Meditations on Gallery 210-216


 These galleries are  full of Chinese bronzes which are mostly bowls and other vessels.  But this twenty four handed figure has caught my attention.   What could I do if I had twenty four hands.  I could certainly complete certain tasks much more quickly.  And then what would I do with the time I had saved.  Saving time seems like a complicated process.  What exactly is time and how do you save it.  And if you save it is it like money that you can then bank and use some time in the future for some other purpose that is totally unlike what you were doing when you saved it.  Or is time more like water flowing through a river where it is never the same once it has passed.  Like the Chinese saying that you can never step in the same river twice.

I want to linger in this gallery and stay looking at the various bronzes which seem so substantial and permanent.  Somehow that is reassuring.

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