Long Day

.

Ever have a day where you have so many unrelated conversations and unrelated tasks and unrelated activities that your brain never quite catches up?  When you go to bed you just know your dreams are going to be paced like a Jason Bourne movie in order to process it all by morning.

It doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad day, or a sad day, or a mad day.  (Whoops, I think I may have swallowed a Dr Seuss book.)  Today was such a day for me.

Perhaps part of my sense of dislocation was squeezing in a visit to the Parthenon- in Nashville.  Nashville has the only full sized replica of the Parthenon in the whole world.  I mean, doesn't that make sense?  Music city.... Parthenon replica... o.k. it makes no sense at all.  But it is sorta cool.

The nude statue in the museum under the Parthenon wigged my 4 year old out.  Which was amusing.

Many of the oil paintings at the Parthenon Museum were framed with glass over the oil paintings, which wigged me out.  Glass over oil-on-canvas plus a little glare from spotlights pretty much obscures all brushstrokes.  You might as well frame a print from the gift shop.

I also found it a tad odd that the Parthenon Museum's collection seemed to be mostly comprised of 19th century American painters.  I guess going with a antiquities collection would be too obvious?

Standing in the museum, sticky with sweat from wrestling my 2 and 4 year olds and their stroller around the site, did remind me of something.  Beauty and how little time it takes to see some, and how you can forget what quality really is if you never stop long enough to look for it, and gaze at it.

Shame on me- I've lived in the area 17 years and have never been to the Parthenon.  It took only an hour to stop there before a doctor visit.  Even oil paintings under glass with poorly aimed spotlights can be breathtaking.

So tonight, I'll probably dream of a car chase around the acropolis with guitar playing, nude statues who are all wearing stethoscopes.  It'll be grand.

Then I'll wake up and start yet another action packed day just a little bit worn out from all the dreams, but I will close my eyes as I sip some coffee and re-see the amazing colors of the paintings and the twisted torso's of the pediment casts.

Who knows what I'll dream about tomorrow night.