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malsperanzaHad an excuse to play hookey and spend a couple of hours this afternoon at the Byzantine art exhibition at the Met. Incredible show; will need a couple more visits to assimilate all that strangeness and beauty. All that harsh faith.
All that gold.
For now, alls I'm gonna say is, Boris and Gleb: OTP! They so wanted to be holding hands. No picture of them on the museum's website, alas; you'll just have to go see the show, and find them standing in their gilded panel (o sages standing in God's holy fire/as in the gold mosaic of a wall), looking valiant, with their hands not quite touching.
Also Sts. Sergius and Bacchus: definitely OTP.
Mmm. Medieval Russian warrior saints.
Annals of Spring
Walking across Central Park afterward, I saw:
1) First robin
2) Pair of grackles grackling
3) Shadblow and redbud in bloom
4) Man playing Bach flute under the Greywacke Arch, which has excellent acoustics for baroque flute. You could hardly hear the mistakes for all the pretty echoes, which lent each note a golden, ringing sweetness. The echoes under the Greywacke Arch make one's footsteps sound like those of a spy meeting a contact in a bad movie: tap. taptap. tap. In fact, I think about 30 movies have filmed spy-meets here. The Bach soundtrack gave it a nice sophisticated touch, as in a bad European spy movie. So I handed off my intel to the agent by tossing fitty cent into the flutist's instrument case, and passed on looking as casual as possible.
5) On the Great Lawn the Squirrel Brigade was out in force, including:
-Red squirrel (quite rare these days)
-Pair of fat grey squirrels fighting over a bagel
-Another grey squirrel, demonstrating excellent posture by sitting very upright, like Maggie Smith doing Lady Bracknell
So, the poet is right, and there is more than one kind of gold. The gold of Byzantium endures untarnished, though Byzantium is dust. And as for the silver-gilt haze of trees in new leaf? Well.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost
I also saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodil fluttering and dancing in the breeze, and I'd like to say that they outdid the sparkling waves in glee, but they were in buckets in front of a florist's shop and looked perfectly sedate.
Still, oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, I expect they will flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.
...Especially as a vacant mood seems to be my natural state.
Good old Wordsworth. Can't hold a candle to Frost most days, but he's a dear.
All in all, four kinds of gold in one day isn't bad.
Yes, I am rich.
All that gold.
For now, alls I'm gonna say is, Boris and Gleb: OTP! They so wanted to be holding hands. No picture of them on the museum's website, alas; you'll just have to go see the show, and find them standing in their gilded panel (o sages standing in God's holy fire/as in the gold mosaic of a wall), looking valiant, with their hands not quite touching.
Also Sts. Sergius and Bacchus: definitely OTP.
Mmm. Medieval Russian warrior saints.
Annals of Spring
Walking across Central Park afterward, I saw:
1) First robin
2) Pair of grackles grackling
3) Shadblow and redbud in bloom
4) Man playing Bach flute under the Greywacke Arch, which has excellent acoustics for baroque flute. You could hardly hear the mistakes for all the pretty echoes, which lent each note a golden, ringing sweetness. The echoes under the Greywacke Arch make one's footsteps sound like those of a spy meeting a contact in a bad movie: tap. taptap. tap. In fact, I think about 30 movies have filmed spy-meets here. The Bach soundtrack gave it a nice sophisticated touch, as in a bad European spy movie. So I handed off my intel to the agent by tossing fitty cent into the flutist's instrument case, and passed on looking as casual as possible.
5) On the Great Lawn the Squirrel Brigade was out in force, including:
-Red squirrel (quite rare these days)
-Pair of fat grey squirrels fighting over a bagel
-Another grey squirrel, demonstrating excellent posture by sitting very upright, like Maggie Smith doing Lady Bracknell
So, the poet is right, and there is more than one kind of gold. The gold of Byzantium endures untarnished, though Byzantium is dust. And as for the silver-gilt haze of trees in new leaf? Well.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost
I also saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodil fluttering and dancing in the breeze, and I'd like to say that they outdid the sparkling waves in glee, but they were in buckets in front of a florist's shop and looked perfectly sedate.
Still, oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, I expect they will flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.
...Especially as a vacant mood seems to be my natural state.
Good old Wordsworth. Can't hold a candle to Frost most days, but he's a dear.
All in all, four kinds of gold in one day isn't bad.
Yes, I am rich.
