At the Getty Villa in Malibu, the first acquisition J. Paul Getty made was a statue of Herakles, referred to as the Getty Hercules. It's a mesmerizing piece, but I was having flash suppression problems on Friday when I toured and you know how art museums are about flash photography. This is a professional photo from the Getty site.
When I was strolling through the galleries, very few of the male statues had their penises--and this Hercules doesn't either. My friend Mary Lou told the story of visiting the Vatican and the tour guide pointing out that not one single male statue in the Vatican collection (and it is vast) has a penis. He said that some Pope way back when, for some reason unknown to the guide, had all the penises removed and that there is one whole room in the Vatican that houses them. I started roaring with laughter and then another woman said, "Yes, I just returned from the Vatican myself and heard that same story, but our guide said all the penises were in a large box somewhere in the Vatican."
I am smiling from ear to ear as I type this. Even though my camera flashed when I took this picture at the Getty, no one saw it, so you see two tourists and one hunky frontal Hercules minus penis. I just always assumed ancient statuary penises were fragile and stuck out too far to transport safely.
What followed were a serious of more and more outrageous ideas--like some kind of reality show where contestants are allowed to reattach all the penises on the Vatican's statues. Any other ideas?
My foot, by the way, became acutely problematic all of yesterday and last night--severe pain, fever, headache, lethargy. Needless to say, I didn't volunteer at the library; I was in bed all day dozing with foot elevated on ice. At 8:45 p.m. last night, the doctor prescribed Vicodin, which I've only had with major surgeries. No one was home, so I dragged myself to the 24 hour pharmacy and back home--and my grandson was back by then. It felt so good to just have another human being in the house. This a.m. the fever and headache are gone; the antibiotic must have kicked in. The foot is still very sore, but nothing like yesterday. Both Rain and Kay R. recommended Reiki and I did complete first level Reiki many years ago. I did Reiki until I fell asleep last night. Hmmm, was it Reiki, antibiotics or Vicodin that broke the cycle--or all of the above? I see the doc again tomorrow.
