museum nom tuesdays are by donation 060305 ... kerry we drifted idly through the galleries, early american to contemporary pausing at a centuries-old chair, a grandfather clock, an red lacquered japanese platform bed standing beneath the 14th century buddhist temple ceiling that is fit together like a puzzle, no nails, we drank up the darkness we murmured at jasper johns— ah i love that one, oh and that one, hey are these still his? they are different somehow--squinting, searching. she stopped to gaze at a marble angel in the wall, run her fingers down the folds in the robes-- can you imagine how long this took to make? all those little details from this huge stone… the museum closed at five and everyone filed out in a line to a sunset that made her gasp pink and yellow in one direction to the right, blue purple orange to the left, and people stopping to stare or take pictures in front of it. after a bit i began to shift and she said, laughing, wait, i need more time- at an overlook we could see boat houses lining the schuylkill river and the city on the other side, ripples in the water like wrinkled silk. how do you know a place is home? she asked. i must have sighed. how do YOU know? she insisted. i don’t know, i said limply, maybe when you’re happy to return there after being gone? when you go to georgia do you feel like you are home? in a way it will always be home i suppose, but every time i go back i realize i’ve stayed too long and i just want to escape. i should have asked her about rio, will it always be home? but my thoughts were buried in red clay and cotton. i will next time. standing on the highway bridge above the center of the river, i recognized the view from her pictures. here the water was black except directly beneath us, where something white that looked like soap floated on the surface. hands in our pockets we trudged up the hill towards her house, ducking under twinkling lights and tree branches, talking more animatedly as if to seize every moment. at home on her couch i looked at the dog and saw rosie for a moment, eyes lined as if by kohl, fur beginning to swirl on the back between her shoulder blades. that happened to rosie around age ten. lola is eight now. she gets grouchier each year, like rosie. but she is sweet to me. she sat between us while we both petted her and dragged her whole tongue across my face when i said her name. lola, lohhhh-la, luh-luh-lola later, hurtling through a tunnel so narrow it catches my breath, i texted her that that this was fun, that it was so good to see her she said i’m so glad i found you 211109 ... kerry (typos galore. grrrr.) 211109 ... raze we visited one of these places together once, but the funny thing is i can't remember a thing we saw. all those objects that belonged to lives we would never touch are lost to me now, and all i can see is the brilliance of the day and the tired notions that darkened it, pulling from its pores all it refused to give away. 211110 ... kerry it was supposed to snow so we put the salt out. walking outside i felt it on my cheeks. we went to look at paintings. according to its brochure the barnes foundation has “the deepest holdings” of paintings by renoir, cezanne, picasso, and matisse. impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings, it was intoxicating to walk into a warm, red-walled room covered in paintings in ornate frames, gold with scrolls and the artist’s surname in a tiny engraved caption. pictures of all colors and sizes. still lifes and nudes, landscapes, scenes of bathing and smoking and lounging. i wanted to eat it all with my eyes. it was fun to try and guess the artist before checking the tag on the frame, which is tiny and easy to overlook. there was so much renoir. i told the_autodidact i’m not crazy about him, they’re like smeared photographs and all the faces look the same. he pointed out the similar shades of pink in nearly every painting. you can tell it’s him just by the pink, he said. we never talk about art, and i wanted to know what he thought about each one. he indulged me. seurat the pointillist like snow on a tv screen clowns in picasso’s blue period when we left the flurries had stopped and the snow didn’t stick. maybe tonight. 211227 what's it to you? who go blather from