After a hot day, and during a balmy night I
headed to the Defining Beauty exhibition at the British
Museum (via the Totem Pole, naturally).
I was, despite the crowd, and the heat, or perhaps
because of it, suitably spellbound by the miracle on offer – such likeness of skin
rendered from stone. But amid the display of athletically poised torsos, I was
most taken by an intricate likeness of the philosopher Socrates, no more than
foot tall, depicted with his arm thrown skyward from his pleated gown, mid
scene in Aristophenes's comedy 'The Clouds'.
Paraphrasing the exhibition text (as hastily
scribbled onto a crumpled receipt)
Socrates has arrived on stage in a basket having
suspended his intellect in the air
in order to gain closer access
to things of higher importance.
What a lovely idea. And though he has come back
down to Earth, he continues to gesture upwards.
On my way home later that night, gentle fat
droplets turned to heavy rain in an instant, a heavy drone of falling
water. I got soaked. I didn't mind. Sheltering in the bus stop, with the
Friday traffic that much louder for the added hiss and slick of the flooded
streets I thought of old Socrates, as I'd just seen him. Looking up.
