🦋 Monuments and memorials
We're back in New Jersey; the trip is over, we're back in one piece. This morning (Easter Morning)  dawned bright and clear (and a little chilly), and we took the metro in to DC for one more look at the mall. We walked down to the tidal basin to look at cherry blossoms -- but yesterday's rain had brought most of them down. Walked around the perimeter of the basin and took some photos of the Jefferson Memorial (which I had pretty much forgotten even existed -- the sun shining on its marble dome took my breath away), and then up to the WWII Veterans' Memorial. I was kind of lost in thought as we walked through it and then along the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial, though perhaps not the correct sort of thought -- I was wondering about what my response should be to these national memorials. I love to look at them and to linger over their lines and surfaces, but they don't  generally call to my mind the thing memorialized -- my response is æsthetic, not emotional or patriotic. The Lincoln Memorial seized hold of my eye from all the way down the length of the reflecting pool and would not let go -- the way it was framed in the bright blue sky was just intensely beautiful; walking along that path, watching it get slowly bigger, then up the steps and into the room itself, pretty awe-inspiring. I had my closest to what I'm thinking of as an appropriate "memorial" response when Sylvia and I were standing inside, reading the text of Lincoln's second inaugural address.  (And also, perhaps, a little later when we were walking by the White House, and I found myself thinking of Nixon.) Sylvia turns out to be pretty good at taking pictures of monuments; the one of the Jefferson Memorial above is hers, and so is this one looking up at Lincoln. Lots more pictures at the Family Album. The "inappropriate response" thing hit me the hardest, I think, at the Vietnam War Veterans' Memorial -- I was noticing and eating up the geometry of the thing, the sheen of the marble and the way it reflected the paths and the people and the flowers people had left, rather than reflecting on the memory of that war -- a war which is very close to being within my first-hand memory, though not quite there. Ellen got a beautiful photo of some chrysanthemums that a visiting middle school class had left in a soldier's memory:
posted evening of Sunday, April 12th, 2009
➳ More posts about the Family Album
➳ More posts about Sylvia
Hey, I was in DC this past weekend, too. I was hanging out with friends, though, so the Hirshhorn was the only sight I made it to. Sounds like you all had a good time.
posted evening of April 16th, 2009 by Bave Dee
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