The Imitated

(the view from Walters)

B'more can be very charming when it wants to be (like when the cashier guys at the grocer ignore my cute outfit but compliment my G-Shock watch). Luckily, today was one such day.  Both Roommate Claude and I realized that we didn't have as much work as we thought we had and went on our own little adventures today.  I stayed local and went to the museum.  The Walters Art Museum is only a block from my place.  I think it's bigger than the Frick and Phillips collections, but not much more, and very manageable.  Despite all this, I've only been there thrice, and only once did I pay attention to the art.  Instead, I like to sit there and write.  If I was a professional writer-- a real one and not just a professional writer of papers-- I'd make my home there.  It's just the right amount of quiet, just the right amount of light, and I can sit there for as long as I want without overpaying for pastries or smelling like coffee grease.  Inspiration abounds there and I find that art erases the constraints of time and place in ways other mediums cannot.  I can hardly relate to the China today, to the rural hardships and poverty I've seen, to the rigid social structures, let alone the China of 50, 100, or 150 years ago (and what of the 1,500?).  But I found myself staring at a 500-year-old statue of guanyin today, an enlightened immortal I do not acknowledge, and sensing the beauty and lightness the artist wanted to convey.  And so it is.  In rooms of elephants and warriors I do not worship, stiff-lipped gentry I do not know, there for a snapshot, I think I get it, in 2012, and I'm charmed by what I see.