The Cloisters of MET

                                             

       I visited the infamous museum in a raining day. The museum is on the top of a small hill. The hill road is quite tough, while the scene along with the road is nice, Hudson river and Hudson river PKWY is just under my feet, opposite my standing is a long and wide green cliff without any building on it. It is seldom seen in New York City. Most of time, there is crowded, populous, noisy, active. Here is peaceful, remote, and isolated, like another face of New York, a new world.

          I step in the entrance, a heavy glass and wooden gate, inside there is a small lobby guiding to a stair, the corridor is dark and mysterious, I feel that I am entering a quiet and isolated cloister.

        The main exhibition gate is gorgeous with sculptured stone in a curved and up shape, the whole atmosphere is giant and magnificent and serious and worshiping. I see a lot of stone construction elements, very nicely sculptured with some bible characters and denotes’ character. The exhibition stuff is made very artificial, and carefully designed, and used a lot of precious materials like marble, good wood, wool and silk, golden thread, diamond, glass paint and others. They represent the art level of medieval period, not a stereotyped impression as I have   with that history period before.

 Temple ware is precious and great. The aesthetic of intimate of the temple 廟堂之高，廟堂之美。國之重器, 虔誠供奉。The basic endeavor for a religious people is the same, they devote all the beauty and precious stuff to show their respect for the majoritic god or goodness. The way is the same in China when the Chinese did the respect for a buddhas god. They made the same small coffin/box to hold the precious bible copies or the rings or necklace for the pope or the church authority.

              The most impressive part is that there are five exhibitions from five cloisters in century 12 to 15 from France and Spain. There are very pretty sculptures and yards, the construction elements are full of the feeling of history and empathy, and they have temperature and love, filling the hearts of the visitors.  The heads of poles are beautiful, and decades of them circle around a square yard with green plants in the same kinds of plant dated from medieval period. They use the old stuff from cloisters setting up such a joyful and pleasant space, the yards, the corridors, the hallway, that place is the only place I dream of being a wedding place. I think of the Arab tales’ books “one thousand and one night”, the holy person’s story in a film and their hard building up a church for male monk and a new established church for nuns in British. I think about all the history around the medieval, the city countries, the knights, the others, I mix them up (history, time, art, characters) … I am lost, and who will not be lost.

           I love every stone pole, and I love every corner of the yards, and I love every foot of the stone road, the wooden floor. I love the space and the bright moment of sunshine period. It is the precious moment in my dull life, I wish it lasts longer, but I cannot. The dust will come within an hour, and I have a long way to back Queens. The reality which I have to think about right now after traveling the afternoon in medieval time.