After I left MLA, I hoofed it over to Lina's house to set my bags down and generally collapse. Working at conferences is really demanding -- not only do you have to be "on" all the time, but for me, the lit. marketplace pulls on the emotional heartstrings, and it overwhelmed me to find myself not only back in the arms of academia, but right at its most well-trafficked center. Still, it was great to stay in DC over new year's. Lina and her family were away on my first day, so I cuddled with Percy the cat and Lizzie the dog, and slept 12 hours. The next day I decided to wander around and visit all the national monuments. I went to DC years ago to visit universities, but wasn't terribly impressed. This time, however, I just fell in love with it. All those Georgetown houses and the amazing architecture everywhere reminded me so much of certain places in Paris.

Here are some of my notes on the whole experience. I'm no brilliant commentator, but in squiring my notebook around with me and diligently taking down impressions, I felt like one of those 19th century chaps who toured the continent, documenting their observations in private journals.

"The glory and romance of our history are here preserved in the chronicles of those who conceived and builded the structure of our nation." -- The National Archives building, Western wall.

Freer Gallery, exhibition on "Freer and the Ideal of Feminine Beauty."

Am struck by the frames, the cool aqua colours of this room. The frames are rich and golden, thick and embellished - almost encrusted - with details. They make the women within them seem like mythic creatures.
Dewing, "The Blue Dress" -- an immediate psychological tonality within the painting. It's harder to connect with Thayer's women; they're monumentalized, dressed in Classical costumes, but the nobility seems too forced. Why didn't he just paint them as they were? Dewing makes one think of Leonardo, all that sfumato and lyrical shading. There are small, knowing portraits - such a contrast with the vast, impressionistic landscapes featuring women in motion. I love quotation in art history - whether a pose, a gaze, a gesture, a setting.

Whistler. Maze-like rooms, flowers projected baldly against a flat ground, women with delicate face draped in oriental dress. Bizarre to see a kimono live with color set against the moist background of London barges on the Thames. "Arrangement in Black and White": Can a painting be this musical? The long, graceful lines of her gown silhouetted against the black room has its own harmony. Love the verticals of this piece; the curves of her body offset by the frame's strong lines. "Nocturne": what is it about dusk that's so attractive to us? A liminal time of colour and light, when they suddenly begin to matter, when they articulate tiny fluctuations in the atmosphere.

A Chinese bottle (13th century) with the resist decoration of a flowering plum branch: asymmetry on one of the most symmetrical and perfectly closed objects. Ironic to have something "flower" on a static creature. A frozen flowering...I like the idea. Urns, vases, bowls are such complete and impenetrable beings. They seem so charged - I'd love to run my hands along them, gliding my palm over the plump contours and closing my fingers around their sudden, slight necks.