Dream Museum
Scheherazade and the Sultan by the Iranian painter Sani ol molk (1849-1856)
The dream began midway like they often seem to, always being thrown into a scene with no preamble. A group was touring a museum–or similar public place–approaching its completion though still under construction. In this country or in Europe somewhere–in the country of dreams. Only after waking did I realize how fantastic a setting it was–like a work of art itself. All of polished stone. The ones I had hooked up with, they came across as experts–and I wasn’t sure I fit in–these were erudite souls, perhaps architects, though sounding more like art scholars. We were roaming here and there, all in varying degrees of astonishment at what we were viewing, meandering freely, no guides in sight.
The edifice was a cross between an abstraction and a recreation from ancient times, perhaps Roman, with a myriad of different levels, some with broad steps leading between them and other levels formed of varied-height stone ledges–all of polished stone, though areas were still uncleaned of the construction debris. One needed to watch so as not to step off an edge, as there were no handrails–yet to be installed? more likely absent handrails altogether, being visually cleaner without. It was, clearly in my mind, an abstract volume such as a modernist architect might create, yet because it was stone, its antecedents ran back millennia.
Whatever sources of light weren’t visible, from neither windows nor artificial, though there wasn’t a lack of it falling on the light-hued stone planes.
At one point, I stepped up onto a wide plinth where the stone ceiling was lower as well, creating a strongly horizontal volume. Here I studied the details. Lying within the space were sections of stone columns, a few capitals, even broken statue body parts strewn about in the fashion of an archaeological dig, only the whole of it was brand new. In the manner of the Getty Villa in LA, recreating a Pompeian villa–yet not wholly a faithful recreation seeing this was a dream place.
A man from the group I was with–there were but a handful of women–commented snidely on the artifacts intended to–recreate–depict–represent–the sculptures of antiquity, though I don’t remember his words–the shorthand of dreams where things implied often aren’t spoke aloud. Some of the sculptures were yet incomplete themselves, as if still being carved–such as Michelangelo’s famous unfinished pieces.
The Awakening Slave by Michelangelo photo by Academia.org
In another room, a grand volume dominated by its rectilinear geometry, the rose-colored panels of granite formed the walls, ceiling and floor repeating the room’s overall geometry. The room was well detailed, like I.M. Pei might have done, and I made an approving comment, to which the same man replied superiorly “it was to be expected.” Some people just can’t help themselves.
Interesting to realize interior conversations continue in our dreams.
None of these rooms had doorways between them but flowed one to the next in an enormous sprawl of interconnected spaces, and everywhere I touched unfinished objects, even held one or two in my hands. One small piece, maybe a volute or bracket carved in the vague form of an angel, lay loose, not yet being fixed in place, so I was careful to return it thinking how odd that it lay about yet unsecured.
Then, looking toward what seemed like the central part of the museum, the space rose several stories in a single volume, on top of which soared yet other parts. High overhead, a series of vivid, pastel-colored colonnades, one above the next, stepping back like I was seeing the heights of a grand palace, possibly the Alhambra, climbing the hollow interior. It was as if the builders had turned an exterior massing inside out, Scheherazade’s palace recreated in these formal volumes of stone.
This had to be the product of a fabulous private wealth, I recall saying, with the implication that there was something unscrupulous in the fortunes the edifice came from. How else could this oversized folly have ever been willed into existence–even if only in a dream? It was intended as a public place, not a private Pompeian villa, so the expense was justified, as was the outsized fortune which paid for it? A common dilemma in the age of ancient kings as in an age of inordinate modern wealth. A constancy through millennia, this disparity.
How does the mind produce these full blown images? Where do they come from? The thought stayed with me long after I’d awakened. All this was inside my own imagination? Like a game world my brain had created, sparing no details, for its own amusement. Though I wished, once awake, that I could return to the dream place at will, explore it further, even dwell in it. Perhaps I should try.
U.S. Grant
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. John 8.7
The San Francisco mob that pulled down Ulysses Grant’s monument knew neither the Bible nor history. Either that, or the rioters believed themselves purer of heart than the man who saved Lincoln’s Union.
Not only could Grant read, but he could write well–one of only a handful of U.S. presidents who could. And he was capable of holding conflicting thoughts simultaneously—something that evidently caused cognitive dissonance in the Frisco rioters.
By no means a perfect person–which he was the first to admit–but without him, Lincoln very well may have failed. And Grant’s family came from the South, no less. He wasn't the scion of a great Virginia family, or the son of a Revolutionary War hero like the noble Robert E. Lee, but unlike Lee, he saw the mortal peril to the country. And unlike Lee, he chose to stand against the feudal dictatorship of the slavers.
The folks in San Francisco need to read their history before judging it. Something about casting stones.
“My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all Constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.”
U. S. Grant writing to his father in the runup to the Civil War.
Reading the quote, Grant sounds much like Lincoln at the war’s outset in his ambivalence toward slavery itself, but with a clear eye as to the importance of holding the country together, even at the expense of civil war. So yes, he was a man of his time. That he wasn’t without flaws–that’s why we read history, why we need to remember it.
