#35 Tues (7/26/22) - [OW] three and a half days in July

We played at travelers on the Tokaido Road, from Edo to Kyoto, along with John Saris who saw the rotting remains of thieves crucified along the way; "a most unsavorie passage."

We appreciated the art of Lorado Taft and his sculpture of The Blind, groping, reaching. We pondered the serenity of My Golden Yesterdays by Hopvsep Pushman and the other works in the Trees Collection.  We were bemused by the Bicyc-elope.

We watched a century (the 17th) discover itself through the writings of its divers inhabitants; Margaret Fell, John Oglander, Harry Oxendin, Thomas Tryon, Leonard Wheatcroft, Ralph Josselin, Sir Thomas Browne, Samuel Hartlib and Isaac Newton.

We marveled at the hidden meanings in the mirrors in Las Meninas by Velazquez and the beauty and splendor of The Paston Treasure. We sampled secrets from the Victoria & Albert Museum - a daimyo's kimono, a glass micro-mosaic table and a low-rider Chevy.

We found out more about Don Quixote and the story of Miguel de Cervantes; a wounded veteran, five years a slave in Algiers and a man who changed the world forever with a book he wrote at 58 years old.

We listened to the timeless eloquence of Sir Thomas Browne, his Qunicunx and his Urne Buriall. We listened to the music of the angel Israfel, whose 'heart strings are a lute.' We added the 'red levin' to our vocabulary. We learned about the Pleiads, which were seven, and dined at The Seven Saints.

We entered the kingdom of Joseon and were transported into a world of kings and princes, historians and novelists, dreams of beauty, books and stories, love and history.

We crafted a poem out of fragments found on the top line of the 30th page of a handful of books, selected at random from the bookshelves. Cornell Boxes, cabinets of curiosity and the poems of Jorge Luis Borges.

We purchased notebooks that hopefully will not remain pristine.

We learned about the taste of crocodile and ostrich and lamented the overuse of the F Word. We used 'gobsmacked' in a sentence.

We glimpsed the infinity of ideas that lay dormant in a small bag of Lego pieces or a piece of an old piano. We watched the Taj Mahal being built and an old iron work restored to its initial beauty.

We planted cardboard seeds and watched them grow into cardboard trees under the shifting light of a yellow cardboard sun.

We saw red paper cranes and contorted jesters made of steel, carved wooden faces peeping out of the tall grass and giant metal beetles perched up high. 

The idea of an apple and the music of the spheres.

Trees and herb gardens, grassland and prairie flowers, 

red-winged blackbirds, geese, ducks and squirrels. 

Tiny white flowers and the feathers of various birds.