Bartel Pritchard Acanthus Columns

Stanford White's columns here on the border of Windsor Terrace and Park Slope are underrated, I think. I know I undervalued them. Now, the more I look, the more I love.

White designed them the year he died, shot by his lady friend's jealous lover. For some reason he left out the karyatids that appear in the Dancing Girl columns of Delphi from which he drew his inspiration. Maybe they were a cliche in his period? Maybe it was an issue of proportion and simplicity? Or maybe he was too busy chasing live skirt to bother with stone women. Life is short.

The metal bowls on top reference the cauldrons on which the oracle, or Pythia sat at the temple of Delphi. Why would you make a poor woman sit on a cauldron? Pythias had it rough, so rough that the wealthy families that at one time were proud to send their daughters off to serve Apollo decided better of it. Some of them were dragged off and raped by fortune seeking visitors while in service of the oracle, others poisoned by the ethylene gas that seeped up from the earth and induced euphoria and speech viewed as prophectic.

Maybe I've misunderstood what I've read. It just doesn't seem right to make someone sit on a cauldron, especially not when it's cooking. I like these verdigris bowls, though, because Prospect Park itself is kind of green bowl, a generous womb-like place that nurtures the spirit of regeneration and reconnection, a thing crucial for those of us who madly scramble for the barrels of cash required to live here.

I can't figure out if these cauldrons, or lanterns as people usually call them, were ever lit. Some sources say yes, others, no. People want to know. It's so easy to imagine fire shooting out of them that it may ultimately be impossible to determine the truth.

I also can't read the sky braille that perforated the view that day. That's right, my arms too short.

The Sore Thumb

How long did it take before I consciously noticed it? I felt it, but it remained peripheral, like a developing hang nail before it gets angry. A bleek monument to The Great War, to the lost children, brothers and fathers. Am I even capable of imaging how terrible it was? Should I try?

I go back and forth about the sore thumb. I daydream of the circle without this thing that feels like a dark, heavy, shut door between S. Slope and Windsor Terrace. I can see it with a Nike, for instance, carved from marble like Stanford White's columns. God knows I need every bit of reflected light to see my way out of all the ruts I find myself in. There always is one, and half the time I don't even recognize it. I wake up in a trench and stumble around in confusion not knowing it.

This thing just absorbs light, and blocks continuity between the neighborhoods in a very subtle way. It lurks behind consciousness. The circle itself has the sense of a forbidden island, it belongs to the down and out who avoid the armory's shelter because they find it dangerous or distasteful. When I walk through there I feel like I'm trespassing. The North side of the monument reads "For Valor and Sacrifice" a sentiment that seems lost on those who frequent the circle, who already have the valor required to face everyday with empty pockets and no protection from the elements. How can they sacrifice? What do they have? Did someone ever give them something worth hording? I get the feeling they were only given more than their share of pain.

The monument feels like a weight around the neck of the neighborhood, the central weight that spins the maelstrom downward. Tremendous inertia.

On Thursday night a group of drummers assembled between White's columns, they were playing at dusk and bringing a sense of life to the circle. Its usual desolation was replaced by a sense of the living. It was an awkward place for the drummers, though, just inside the black posts that block traffic from entering the park, slightly off center. They seemed happy enough. But I wondered what it would be like if a small bandstand stood in the center of the circle, where we could give its heart over to the musicians. And the road surrounding it temporarily blocked off to allow, for once, a sense of celebration, instead of remorse and caution.

Sometimes I make friends with the sore thumb - I know I need these reminders of that fundamental human soreness, the soreness that we go to such great lengths to deny. The soreness that sometimes helps me be a more empathetic person. The thing that reminds me of the legacy of conflict, confusion and desperation every single person is yoked to without necessarily knowing it, and the terrible uncertainty of the future.

But other times I just want this monolith of pain lifted out of our lives. Replaced with something uplifting.

temporary landmark

This snow wall constructed between two massive ash trees echoes and distorts the dymanic of the Prospect Park's 15th Street entrance, flanked by two gorgeously carved marble columns by Stanford White. We passed by this snow defined abscence in Prospect Park yesterday on the way home from school. I wonder what its makers call it? Many posed for a photo in front of it.