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Feb. 13th, 2025 03:30 pmAs an adult I have regained the ability to be scared by museums. This is good because it is part of my un-numbing process.
At some point in childhood it becomes embarrassing to be scared in a museum. And so you begin the process of fixing yourself, studying your fear, exposing its contradictions. You learn to paint. You learn to sculpt. You volunteer in a museum and help to assemble exhibits. You spend a day working with fiberglass and lose maybe half a percent of your lung function, permanently. Years later you come back to the exhibits you remember as a child. Everything is smaller and more hackable. The list of donors on the wall is held together with legos, of all things. More years go by. Life comes at you harder than any museum can. Your hair streaks with gray. You're in a darkened gallery by yourself with no parents, no date, nobody to be embarrassed in front of. A wooden eagle sits atop a medieval pulpit and on the flat carved sides are multiple small church interiors and this is terrifying for reasons you cannot grasp. You look at it for as long as you can stand before fleeing, at a mature walking pace, stepping out into the atrium where the light of the sunset casts down on marble American statues and a fountain and you sit a while.
At some point in childhood it becomes embarrassing to be scared in a museum. And so you begin the process of fixing yourself, studying your fear, exposing its contradictions. You learn to paint. You learn to sculpt. You volunteer in a museum and help to assemble exhibits. You spend a day working with fiberglass and lose maybe half a percent of your lung function, permanently. Years later you come back to the exhibits you remember as a child. Everything is smaller and more hackable. The list of donors on the wall is held together with legos, of all things. More years go by. Life comes at you harder than any museum can. Your hair streaks with gray. You're in a darkened gallery by yourself with no parents, no date, nobody to be embarrassed in front of. A wooden eagle sits atop a medieval pulpit and on the flat carved sides are multiple small church interiors and this is terrifying for reasons you cannot grasp. You look at it for as long as you can stand before fleeing, at a mature walking pace, stepping out into the atrium where the light of the sunset casts down on marble American statues and a fountain and you sit a while.
