The Budapest train station called Keleti is gigantic and beautiful. Inside Keleti Station today it is confusing, hot, and crowded, and we are waiting for an overnight train to Krakow. I have loved train stations for a long time because of the vibrant aura of travelers setting off on a journey or arriving at a destination. Grand Central Station in New York City is a very special train station for me. It represents my claim on my own life, starting a new existence right there at the center of the universe!
Centered in this station in Budapest, between tracks and ticket booths, there are two old-fashioned “big boards” with metal cards clicking over to display the times of arrival or departure of the trains along with the origin or destination, notes we can’t understand, any delays and how long, and finally, the datum that completes each line, the track number.
Every couple of minutes, the board begins to transform itself. One by one, beginning at the top, each element of the line of information will begin rotating to repeat, momentarily, the line below it. For just a blink of an eye, the two lines are identical, and then the elements of the second line begin to flip to bring up the train just below it. This movement is nearly constant as track numbers and other information is updated. At any moment, some element is flipping through all of the small metal cards with all of its potential readings to stop at the exact right one.
The “big board” entertains us in anticipation of the track posting which will catapult us into action towards the arriving train. The sound of all that clicking mesmerizes us, rivets our attention. This sound is like rosary beads clicking, like many fast, small marbles snapping against one another, like thick, flexible plastic cards shuffling, like heavy dry leaves rustling in the wind in October. It is similar and yet unlike any of these. If the mechanical big board holds still and silent, for even a moment, everyone watching it is still, we all stop breathing for an instant, for a heartbeat, until the rapid flipping begins again.
I tried to figure out who or what is behind this hypnotic system, but can’t quite imagine! This system predates computers, but is it computerized now? Of course, the next iteration of big boards will be digital displays, practical, but not as dynamic or interesting to watch.
In addition to this repetitive, resonant sound locking on a brain frequency that immobilizes us, we are also enchanted with the names of destinations that flip through our sights each time a line moves up the board. Potential destinations from this spot in Budapest flip over each other, revealing and concealing jewels and tapestries, markets and minarets, rich aromas and strange twisting cries. Today we are NOT going to Nagykáta, Zűrich, Sopron, Hatva, Moszkva, Szolnok, Sűlysáp, Koŝice, Pëcs, Graz, Berlin, Zagreb, Hamburg, Belgrade, Thessalonika, Dormond, or Bratislava, or any of the places with names so complex I couldn’t capture them from the short glimpse on the big board.
Our train finally appears at the bottom of the big board as the departure time of 18:30 takes the bottom line below 18:25. Before we are assigned a track number and achieve the top line, I am already nostalgic for the sound of the big board at Keleti Station in Budapest.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Ring the Bell
At Jinming Temple on Saturday I held three smoldering incense sticks in the sticky humid air and bowed in four directions to the Buddha, beginning with the East. I inhaled the smoke and then opened my hands and heart for a blessing.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
A few hours later, I paid two renminbi to sound the massive bell in an inner courtyard of the Confucius Temple. A small log was wrapped in red cloth and suspended by two ropes. I pulled it back, posed for a photo, and released the log toward the bell and the boom reverberating through flesh and bone and air. I paid another five renminbi to hold mallets and play three rows of graduated bronze bells, a very big drum, and a Chinese zither. My five minutes on that stage were not enough to perfect my style, but to confirm a vision that this might have been my role in a past life at this temple.
On Monday, I climbed every available stair in the weaving workshop garden; the geometric and smooth ones as well as the water-shaped, rough and uneven ones, filling all my frames with texture. I looked and longed toward the roof garden that was inaccessible to my ascending desire.
I confess that I am the one who touches sculptures despite signs that say “Do not touch,” and on Tuesday, I touched the lucky turtle, and the elephant, and the camel, and the lions. They were stone both before and after, but I was not.
At the gate of Linggu Temple on Purple Mountain, I ate slippery cold noodles of bean paste with shredded carrots and cucumber, sauced with sweet, pungent, and spicy. Though I held my sticks upside down, no one noticed my splashy style.
Today, I plan to touch silk and jade, perhaps to great excess. When the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome rings the final bell in my head or heart, I will be ready.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Sitting Still (Auracular Spaces #2)
“Matter, it was discovered, can be used to tell time.
‘A rock,’ said physicist Holger Müller, ‘is a clock.’”
Harper’s Magazine, “Findings” March 2013
I am sitting still in a small park on a compact university campus in downtown Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The temperature is in the 90’s and I am inclined to remain motionless while humid currents circulate around me.
A dark haired woman picks up a long bamboo pole and begins to swat at the plum-sized yellow fruit suspended in bunches above her head in the branches of a tree. Her companion picks up the fallen fruit and rubs it with water from a jar. She then places it on the seat of a wheelchair already occupied by a slight immobile man in white pajamas. He may not be aware that he has become a basket for the ripe fruit.
The two women are slightly heavier and quite a bit darker in flesh than many of the other women in this city; they may be ethnic minority Chinese employed as home health aides for this elderly and seemingly incapacitated man. Three animated elderly people sit on a bench nearby eating the same fruit. The two trios are linked by the sweet ripe fruit, but nothing else.
Two school girls pass by arm in arm. Workers traverse the path just beyond the low railings with small wheelbarrows, tools, and pallets of water behind bicycles.
