The Lincoln Memorial

Part 2 of the adventure which began below.  Backdated from a week later, because I'm a bad person.

The Lincoln Memorial, 1:20pm

I have come to the Lincoln Memorial, although I have been here once before (briefly, when I was in the city two years ago) not because it lies on my path home - it doesn't, really - but because I like it.  I have great trouble conjuring up any sort of emotional reaction to the Washington Monument, even if it is the world's tallest phallus - I mean, obelisk - but Lincoln is another thing entirely.  Perhaps it is appropriate, then, that as I sit on the steps and write, the sun has come out properly for the first time today.

I also came to see the people.  These are not the swelling amusement-park throngs, and neither are they the emotional mobs who periodically hold rallies here or in the vicinity.  The memorial is a bit out of the way for those going to see the Capitol and the White House, and since it's at the far end of the Mall, it's not something you just stumble across on your way somewhere else.  No, these people are here to see Lincoln.

There is not, to my knowledge, any larger rendering of a human being in this city of larger-than-life figures, but almost as large as Lincoln himself (figuratively speaking) are his words, which flank visitors who enter: the Gettysburg Address, carved in marble on Lincoln's right, and his Second Inaugural Address, ditto on the left.  Some of the people take pictures of Lincoln and then step out to admire the view of the Washington Monument from the other end of the Reflecting Pool, but others step into these two wings which in a religious structure would be chapels and read the words of a man who is as close to a prophet in American mythology as one could possibly be.  But everyone, even the people who come to snap a photo and then leave, is quiet - not silent, of course - but muted, perhaps out of respect, perhaps from awe, or perhaps in deference to Lincoln, for whatever the deficiencies of American popular knowledge, everyone knows who Lincoln is.

No one thinks of the Lincoln Memorial as being particularly ornate, since our common perception is formed by the rather stripped-down versions visible on the back of the penny and the five-dollar bill, but in fact there is some lovely art here.

Even those who don't speak English know him, it turns out.  I have heard languages I can't name on the streets of the District, and this is true at the memorial too.  As I exited I passed several women in saris, some punks with pierced noses, ears, and God knows what else, and numerous others who don't fit the corn-fed, white-bread stereotype.  They were all respectful, if not religiously so.  I suspect that most of us would be when faced with something which, as amorphous as its symbolism may be, is indisputably the representation of something far larger than ourselves.

Enough writing - I need my lunch.  Away from the monument I can find some place to unpack my picnic.  And of course, I can come back here whenever I want.  Appropriately enough, this temple to American idealism is open twenty-four hours a day.

Remember this from high school?