Monday, August 06, 2007

All rather quiet on the western front L.A. has clammed up like Pismo Beach. Nobody is talking to me, anyhow. They're thinking, perhaps. Puzzling over the map. An earthquake in Utah 4.0 on the Ritchter Scale. To the north it's all collapsed bridge stories. To the east, is this absolutely horrible execution of three college-bound children by some men with guns and knives in Newark. Spurned Army recruiters, no doubt. Forgive me, I turn away. I am the southern exposure. Today's word is diastyle. The arrangement of classical Greek columns in which the space between two columns measures three diameters. This is the view of the Gods from within their temples. Man, from the diastyle perspective is small, framed and in the God's light. Supplicants have the rat's eye view of things and informed and disabused, will always leave with a lighter step than the one which brought them. The Greeks, of course, weren't satisfied just fleecing the sheep, and secularized the concept by building a walkway right down the center of their theatres, the diazoma. For the goats. The eye always seeks the axis of symmetry. We instinctively seek balanced compositions, but then we're forced have to choose a side, a point of view, but not that one. Left or right? Port or starboard? Hey, you're on the diastyle, make your choice or the usher will. Sit down. The center then, will be held for the Gods. The movies brought the whole thing indoors, but still the center gap was respected. The projector light casts well tempered shadows on the very lowly wall. A false dichotomy. Deus ex machina. Ladies will kindly remove their hats.  Ionian Columns 12:12:23 PM    comment