Grim Epiphany

Was early for a rendezvous with my sister last
week, and thought I'd try to intercept her at
Brooklyn Criminal Court on Schermerhorn Street
where she's an attorney for the 18B Panel: court-
appointed private counsel for indigent criminal
clients.

Hadn't seen the court building before (Collins &
Collins 1932): usual platitudes inscribed on
entablature, manly rusticated base, triumphal-arch
entries, all invoking, uh, the example of Roman
law.

Remembered how some years earlier I'd learned the
detailing art from amazing full-scale 1930's shop
drawings -- in the course of replacing 3600
derelict windows at Harvey Wylie Corbett's
depression-deco Manhattan Criminal Court Building
locally known as "The Tombs".

Occasionally see the Bread and Butter of my
youthful indiscretion gracing the background of
local newscast shots covering the murder trial of
the week.

Noticed crummy 19th century Pacific High was
smacked little-brother cheek-by-jowl against
Brooklyn Criminal Court, embracing in a Venn
Diagram from hell, with parking lots all around and
later asked my sister tongue-in-cheek if there was
a connecting door between the two institutions --
such bonhomie would surely be welcome in the Urban
Village -- and sure enough she said some of her
younger clients were Pacific High students.

By way of deflecting some indelicate comments put
to me just then regarding race and gender, I
studiously contemplated the immanent Shape Grammar
inflecting the courtly facade, waiting on a slow
line to go through security check with hundreds of
sullen, hunkered down folk who would not offer me
an opinion one way or the other about Seaside.

Past the metal detector, I "assumed the position"
for a closer hand-held wand check, noticing the
young men around assumed the position with ease and
familiarity and I thought well maybe this was the
"homo ad circulum" of Vitruvian and Leonardian
fame.

Couldn't find my sister after wandering round and
round dim marble corridors on the 4th,5th, and 6th
floors where criminal courtrooms are located --
crying babies, small children, Post-Mechanical
Brides camping out on the floor in great smothered
heaps made my attempts at a closer inspection of
the condition of the Radiant Heating System
impossible.

Left the building via fire stair, in which
clandestine business of various sorts was being
transacted in direct violation of Section C26-604.3
of the Building Code of the City of New York: "exit
passageways shall be kept free of obstructions at
all times".

Headed a few blocks over to the day-care where I
finally found my sister waiting, and then my two-
year old Korean niece seeing me cried DaDa -- aptly
-- and ran to me with her picture book open and
pointed proudly to each of the mysterious figures
rendered therein, intoning: Sak, Swa, Ta, --
circle, square, triangle -- and I knew then I would
have plenty to discuss with the child about Sacred
Geometries. But that would have to wait.


Deborah