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September 26, 2006
Noguchi
The space of the city is transformed by the way I move through it. On my bike, instead of on foot, distances between things are shortened, time is compressed, and the city I move through is changed. I’m reminded constantly of the relationship between space and time.
I made a decision to not bring a camera with me, to instead just go on the trip to and through the Noguchi Museum and then, with words, pull what images remained with me from memory.
The ground falls down and away. The city widens and grows smaller. Sighed to another place, an inner island. From prisons to mansions, what changes? Mostly the price. Rectangles with larger windows and better paint jobs. From here I can see the pricy real estate on the east river. The rich and powerful surround themselves with a grandure they cannot themselves see. A display to remind their subjects that the king has wealth without usefulness. A short distance traveled and a completely different place. On this little island away from a larger island I feel more space as time slows down. Cars do not own this space, the pace is slowed down, it’s easier to breath.
The narrow angle of the museum’s face gives way to the expansive opposite, going in and finding outside has come with me. The stones have such slow conversations, we cannot hear them. Pulled into their surfaces, their mysteries. Some are yielding, welcoming, mirthful. Most retain their solemn grace, echoing the conversation with the man that coaxed their forms from rough houses.
Space within the stones, vision wrapping around their curves, seeking to swallow them, to see all around all at once. I cannot overcome their gravity.
What stayed with me the most – a stone with a pool of water in it, water flowing over the sides and down the face of the stone, giving it movement, uniting base elements of earth and water, and then the sun shinning, light slanting down and glancing off the surface of the stone with water running down it, casting a shadow onto the ground, onto these small rocks we walk on as we observe these rocks of Noguchi, and the reflected light casting this shadow of the waters movement. A breathtaking unity of space and material.
Posted by Nathan Guisinger at September 26, 2006 11:02 PM