Day 73: The Total Building

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

- Wallace Stevens (Poet, Insurance Executive, lifelong Hartford resident)

We went to The Governor's mansion with Emily, her roommate, and her sister for a little tour of the Christmas decorations. The Governor doesn't actually live there, so tour is a shuffle-through of a museum to opulence. I nearly persuaded myself into buying this year's ornament- "The Genius of Connecticut," a protector angel of our city- but the use of the word "Genius" was odd and the women selling them didn't seemed accustomed to people passing by. The best thing in the place was a punchbowl made for a Connecticut Battleship that some schoolchildren saved up $4,000 for, though I'm not sure why. What I learned from the tour: Greg has no interest in colonial furniture, and is grumpy when cookie recipes are only handed out to women, even though he doesn't bake.

Our group seemed a little stunned by our dutiful Connecticut Holiday Season Activity, so we headed into West Hartford for fantastic vegetarian food. Greg and Emily talked Connecticut Facts and Hartford Urban Planning for quite some time; I think they may be soulmates. We headed to a bookstore and I bought Wallace Stevens' Complete Poems, which I've been meaning to since I finished my paper. Like most people, I am vaguely afraid of poetry's mysteries, but I feel connected to Stevens because he refused to leave Hartford. This is from his "Sketch of the Ultimate Politician":

He is the final builder of the total building,
The final dreamer of the total dream,
Or will be. Building and dream are one.

We talk about the buildings in Hartford-- the ones that stand empty, the ones that have promised to be built--like they will change the city. I agree; the empty lots and cleaned-out storefronts seem like an echo of an empty government, an empty bureaucratic process, empty citizens. But we talk about them so much that they are being built in our imaginations and recognized for the possibilities they are. Maybe it would be sadder if they were full; maybe it would be sadder if they were all over-decorated mansions where nobody lived.