Talented but rotten fathers

I'm back in New Haven today, recovering from the bliss and ecstasy of yesterday at Occupy Wall Street. I was immobile till noon, after which D and I strolled around the Yale ghetto and nabbed a memorable "Mayan Cocoa" in the afternoon.

I wanted to see the Louis Kahn buildings because I recently watched his son's documentary about him and was equally wrenched by the son's quest for a father and by the father's unusual talent both as an architect and as a man who was charming to women who then were kinder to him than he ever deserved.

My father absconded before I was born and I never met him; and three of my four children had absent fathers, while the fourth had a father who was problematic in a different way, so it's fair to say that the trope of the absent father engenders quite a lot of feeling in me. And yet I can't help admiring a good building.

This is the staircase of the British Art Museum at Yale, one of the stuffiest art museums I've ever visited: whispering awe, heavy presence of security police, art for the plutocrats of the world. Kahn designed both this building and the Yale Art Gallery, and in both buildings what fascinates me most is the staircase. The other one is a series of triangles built with wire and pipes, which is even more dazzling, but this one is lit better and thus made the better photograph.