An afternoon at the Freer

When you visit the Freer Gallery, your last stop should be the Peacock Room. Its claustrophobic ornateness is really too much, a gaudy burst of dark greens and golds, laughable in its excess, yet somehow sepulchral, like the mausoleum of some operatic diva who couldn't bear to leave the stage, even in death. You stand in the center of the room and take it all in, repulsed by its gaudiness, yet impressed despite yourself. That's when you nudge the leg of the person next to you and come to the consensus that it's time to leave.

The Freer is famous for its Whistlers and Homers, and notable for its collection of art by other Americans who were entranced by the landscapes and calligraphy of the East. You can have them. I prefer to bypass the Saint-Gaudens and Singer Sargents and head straight for the source, the statuary and painted screens of China and Japan, the Korean ceramics, the illuminated manuscripts from early Islam.

In the main lobby of the museum is a breathtaking mosaic, tiles arranged in concentric circles, a golden sun. Closer inspection reveals graceful inscriptions in black on each of the tiles, which, the placard informs us, comprise "The Song of the Reed" by the 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi.



The sound of the reed comes from fire, not wind -
What use is one's life without this fire?
It is the fire of love that brigs music to the reed.
It is the ferment of love that gives taste to the wine.
The song of the reed soothes the pain of lost love.
Its melody sweeps the veils from the heart.
Can their be a poison so bitter or a sugar so sweet
As the song of the reed?
To hear the song of the reed
Everything you have ever known must be left behind.

Images of ukiyo-e, the "floating world," Hokusai's magnificent waves and landscapes, scenes of Edo street life with colors so vibrant, expressions so vivid, that you can almost hear the sounds of oxcarts and the cries of laborers, smell the woodsmoke from the smith's forge.

Museums are themselves floating worlds. They are transportive; they exist outside of time and lift us out of ourselves. The Freer contains multitudes and epochs, yet the space creates an intimacy between the objects and the viewer. Cultures and periods flow together as one gallery leads into another. Here is a 17th century cup, a sepia spiderweb of cracks casting a delicate veil over the cobalt landscape beneath the glaze. Here is a scene of sensual opulence from Iran, rendered in muted jade and sparkling blues. You move as if through a garden, every so often calling your companion's attention to something brilliant that caught your eye. We are suspended in beauty.

In one room, Shakyamuni reclines on his deathbed, surrounded by his disciples as he prepares for his Parinirvana. "And then I feel the sun itself/as it blazes over the hills," writes Mary Oliver,

like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

In 1575, on the Shitagahara Plain near Nagashino Castle, the troops of Oda Nobunaga, one of the "three great unifiers" of Japan, defeated the invading forces of Takeda Katsuyori using firearms, forever altering the course of Japanese military tactics. That incongruous combination of ancient and modern, of laquered wooden armor and European guns, is gloriously rendered in a handscroll where banners seem to snap and flutter in the wind, and soldiers with lances squint through clouds of cordite.



In classical Chinese landscapes, perspective is reversed. Human beings and their signs of habitation are frequently closer to the viewer, yet they are inevitably dwarfed by the looming mountains that rise in the background, the soft curves of their slopes hazy and indistinct in the mist.

Descending into the concourse that connects the Freer with the Sackler Gallery, one encounters Lord Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles, son of Shiva and Parvati. He is magnificent in repose, gentle, all-accepting. Here the museum, the product of the academy, of the West, has been transfigured into shrine, coins left at the feet of the deity by visitors moved to lift up prayers in that quiet alcove. I add my own offering and place my palms together, silently ask on behalf of my friend safe passage and a speedy return, for the rough roads before our feet to be made straight.



Climbing the stairs, we find ourselves in the hallway that winds around the courtyard at the center of the Freer and we end our visit in the Peacock Room. We walk out of the museum, re-enter time and the world. The streets rush by us like rills and streams, like radiant spokes of a great wheel: Constitution Avenue to the north, Independence to the south. The headwaters of Pennsylvania Avenue empty out into 7th Street, which flows without a break into Georgia Avenue when it reaches Howard University.

Irving Street, Morton Street, New Hampshire Avenue. Upshur, Crittenden, and Dellafield. Gallatin Street, named for a Swiss immigrant who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1801 until 1814. Ingraham and Jefferson, and on past Walter Reed Medical Center, liquor stores and Ethiopian restaurants, faces in all shades of brown blurring past as I make my way north, carrying the memory of beauty with me on the journey home.