Ulysses S. Grant once owned another human being–and freed him. So that condemns him in some eyes. Fair enough, I might do the same if my ancestors were dragged in chains from a slave boat. But do they get to decide this for the rest of us like a self-anointed Supreme Court? I call bullshit on this.
Lincoln, among others, proposed the Federal government buy the slaves their freedom, though the Abolitionists would hear none of it and the plantation class refused to give up their cheap labor. So rather than that albeit awkward moral compromise, the country paid with 620,000 lives–what was the more heinous cost? Agreed that the plantation class didn’t deserve to be saved from themselves, but what of the country’s young men?
No one could grasp what a coming war would cost–or at least not well enough to make a sincere effort to avoid it, North and South alike. The country failed its youth and left it to Lincoln and Grant—and the soldiers and sailors—to clean up their mess.
“ ‘If compensation is to be given at all,’ the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison said at the National Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia in 1833, ‘it should be given to the outraged and guiltless slaves, and not to those who have plundered and abused them.’ ”
from New York Times’ article, When Slaveowners Got Reparations
In many ways, the San Francisco mob very much resembles eighteenth century purity-testers such as William Lloyd Garrison.
More than mouthing the words, Grant put his uniform back on, left his family and reported for duty to save the Union. I can forgive him for not being Jesus, though evidently some now are having a time understanding they aren’t either.
Hypocrisy is well and doing fine.
People Gone Wild
The Quarantine is dead. Long live the Quarantine!
These past few weeks, we don’t pass nearly as many walkers to wave at while walking Ms. Layla. Ever since March, we had been seeing strangers right and left, and I was curious about where they’d been hiding out all these years, but didn’t want to come across as “that person” so I just waved and smiled instead.
And the water craft–not as many kayaks and paddle boards being launched–most have been put back in the beach racks. About the only ones left on the streets are the dog walkers, and we just nod and pass each other, keeping to opposite sides of the street.
But the cars – OMG, the cars. Do all those speedsters need to go so fast? Seriously, dudes, slow down. It’ll still be there when you arrive, whatever ‘it’ is.
It was nice during the quarantine to think the community was rediscovering itself, that a radical transformation from couch to trekking, as our English cousins call it, was happening. Though it didn’t last too long. Summer’s upon us, yes, the humidity and the thunderstorms, but still…
I had this fantasy that after the Covid-19 was over, we’d hold this march, a parade starting at one end of the community and going to the other, a long line of smiling, united neighbors. Now, I don’t know.
The randomness, the capricious enforcing of the health regs–where did that come from? I thought this was a country of law-abiding people (for the most part). Arbitrarily ignoring what few recommendations we’re receiving from the Feds, one could confuse the country as the Disunited Cantons of America. We’re all living in our personal Appalachian hollers for all we seem to consider anyone not of our immediate kin.
Seems the country is missing an opportunity to pull itself together. Sure, the Prez isn’t helping, but these days it doesn’t appear we need much encouragement to disagree with each other, left, right and in the middle.
Sebastian Junger writes in Tribe that the sociologist, Charles Fritz came to believe the mass bombing campaigns by both sides during World War II were futile in breaking the wills of their enemies; the opposite resulted.
“After the war [Fritz] turned his attention to natural disasters in the United States and formulated a broad theory about social resilience. He was unable to find a single instance where communities that had been hit by catastrophic events lapsed into sustained panic, much less anything approaching anarchy. If anything, [Fritz] found that social bonds were reinforced during disasters, and that people overwhelmingly devoted their energies toward the good of the community rather than just themselves.”
from Tribe, by Sebastian Junger
So greeting strangers during a pandemic that I met in the street isn’t much of a gesture, though the feeling of comradeship in troubled times was sincere.
A family down a couple blocks from us has a plastic bin set by the street asking for donations for a local food bank as their contribution to the needy impacted by the economic shutdown. On a piece of blackboard beside the bin, Lisa had been posing daily brain teasers to entertain walkers–boosting morale and putting smiles on faces as they passed. She’d go out every morning with chalk and eraser, say hi to Layla, then write the answer to the previous day’s teaser, and ask a fresh one. When it rained, she’d clean the slate and repost the messages.
At one point Lisa asked for new teasers, a sure sign she was running out of ideas after weeks of a good run.
After George Floyd’s murder and all that followed, she stopped posting the puzzles and drew a simple candle in profile on the blackboard–yet continued asking for donations. She was doing what others were doing “toward the good of the community.” Modest and touching, she was one more person devoting energy toward the common good, and it was warming to feel she cared–that my neighbor cared. You can catch her on the PBS NewsHour: Lisa Desjardins covers Capital Hill.
Though there are far fewer walkers these days, and I’m afraid we’ve most of us drifted back into our safe lives of isolation, having forgotten what was too briefly learned from the quarantine.