day five: the places you forget to forget

At the Charles Art Museum in Baltimore over Christmas last year, I spent a long time walking through the Asian art, looking at tiny Japanese inro and netsuke. Passing through a sitting room between two galleries, I became transfixed on this tower and old church sitting outside the window and had this complete urge to sit and be quiet and stare out the window, which is a common impulse I learned growing up as an only child.



I got really good at sitting and watching things long enough to see them change, like this rose bush that would grow all spring until it could tap my bedroom window. I wanted to watch for the opposite reason at the art museum, because I was looking at this tower and church that had been around for dozens of decades. These things aren't going anywhere, and they don't age. This actualization seems incredibly simple, I know, but sometimes that's how thoughts work. You certainly intrinsically understand that monuments age differently than people, but one day you see something that makes you feel the fact.

And this certain fact felt quiet, like a blue but not black evening. I thought of the Cure song The Big Hand, remembered first fall chills, felt a little woozy like I'd had coffee too late in the afternoon. And I was obscured, pea coated, and common.