Driving to Byzantium

or Rittenhouse Square...that was probably it, because you can't really drive to Byzantium from where I live. Or maybe you could have at one time, but Byzantium doesn't technically exist any longer, except in stories and songs, which makes it a bit more of a mythological or epic phenomenon, even though you could probably get to where it used to be, albeit not by car....

William Butler Yeats described Byzantium as a place where aged intellectuals could escape sensual excesses and have actual conversations, which sounds pretty groovy in the particular sense of "grooviness" which is devoid of the sunburnt mirth, dance, and provencal song Keats described when under the influence of the nightingale... So, like an "animal house" that's more like the New York Public Library quiet reading room.

So where were we? Ah yes, driving to Rittenhouse Square...

The way to Rittenhouse Square is full of obstacles and challenges, like the Schuylkill Expressway. Some days it's a picturesque vision of loveliness...others, it's a parking lot. I don't have enough experience to know when, exactly, the highway will be in which condition. Consequently, I often find myself making a long, running commentary on the driving. It's especially worthy of comment, I find, when cars slow down dramatically so that their drivers can examine the world around them--"why look, a pile of fresh dirt!"

But I digress.

The real reason for the trip toward Rittenhouse Square was a trip to the Franklin Institue in order to bolster my rapdily declining mental faculties. The trip was relatively successful.

I hope.