The East Coast
From Gaithersburg, we drove to Washington, DC, on the Clara Barton Parkway. The view entering the city is of the Kennedy Center across the Potomac. Stunning. I’ve never entered the city in that direction and loved the parkway.
We cruised past the White House and Washington Monument and visited the National Building Museum. Then we visited the Phillips Collection because I wanted to experience the Rothko Room again. There was a great exhibit about the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge at the Building Museum, and I spent a long time in the Rothko room.
The Rothko room was built originally to Rothko’s specifications. Other than the Rothko Chapel in Houston, which I have yet to visit, it is the only place where the work is shown as Rothko wanted. The lighting is dim, and the four paintings loom large as you sit on the bench in the middle. So many people come peek in, and leave. The sign that says no more than eight people at a time, most don’t read. They think it means the room is closed, mainly because of the dim lighting, so different from the rest of the museum with its clean walls and bright lighting. Most of us don’t know how to sit and look–how to see. We sat, and I looked at Green and Tangerine on Red, and Dawn looked the opposite at Green and Maroon. She saw a landscape. She saw West Texas, and the whitish line in the middle moved as her eyes moved over the canvas. Like rain on the horizon. The weird sky and red dirt. I saw the blue outline as a river; she saw it as a highway. I told her Rothko said they were not landscapes; they were emotions. So she asked what emotions I saw in the painting. In Ochre and Red on Red, I noticed the painting was painted with the ochre on the bottom but hung with the ochre on the top. (You can see the paint drips going up instead of down). I saw oppression. A box trying to hold in the passion below. Dawn saw life-sustaining maize in the earthy tone. She saw a big window of hope in Orange and Red on Red, and I saw possibility.
We left DC before 5 p.m. and decided to get as far North as possible. I installed our EZ Pass, and we took off on I-95, crossing into Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York before ending up in Connecticut. We overnighted in Trumbull, CT, arriving at our hotel at about 10:40 p.m.
We were greeted by this raccoon the following day as we plotted our journey. I wanted to go to New Haven and see Yale. We wanted to go to Mystic–but no pizza. We had dinner in Newport, RI, and overnighted in Plymouth, MA.
We quickly visited Plymouth the following morning but could not reach the rock or the harbor because of a runner’s race. We drove to Falmouth, MA, went to Maison Villette for croissants and pastries, took them to the beach, and had a picnic. Then we drove to Boston and went to Maine, stopping at Cindy’s for lobster rolls that we ate for dinner that night in our rental house.
I’m living in Rockland, ME, for the next few months. I’m writing. I’m watching the tide rise and fall and preparing for a storm. I’m visiting lighthouses, museums, and galleries. I’m reading. I’m on sabbatical. I’m a Texas Colorado woman experiencing the East Coast–the rocky shore–the water. The lush forest. Something completely different from what I have known my whole life feeds my soul.