Sense of Place

A line from Akhmatova: The hour of remembrance has drawn close again.

It does not seem, during the fall of my senior year, that this hour has ever left. The odd extensions of autumn, my exponentially increasing workload and a premature sense of nostalgia have led me on more walks than usual. Back to my favorite places I go, past my first-year dorm and classes of semesters past, back to remember discovery, in search of the fascinating memory of newness.

And so, this week, I present a list of my favorite discoveries: stone arches, bronze plaques and back-rooms of libraries, a liberally biased and eccentric collection of bests. Some are worth an hour, others an afternoon, others a passing glance. No epiphanies here--no discoveries in any larger sense; these are simply the facts of place, the bricks and paths and collections I have come across, delighted, in the past four years:

1. For reading in autumn: the round bench built around a tree in Radcliffe Yard. The gnarled tree offers an endless variety of back support, pleasant long after library chairs have been exhausted. Perfect for Thursday afternoons with a book.

2. For remembering childhood: the Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit doors hidden in the trees and bushes between the Science Center and Littauer. Pooh lives at the base of a tree; Rabbit and Piglet are across the path and a bit harder to find. An early visit--say, before 11 a.m.--often finds small children in strollers calling good morning to Pooh in passing, or leaving "presents" inside his wooden door.

3. For planning an exit strategy: the Mt. Auburn fire escapes. With spectacular views over the roof of Spice and over towards Holyoke Center, they are nonetheless the best backdrop Harvard offers for dramatic scenes of introspection in the style of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Also in the area: the Let's Go bathrooms, with the truest mirrors of any on campus.

4. For telling secrets: the whispering arch around the main entrance to Sever. This requires at least two people, some patience and low traffic. Especially good times to try are eleven and noon on Monday, Wednesday or Friday.

5. For conjoining planets: the Science Center observatory. Entrance requires a sticker of authorization or a friend with a sticker, but once inside, the dome opens, the tall creaking ladder slides loudly around in the dark, and the heavy telescope swings slowly on its ropes towards the tiny points of light. Best visited on a clear night when the moon is not too full, as its brightness will absorb everything else in the sky.

6. For an understanding of alchemy: the glass flowers in the Natural History museum, past the Science Center on Oxford Street. Anyone who has ever been asked to spin a convincing argument from difficult material will appreciate the glassblowers' unbelievable skill in crafting plants from silicon. These are not the kind of flowers one might bring as a gift; they're Amazonian plants, butterflies, beetles, vegetables, stalks, grass, all startlingly lifelike.

7. For getting lost in books: the 550-555 section of the Widener stacks, full of ancient and medieval languages. The study carrels here have excellent collections: on an average day, "Modern Persian Poetry" sits between "Language and Science in Mesopotamia" and "Readings in the Cappadocian Fathers." Best followed by an exit through Widener's main entrance, slightly disoriented, around dusk: marvel at the placement of library and church in direct opposition, fodder for any epistemological crisis.

A tie for this category is the secret upstairs room of the Lowell House library, accessible through a very steep metal stair at the back of the copy room (light switch at the top). The room contains a wonderfully arranged collection of everything from Wittgenstein and the Gitas to early American treatises on expansion, character and war.

8. For conceptual problems of interiority/exteriority: The marvelous ramp leading up and through the Carpenter Center is meant to prompt questions of where the sidewalk ends and the building begins; it snakes through the studios in an almost alimentary fashion and down to the street on the other side. The views into the galleries are worth the detour. Best at dusk.

9. For plotting the destruction or salvation of the world: the Death Star. Ask any physics major to escort you.

10. For sound and fury: the Faulkner plaque on the Lars Anderson bridge. The plaque is small, bronze, weathered and nearly impossible to pick out against the brick on the bridge's northwest side; it's inscribed "to Quentin Compson, drowned in a field of honeysuckle." Cognoscenti will recognize the bridge as the supposed location of one of the novel's great tragedies.

This is clearly not an exhaustive list. But in this shortest-of-all seasons, a season of gift lists, good- and bad-lists, shopping lists and to-do lists, I offer this as an antidote: the unobligatory list-of-discovery, list-of-nostalgia, someone-else's-list.

Maryanthe E. Malliaris '01 is a mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.