Courtyard at the National Art Gallery
National Art Gallery is right in the middle of the Smithsonian jungle in DC - is nice and it's free. Even nicer are the two courtyards on both its ends (east and west). Of course while I loved seeing the Monet's and the Gauguin's (my favorite), the courtyards are what remain etched on my mind. First of all, it's quite unexpected. You keep walking from gallery room to gallery room and you spot what seems like an open space. You walk a little further into the open space - the courtyard expands, quietens you and soaks you in. The noise levels automatically subdue - it dins - and surprisingly the light seems equally responsible to suck up the noise as does the architecture. It's almost like something floating in the air catches every released word and immediately silences it.
On the distant left, I saw a beautiful lady in a yellow summer dress. She lay lazily with her legs crossed on the table - her eyes closed in contemplatation (she might have just been napping). I walked over to the other side for whatever reason and settled into one of the garden chairs. The center of the courtyard boasted a fountain magnificent in its simplicity. The fountain - a sculpture of two little boys playing with each other - let out water in a leisurely pace and not uniformly. Around the fountain were flowers in rich, bright colors - yellows, reds, pinks and deep violets with intermittent green from the leaves. Smells of the flowers tingled not just my nose but my mouth - I can somehow taste it in my mouth right now - I wonder why. A Chinese family - a senior couple and their girl - took photographs of each other in all possible combinations - dad-mom, dad-daughter, mom-daughter, dad-mom-daughter, dad, mom, and daughter. That was amusing. My eyes moved away from the trigger-jolly family to the ceiling; up above the circular breadth of the courtyard was white light. Sunlight seemed to force itself through the glass dome and engulf the whole courtyard with its radiance. The courtyard demanded the mind to stop thinking and empty itself completely. I liked it.
On the distant left, I saw a beautiful lady in a yellow summer dress. She lay lazily with her legs crossed on the table - her eyes closed in contemplatation (she might have just been napping). I walked over to the other side for whatever reason and settled into one of the garden chairs. The center of the courtyard boasted a fountain magnificent in its simplicity. The fountain - a sculpture of two little boys playing with each other - let out water in a leisurely pace and not uniformly. Around the fountain were flowers in rich, bright colors - yellows, reds, pinks and deep violets with intermittent green from the leaves. Smells of the flowers tingled not just my nose but my mouth - I can somehow taste it in my mouth right now - I wonder why. A Chinese family - a senior couple and their girl - took photographs of each other in all possible combinations - dad-mom, dad-daughter, mom-daughter, dad-mom-daughter, dad, mom, and daughter. That was amusing. My eyes moved away from the trigger-jolly family to the ceiling; up above the circular breadth of the courtyard was white light. Sunlight seemed to force itself through the glass dome and engulf the whole courtyard with its radiance. The courtyard demanded the mind to stop thinking and empty itself completely. I liked it.
posted by pravs at 8:00 PM
1 Comments:
Good words.
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