Monument Avenue is a wide main thoroughfare that cuts a scissor-straight line through the west of Richmond, direct into the city centre. West Grace Street and Broad Street run parallel to it, equally straight, but Grace, also residential, is narrower while Broad Street is the commercial axis, with shopfronts, neon signs, public buildings, more traffic, as well as public transport, buses and trams. What makes Monument Avenue truly special is the wide central strip, grassy and tree-covered. Other residential streets such as Grace and Franklin, they too have plenty of trees planted in the wide pavements, but lack the median strip. But all of these trees, pine, oak, sycamore, are tall and leafy, provide scents and shade.
Pavements, shaded by trees, what a blissful luxury. And I had forgotten how beautiful Richmond is, these large elegant buildings, some with steps leading up, some with tall columns, such a sense of grandeur from over a century ago, and perhaps more, for this is an old city, in American terms, old buildings, but freshly painted, planted trees reaching their maturity – taller than they would have been 3 decades ago when I was last here. So thankful for the beauty of the sweeping elegant buildings and the trees with their presence and their shade.
What places do we visit or revisit? I’m thinking in terms of external, so seeming solid, these streets and buildings, these scented trees, and there’s the name of a city or country, still the same (though these get changed sometimes too). We would say, yes, it is the same place. But even cities, those constructions of steel and stone, brick and concrete, they continually change, whole new blocks of buildings going up, the trees grow, other buildings are demolished, shops come and go, facades are painted. Perhaps that’s why maybe it is refreshing and comforting to see old buildings that have not changed, or very little, look, history is here too, it is not just the tales we tell to younger generations who are already poised on the threshold of our stories, heading for somewhere else.
Then there are the other ‘places’ which are of the mind and memory, places of perception, and of the moods and feelings that clothe our memories, so I can point to this place in the narrative and say: I was here in 1989, before that, in 1981, before that I travelled to – Greece, Türkiye, Iran, I settled for a while in the beautiful Bavarian landscape, and I never really wanted to leave, but somehow ...
The inner life, the life of soul, that inner witness, traveller and companion through these physical and emotional landscapes, through the worlds of ideas and the sudden flashes of understanding and meaning, where the person we consider as our self connects with the flint and spark of our inner witness and companion.
At any rate, here I am, or here we are, in a place of sunshine and flourishing growth and though the name of this city is Richmond and it was then too, it is both familiar and newly-discovered. It is like beginning a book, then putting it down, then life takes over and the book is forgotten and when I come back to it, so much has happened but the pages have turned and decades have passed. Now it’s many years later and how much more there is in this ‘later’ to see and understand and factor in, how much richer then the story becomes …
I’m walking through the streets of Richmond and we are both strangers and old friends. I have met up with an old friend who is new to me as well as being known to me, and there is the paradox at the heart of life. It’s a paradox, and it is itself, not something I can explain or understand and definitely not to be solved or resolved. It is the mystery and it is the self, and, however weary I might feel at times, it is always in motion and movement and flux and change.
Monument Avenue has a special place in my personal labyrinth of life. My friend G (who I have met up with now) lived there when I first visited. I remember looking over the balcony of his first floor apartment when our mutual friend P turned up. His visit was as unexpected as my own. None of us had planned this but the three of us ended up on G’s balcony on Monument Avenue, at the same time. We had all known each other in the mountains and forests of the Schwarzwald. Years later, our personal Guardians had arranged things so that we would meet up again. It was December in Richmond, hardly cold, but the trees were bare. Winter sunshine, deep blue sky and dark branches against the sky.
Another time on Monument Avenue it was early spring I think, the trees were just beginning to come into leaf, and I was leaving and I was weeping, we were sitting in G’s car and he was going to drive me to the airport. It’s nothing monumental he said, as he turned the ignition and put the car in gear. On Monument Avenue. He likes to play with language.
In those days, there were actual monuments spaced out along the avenue, in the grassy strip. I didn’t really pay much attention to them. I remember G once joking about statues to confederate soldiers such as Robert E Lee. This time I am on foot and the trees are so broad and branchy and splendid in their leaves that they spread out and cover over the places where the monuments used to be.
These representations of the past have become so offensive to the present, that they were removed. I meant to ask if there was a special park, the way they have in Budapest, where old statues from communist times are preserved, so that people can see the monuments of the past, just as old books are preserved, no matter what world views they depict, so statues can be too, can have their places in museums, rather than being removed from sight, or even attacked and defaced, the way that Greek temples were by the adherents of the next religions and philosophies to become the latest orthodoxy, latest Zeitgeist.
Closer to the town centre, there are new buildings, part of the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, clean red stonework, plenty of glass, trees of course, young people walking with backpacks and shoulder bags, strolling with nonchalant beauty, or sitting at cafe tables with their laptops propped in front of them.
On Broad Street I passed the site of the former Miller & Rhoads, and Thalhimers department stores, which were at the forefront of workers’ strikes and civil rights actions in the early 1960s. I went into Barnes & Noble and bought some greeting cards of one of Richmond’s elegant churches in the snow. I try to imagine snow here.
On the way back, the residents of the care home on Grace Street sit out on the pavement in the shade. Between Grace and Franklin there’s a line of fire escapes against the red brick of the buildings. The synagogue on Franklin has a stained glass upper window which reflects the trees and blue sky; shadows of sparrows dart underneath the box shrubs.
Light is soft, benevolent, and hard, a spear, a baton, to push you on. Just up from the synagogue an ant wrinkles past on the red brick walk. Here we are again, the light says or the bricks say or the reflection of the trees and sky says, a choral slip and sift of wind speaks, breathes, becomes. We are all each other.
Pink flowers on my left. Pillars of empire on Birch Avenue. This building is the St James Episcopal church. Which it turns out, is where G was baptised.
The rented apartment is in the area of Richmond known as The Fan. The living-room looks out onto the street, the trees, and the few passing cars. The dining-room looks out onto the narrow passageway between the red-brick buildings, home to a couple of plastic trash bins, and a twig broom, ready to sweep away the leaves when autumn makes a real appearance. The kitchen window looks out onto the back yard, where there is a huge oak tree, G says the biggest he has ever seen in the city. It is planted next to the wooden boundary fence between this yard and the one next door, generous in its shade to both yards. There’s a small garden table and chairs, which we sit out on, in the evening.
When I get back to the apartment after my exploration of the city centre, I say let’s go to see the bison in Maymont Park.
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