In The Museum is on p. 27 of Poems For Your Heart
When I got married the first time it was in Cambridge, MA., where my new husband was a Harvard graduate student. Being from Australia, I’d been nowhere in America except Berkeley and San Francisco, where I had lived for three years and obtained my Masters degree, and I wanted to see the famous New York City. We had a friend whose affluent step-father owned a penthouse on 6th Ave and our friend obtained permission for us to stay there for the upcoming weekend.
So we took an early Saturday train from Boston and got off at Grand Central Station. We came out onto E. 42nd St., walked a block or two to 5th Ave., turned right, and off we went! Holding hands, we ran in 7/8 time to the Museum, 40 blocks. 7/8 time was well-known to us from all the Eastern European folkdancing we’d done. You may be familiar with Dave Brubeck’s song Take Five, which is in 5/4. You can hear it on YouTube. The Eastern European countries, such as Romania, Macedonia, Croatia, and Serbia, use several other odd rhythms in their songs and dances: 5/8 and 9/8 for example. Running in 7/8 time means two fast steps then a slower step (1-and — 2-and — 3-and-a). The slower step gives you time to spring higher and feel like a bird. If you start by stepping onto your left foot, it’s L-and — R-and — L-and-a. You then land on your right foot and repeat the pattern from the right side of your body. It goes at a brisk speed.
My husband and I loved those odd rhythms and it was a sunny Saturday and we didn’t pause till we arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’d already been very impressed by the majestic Grand Central Station and now I was impressed by this majestic museum. We switched our energy from joyous 7/8 to decorous walking and entered. A hushed atmosphere, gleaming wood floors, silent guards watching, and paintings of all sizes on the walls. I think we walked through to an area where El Greco paintings were hung and the one described in the poem was the first one I saw.
Transfixed
I stood in front of it for only a few seconds before the transcendence overcame me. I went out of my body and it sank to the bench behind it. I floated, unaware of the room and everything in it, but I could see the painting clearly. I identified with that saint, with his connection to God, entering his world and merging with that connection. God is in all of us and in all of Nature and when we can get away from our daily world of time and space and words, it all becomes one vast world of peace and there are no words to do it justice. I don’t know how long I was in that state. Eventually I came to and noticed that I was on a bench in a museum. My husband, bless his heart, had not tried to interrupt.
Penthouse Surprise
After spending the afternoon in the museum, we had dinner out somewhere and then headed back to find the penthouse. That was no trouble and taking the elevator to the top floor we used our key to enter. It occupied the whole of the top floor. This was exciting! There’d be fantastic views out all four sides and who knows what luxurious accommodations! However, as we entered the enormous living area, we heard voices. What? Was there a mistake and we were here on the wrong weekend?
“Come on in,” called a lazy male voice. Following the sound, we came to a doorway into a large bedroom and there in the huge bed was a man with two women, one on each side. One simpered a bit and giggled and the other directed a hostile stare at us. The man said,
“Make yourselves at home. Choose a bedroom.”
I recognized this man. He was a well-known, many would say traitorous, leftist politician in California (where we had both lived for several years before moving to Cambridge). He had gone to North Vietnam and given help and support to the Viet Cong (communists who took over the country after American troops were withdrawn in 1973.) From what we could see of him, he was a skinny little fellow and had a cynical air about him. The women were clearly at his beck and call. Feeling repulsed, I backed out of the room and we then found a bedroom as far as possible from theirs. As I remember, we slept late and the three were gone when we started to see about breakfast. As I sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee and gazed down at the 6th Ave. traffic, I reflected on the polar opposites of my first day in N.Y.
- A soaring experience of God’s love and peace, as vivid in my 20th century era as it was for El Greco in his 16th century; then
- An encounter with the seamy underside of California’s 1960’s politics.
Both experiences were uninvited, one passionately welcome and the other not.
Note: El Greco, “the Greek”, was Domenikos Theotokopoulos, from Crete. After not doing so well in Italy, he enjoyed a successful career in Spain. I have looked online for the painting I saw but have not found it. It could have been one of his many paintings of St. Francis. Here is a quote from the Museum’s online article about El Greco:
El Greco is one of the few old master painters who enjoys widespread popularity. … [He was] a painter who “felt the mystical inner construction” of life … someone whose art stood as a rejection of the materialist culture of modern life. [Jen: “modern” as in 16th century life]
The painter lives on, five centuries later. The politician died in 2016 and is mostly forgotten.