My wonderful, sweet, one-of-a-kind wife Suzie suggested that I have the day to myself today. Swallowing my guilt, I took her up on it, and did the one thing I absolutely wanted to do in London, which was to visit the British Museum. It did not disappoint; it was one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been.
The sheer volume of artifacts is hard to comprehend, and the cumulative effect is awe-inspiring and humbling. From the massive, towering Egyptian sculptures, to the incredibly detailed Assyrian stone engravings, to the small, almost incomprehensibly ancient statuettes carved for purposes unknown, standing before these manifestations of the human desire toward creation, toward documentation, toward immortality, was moving.
At one point I stood before a stone statute, Greek I believe, of a girl holding a bird in her arms as an offering, and I felt as if the girl and the bird were reaching to me across the vast years, I felt the bird’s fluttering wings, I felt the tension in the girl’s arms as she held it still, I felt the moment as if it were happening right before me. I felt my eyes watering up in reaction to the power of it. I am not an artist, I don’t understand the intricacies of it, the fine points, but standing there I realized it can touch me, something I don’t often acknowledge or, perhaps, wish to admit.
It is late tonight, and I can’t finalize this post with pictures. I will tomorrow. It was good to see my kids when we met to go up the London Eye, and we had a fine family dinner at a pub on Whitehall, and we took a leisurely bus ride back to our neighborhood instead of the cramped underground, and for the first time, really, I’m glad we came to London.
Categories: Travel -- London
Tags: Bristish Museum