Friday, July 24, 2015

The Three Graces

The New York Times had an article earlier this week about the benefits of walking in nature. Conclusion: walking in nature decreases brooding, aka “morbid rumination.”

Elaine and I went walking in a version of nature recently. Visting the Indianapolis Museum of Art, we ended up, for the first time ever, walking around Oldfields, the twenty-six-acre Lilly family estate, now part of the IMA grounds. I imagined the life of a pharmaceuticals baron. You could say “I shall go for a walk now” and never leave your front yard.

Oldfields felt to us like a modest version of the Huntington Library: gardens, paths, unidentified sculpture. I stopped at the end of an allée to take a picture of the Three Graces. They were neither walking nor morbidly ruminating.


[Artist unknown. Click for a larger view.]

I know the Graces best from James Joyce’s “The Dead”:

— He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia, said Mary Jane.

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