Root Canal
By Linda Pastan
under the anesthetic
tiny gondoliers
sing to me
pizzicato
and I am
borne away
helpless as
childhood
as they pole
through the shadowed
waters
of the mouth
--------
I spent a wonderful day with my family plus
From there we walked (with a stop at Starbucks for hot chocolate) to the National Geographic Explorers Hall, where we briefly visited the Polar Obsession photo exhibit before going into the phenomenal Terra Cotta Warriors display. The exhibit is divided into two parts, with the first mostly containing Qin artifacts like weapons, building materials, ornaments from palaces, royal seals, and jade objects, while the more open second area has several of the Xi'an warriors plus acrobats, musicians, and charioteers alongside maps and diagrams of the tomb of the First Emperor (whom I must confess strikes me much more as a paranoid lunatic than a great leader, given the crushing excesses of his life and death). It's hard to remember all the highlights -- the braided bronze tassels on the chariots, the detail on the cavalry harnesses, the enormous human figures and the models showing how they were made -- even the large photos of the excavation sites in Xi'an wrapped around the Explorers Hall are simply amazing.
You can see my family reflected in the glass in this contemporary sculpture.
A string quartet near the café provided music as we visited the Davies Collection -- where no photos are permitted, since the paintings are on loan from another museum.
No photos were permitted in the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit either, though this replica was displayed in a window facing the museum's courtyard.
The lobby had large photos of the excavation sites in China...
...as did the enormous banners wrapped around the exterior of the building.
Here are my kids, Paul, a replica of one of the generals, myself, Lin, and
On the way back to the car after sunset, we saw a large hawk eating a small rodent on a snow pile.
Since it's Purim, Paul made kreplach and vegetable couscous for dinner, then we had hamantaschen and watched the Olympic closing ceremonies -- we missed the US-Canada hockey game while we were at the museums and it sounds like we missed a great overtime, so congratulations to Canada. I enjoyed the lighthearted aspects of the closing ceremonies -- the parody of the failure to get the torch pillar up in the opening ceremonies, the Mounties, moose, beavers, and hockey fights, the writing-names-in-snow complaints, the Shatner! I enjoyed these Games a lot. Well done, Vancouver. Happy March!
