ghettos.

They told me that each word went straight to the heart. I've never had such an experience. These little old ladies walked through the depths of hell and survived.

The characters in the play were real. However, in those moments, we understood all that they cared for. We knew them as real life.

What happened so many years ago hit home today.

And that will remain when the virus has been conquered.