The clicking sound of high heels draws my attention to a slender woman in a long-sleeved black dress with a spine overtly zippered from neck to hem.
I hear a flute somewhere behind me in the middle air.
Another wheelchair approaches the bench to my left. A young adult male pushes an older man. After transferring the older man to the bench, the younger one sits beside him and turns his full attention to his cellphone. The older man enters the park’s ambiance in the role of witness.
The wooden benches are built to seat two comfortably, but they are occupied one by one by one.
This park strays toward the wild side with soft low grasses that are not trimmed between the paths. The shrubs and trees are carefully randomized to present every shape, texture, and size with limbs growing horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and fractally. Greens go forth as leaves, fronds, tufts, fingertips, feathers, sprays, needles, fans, ferns, shoots, and every other possible projection and extension to form a thick and light-entrapping tent. Fallen and falling leaves become part of the appealing pattern.
Pensive notes from several flutes at a distance play hide and seek among the leaves.
This garden has many more paths of patterned tiles than necessary to pass through it in any direction. The trails criss-cross and converge at a five-pointed, off-kilter star deliberately far from the notion of center. The tiles inscribe skewed triangles and irregular four or five-sided geometric shapes. This park makes a deliberate statement about beauty and order, reminding me of the Wallace Stevens line, “The Imperfect is our Paradise.” Inside is a pause outside the ordinary. Though all sides have low boundaries, no glance in any direction gives up the secret of its size and shape. Peripheral vision is quiet on the subject, making no guesses.
A woman with silver hair and red shoes scribbles in a notebook. Three brightly dressed girls take photos of a baby sitting on a bench. A pregnant woman listens to music through headphones.
An organic breathing space offering the privacy of intimate public rooms, this botanical sanctuary presents two objects for visual convergence. One is a bronze head on a large, slightly irregular stone block. The other is a water-pocked stone in the shape and size of two horses kneeling nose to nose. Formed of elements and momentum, the stones beckon like evidence.
I am still . . . sitting . . . and then . . . the flutes draw my themes onward.
The park takes another breath and recomposes space and time around the flight of a single white butterfly.
‘A rock,’ said physicist Holger Müller, ‘is a clock.’”
Harper’s Magazine, “Findings” March 2013
I am sitting still in a small park on a compact university campus in downtown Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The temperature is in the 90’s and I am inclined to remain motionless while humid currents circulate around me.
A dark haired woman picks up a long bamboo pole and begins to swat at the plum-sized yellow fruit suspended in bunches above her head in the branches of a tree. Her companion picks up the fallen fruit and rubs it with water from a jar. She then places it on the seat of a wheelchair already occupied by a slight immobile man in white pajamas. He may not be aware that he has become a basket for the ripe fruit.
The two women are slightly heavier and quite a bit darker in flesh than many of the other women in this city; they may be ethnic minority Chinese employed as home health aides for this elderly and seemingly incapacitated man. Three animated elderly people sit on a bench nearby eating the same fruit. The two trios are linked by the sweet ripe fruit, but nothing else.
Two school girls pass by arm in arm. Workers traverse the path just beyond the low railings with small wheelbarrows, tools, and pallets of water behind bicycles.
The clicking sound of high heels draws my attention to a slender woman in a long-sleeved black dress with a spine overtly zippered from neck to hem.
I hear a flute somewhere behind me in the middle air.
Another wheelchair approaches the bench to my left. A young adult male pushes an older man. After transferring the older man to the bench, the younger one sits beside him and turns his full attention to his cellphone. The older man enters the park’s ambiance in the role of witness.
The wooden benches are built to seat two comfortably, but they are occupied one by one by one.
This park strays toward the wild side with soft low grasses that are not trimmed between the paths. The shrubs and trees are carefully randomized to present every shape, texture, and size with limbs growing horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and fractally. Greens go forth as leaves, fronds, tufts, fingertips, feathers, sprays, needles, fans, ferns, shoots, and every other possible projection and extension to form a thick and light-entrapping tent. Fallen and falling leaves become part of the appealing pattern.
Pensive notes from several flutes at a distance play hide and seek among the leaves.
This garden has many more paths of patterned tiles than necessary to pass through it in any direction. The trails criss-cross and converge at a five-pointed, off-kilter star deliberately far from the notion of center. The tiles inscribe skewed triangles and irregular four or five-sided geometric shapes. This park makes a deliberate statement about beauty and order, reminding me of the Wallace Stevens line, “The Imperfect is our Paradise.” Inside is a pause outside the ordinary. Though all sides have low boundaries, no glance in any direction gives up the secret of its size and shape. Peripheral vision is quiet on the subject, making no guesses.
A woman with silver hair and red shoes scribbles in a notebook. Three brightly dressed girls take photos of a baby sitting on a bench. A pregnant woman listens to music through headphones.
An organic breathing space offering the privacy of intimate public rooms, this botanical sanctuary presents two objects for visual convergence. One is a bronze head on a large, slightly irregular stone block. The other is a water-pocked stone in the shape and size of two horses kneeling nose to nose. Formed of elements and momentum, the stones beckon like evidence.
I am still . . . sitting . . . and then . . . the flutes draw my themes onward.
The park takes another breath and recomposes space and time around the flight of a single white butterfly.
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