In a constant state of vertigo

august 12, i feel like this:

Big, Cool, Echo-y Spaces

Bullies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!

So the other day I ventured out into the city, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had never been. Three hours into standing and being bombarded by images and thoughts that spiraled down every possible path of wonderment and I still had not seen the whole place. My feet ached and at one point, sitting in a massive open hall with a chunk of an egyptian tomb on a platform surrounded by water, I felt the urge to cry.
Not out of the "omg art" type of emotion. On the contrary, it's really museums or big buildings (especially with high ceilings) that overwhelm me with a sense of calm. And I feel a sense of compression, of containment.

There's something about a "restrained" big, open space that differs in feeling than, say, being out in a meadow or some other romantic, big-sky place. There, you feel like the sky is endless and you feel small and amazed. Or the ocean, (fuck, how I love the ocean!) that swarms you with environmental stimuli till you're raw from being beaten with waves and wind and sand. And the blissful exhaustion and purity you feel afterwards...
But big, open human-made places with walls have an effect on me like no other place. It was cold at the MET, carefully temperature-and-moisture controlled. When I left I felt thoroughly chilled, but clean because of it. And all those murmurs of people echoing and those vibrations bouncing off the walls, it's like they created a hum. A hum that pushed out all my worries and insecurities.
It's funny how meditation happens when you're not even aware you're meditating. And you know you've entered some other, clear compartment in your brain because later, every thought you had there you can summon forward as if an event occurred...for example, while at the MET, I caught myself seething over some past event and I told my self "That doesn't matter, it's all over. Leave it behind." And for once, there wasn't the other side of my conscience whining back with some cynical retort. A few days later when confronted with similar thoughts I remembered the moment in which that voice larger than myself had resonated off the museum walls. And it soothed me and made me remember "you've already resolved this."

Do I sound like I'm instructing you through a yoga session yet? I know, I know.

And when I stand back and look at what I'm saying I'm also flooded with this awareness that whatever "meditation" means in the modern world, or whatever books are written about spirituality or "knowing yourself" are all so untrustworthy and I scoff at them. Or, I have scoffed at them. I think of those magazines where happy, fit women sit indian-style on yoga mats advertising stretchy clothes with some line about "breathe, love yourself."

I also look back at my experience at the MET and remember the whining children, the expensive cafes, the bored looking exhibit attendants, the endless advertising, the guy playing really bad trumpet outside on the steps for money. It's a tourist trap, right? The hot spot for hot dog vendors. And it's all commercial, right? Everything is ruined and you can't possibly have a spiritual experience at a God damn tourist trap in the middle of vulgar, concrete, sinfuly New York City, right?

Right.

I guess.