St. Mary's Cathedral
I'm really not a very religious person, in the sense that I tend to want to reject organized religions, for various reasons I should not get into right now. I am, however, a spiritual person, in a much more individualized way, such as how some people meditate, trying to find enlightenment or something similar. Perhaps because of this, I have always liked the atmosphere inside of churches, especially when they are old and empty. This allows, I think, for more personalized meditation and understanding than does a structured mass.
St. Mary's Cathedral reminds me a lot of many of the churches in Europe, such as the one right next to my grandmother's house in a little German town called Muelheim. They are both cool, peaceful, and asymmetrical buildings. Thus cathedral, though, seems to be lighter. I think this is partly due to the fact that the inside of my grandmother' church looks like its outside, made of dark stone, while this church is made of wood on the inside, with walls that are painted white. Even the stone seen on the outside of this cathedral is much lighter than the stone which
makes up my grandmother's church. Moreover, there are larger windows here, and they are lower than in my grandmother's church, allowing more light to enter.
I have always been so fascinated by stained glass windows: Not only because their images tell stories or symbolically encompass various meanings and ideas, but also because they are just simply beautiful. Perhaps what intrigues me about them the most is that they can only be seen from the inside. When we stood outside this cathedral, we could infer that it had stained glass windows, but we could not really see them. Only by entering through the door, and thereby accepting an entry into a more peaceful, meditative state, were we able to see the beauty of the windows.
Coming into a church like this, no matter of what faith, what architectural style, from what era, and in which city, evokes similar peaceful and meditative feelings.
Incidentally -- this is not unlike taking a moment out of the human "rat race" to experience a part of nature. Architecture is man-made nature.
Capitol Rotunda
My head throbs, and so the touch of the cold tile through my shirt is emphasized with each throb, and I can tell exactly which parts of my back stick out more than others. Lying on my back looki
ng up at the inside
of the capitol's done, I think more about what is underneath my back than what is above my head. I wish I were lying in the very center of the room, so that I wouldn't have to wonder why the separate circular floors climaxing at the dome above me don't quite line up. I almost think there might be some mystical architectural reason for them not to be lined up quite right, but I know it's just perspective.
A song lyric just popped into my head: "Do you believe / in what you see?" In psychology, we talked about how we can only know reality to the extent and in the form that our brain gives it to us. That's why those floors don't life up, and why the smooth coolness on my back seems like the center of the universe with each throb of my head, even though I am not even in the center of the floor underneath the dome.
Asymmetry where there should be symmetry is painful. My brain is trying to make the floors line up, cover each other up, so that the Texas star is at the zenith, and maybe the center of some universe, or maybe at the other end of a universe of which I am the beginning. I can't feel beyond the tile underneath my back, and I can't see past the gold star underneath the top of the dome.
It says T E X A and S between the points of the star, and I should feel lucky to know which letter to start with.