I was at a museum walking through an exhibition of art about maps. There were historical maps on the wall, as well as a lot of contemporary art based on the idea of mapping. I stopped for a long time to look at a painting that was a map of the works of political philosopher Hannah Arendt. The canvas was a square, but the map of her books was a circle with concentric rings arranged chronologically. Her first book was in the center, and then each ring represented another year until her death. The rings were all broken down into segments representing each book that she had published in that year. The whole canvas was painted in light colors, each of which symbolized a different branch of philosophy: ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, phenomenology, etc. The books were color coded according to which aspect of philosophy they represented. Despite the geometric shape and conceptual theme of the painting, it was painted using a very thick and painterly impasto technique.

I was inside my high school walking toward the main exit, when I looked up and saw that there were Gustav Klimt murals painted on the wall. I felt as if I had seen them before, but that I hadn’t really paid attention to them, and that I hadn’t understood their importance. They were all of women with extremely long brown hair, which seemed to be floating, as if under water. For some reason, I tried to identify the one whose hair was closest to the length of my own hair. Then I went down the stairs to the basement, and as I got about half way down, I noticed that the whole basement was flooded up to four feet. The water was a greenish brown, like a river, but I wasn’t afraid to swim in it. Lots of other people were also swimming in it too, including Renée and her son Tommy. It all felt very soothing and beautiful. The light was warm and shadowy, and the architecture seemed historical, like Baroque Venice. I felt happy to be able to return to this high school with a basement that you could swim in, although I would sometimes have moments of confusion when I couldn’t recall how the art classes were held in the basement under these conditions.