The AVAM

I'm on a second, stronger antibiotic, this one for two weeks. After feeling infinitely better last weekend I regressed badly on Monday, and by Thursday felt worse than ever. The warned me about gangs, knives, and guns in the City Schools. They didn't warn me about biological weapons.

I've spent as much time as possible sleeping the last few days. Forunately my Saturday morning class was cancelled yesterday. I used the time to complete some homework early. One assignment for Multicultural Ed was to visit a local museum and write a Personal Reflection.

I am sick to death of Personal Reflections. But the AVAM had a new exhibit called All Faiths Beautiful. Seemed appropriate. I hopped in the car for the five-minute drive to the Harbor and the museum. Unfortunately I'd forgotten about the Baltimore Marathon. I had to do some clever back-channel navigation, going south and west and sneaking up on the Harbor from a different direction. Runners in clumps wheezed by at almost every intersection.

The AVAM exhibit is up to their usual standards. A few canvases by Alex Grey, who always amuses me with his trippy hippy transdenominational images of physical bodies dissolving into ethereal ecstatic trance. Some dude named Michael Green used digital collage to illuminate Coleman Barks' translations of Rumi. Some cat named Fred Kahler made intricate quill pen drawings like frozen frames from a late-phase Brakhage film. The museum kindly provided magnifying glasses for detailed study. There's the usual collection of whimsical and deadly serious pieces by the fanatical, the obsessed, the mentally ill, the modern-day William Blake visionaries. One statue of the Goddess made entirely out of seashells blew me away, as did a stone carving of the Holy Family and a donkey in Egypt.

Scattered throughout the exhibit were wonderful religious-themed confession cards from PostSecret.

I had to skirt marathoners running through our neighborhood when I returned home as well.