Is This an Airport?
What's Up with That Guy and Sporadic Transportation
It’s probably clear that I love art galleries. What I love about DC is that it helps me get closer to this love. I visit one at least once every week. On this Sunday, I was at the National Gallery of Art, East Building. It’s a favorite. After a little bit of a walk, I am there in the morning reading my books, thinking about things, and pretending I’m some awesome philosopher. It is a precious moment in my little life.
I was seated in the tunnel cafe between the East and West Buildings this morning. I lifted my head up from reading to have myself a little inspirational moment, to ponder.
I was noticing a family move across the waterfall in front of me, when I saw him.
This dude
This dude looked worked. He was sitting on the stylish couch there, the unsupportive kind without arms or a back to it that was also meant to accommodate twenty people (or forty people if they sat back to back). He was looking around but had his neck pitted, tilting just his head and mostly his eyes around scanning the room in his forward lean. His look was the accumulation of slow burnout arriving in a single moment. He was forlorn, bearing something abandoned, privately tragic but socially apparent. He was a flat tire on its last roll.
His backpack was full. It rested against his leg and the base of the couch. He was possibly wondering to himself, “what has happened?” or “how has it come to this?” or maybe “what am I to do now with all this silence?”
He seemed to be waiting.
I was taken aback by this demolished man when the thought struck me: am I in an airport?
Airports
Suddenly, this palace of mystery and wonder made a little more sense. I thought I was in the National Gallery of Art. But now everything I saw there was finally adding up:
There are people (obviously tourists) with camping backpacks on
I have even seen people who have must have journeyed from the mountains nearby and returned to civilization with their hiking sticks as they trek through what was mistaking an art gallery
There are kids crying, being dragged around
A waterfall guarded by fake plants
A stylish, unhelpful couch
There are stylish but uncomfortable chairs and tables paired around
There are arrival and departure sounds screeching constantly from people at the tables and chairs around me, clear announcements of things I don’t want to hear and can’t understand (surely it is bad manners to drag chairs like sleds, surely it would occur to one to slightly lift a chair upon seating or standing?)
Many a father staring far away with a firm listlessness in their gaze
There are influencers dressed in sweats for the heavy labor of resting and staring
Finding myself suddenly lost and thrown into elsewhere, panic consumed me. I had to remind myself that I was in fact not in an airport. I simply wasn’t. For one thing, I like being in art galleries. They provide a space for thought and reflection and are profoundly transportive. And I wouldn’t just go to an airport. No, that’s just not sane. But I would readily go to an art gallery (readily).
The stability that I took for this lost soul is ultimately that my activities reflect my source of life. I may sometimes become confused, but it seems I can rely on a sense of passion to distinguish where I would have actually ended up anyway.
Trevor
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