Cool Cupolas

I only recently found out what a "cupola" is but I have been a fan for a long time.

A while back I blogged about the village that I call The Hamlet and I was frustrated because I couldn't find an image of the Grammar School where I had taken ballet. I searched again, and I found the above. There are so many things that I love about this building, from the cupola on top, to the arches, the secret doors and its perfect symmetry.

more on this later!

Non- Book Meme, part 2

Item number five, Stanford Chapel.


Stanford Chapel, 1906

When I was a kid, my parents took us to the free organ concerts put on by the music doctoral students.

I never recovered.

Was it the realization that the gut could register sound that the ears could not? That I could completely lose myself in a piece of music? The bass notes rolled slowly like ships being lowered into the docks. I could nearly sense the thoughts in the organist's mind, knowing that their finger was poised over the keys, as if suspended by a hair and as soon as that finger twitched, the payload doors swung open and walls came down. The sound sustained until I could take it no more.

And what walls! Ceilings lost in shadows, illuminated by bulbous hanging lamps, hovering like UFOs, shot with cobalt and brass. With vaulted ceilings, gilded letters, and mosaics of Adam and Eve being thrown from the garden by flaming angels. Cavernous, darkened side rooms gave the place an eerie tension between space and containment. Empty balconies and mysterious doors lined the periphery. I imagined they led to under ground crypts and secret rooms. It was as if the stone angels, tessellated saints, the domes, the vaults, the columns, the organist and the organ all conspired together to bring me to rapture.

I am tagging Rosa, Nori, El Cab, and the Chief.