Tibetan bells in my head, ringing in overtones of dissonant perfection, piercing my mind, from metals matched, shaped, forged, smelted, carried, mined from the slopes of Everest by hand, all part of a devotional process. I can hear them, though no bell is present in the upper level of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Asian art section- but there is an entire promenade of a buddhist temple, how did they get it here? rows of thirty foot columns in an appropriately dim room, with shivas and buddhas and assorted ivory and silver perfectly rendered the incense is almost real in my nose if I sit here a moment I might catch a glimpse of the first of the seven giant steps to heaven, towering overhead, yet five thousand miles away, like an ant might and the perfect smile of serenity lives in that face of granite
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