“A people’s park for the future,” (Arts & Entertainment, Aug. 29), Blair Kamin’s positive response to Millennium Park, is unconvincing.
Kamin says, “The people . . . no longer want to passively observe painterly scenes of nature . . . This is a post-industrial park, in which people want to actively engage what they see.” Perhaps. Perhaps not. Kamin might want to revisit this happy, action-oriented rationale from the long view, later in life–perhaps in his 70s, where I now find myself.
Some things never change. There is no “progress” where basic human needs are concerned. And the need to disengage, rather than engage, can suddenly be the most important need of all. There will never be any shortage of ways to spend time actively. But for those unexpected, impossible moments that happen to all of us, the really critical need is finding a way to step back from the battle, a way to cope, to function.
From time to time–quite often, in fact–we all need a refuge, a healing environment where we can leave ego-related problems behind, and reach out to the mystery of things. Long, long ago, as early as the observance of an activity-free Sabbath by ancient Hebrews, or nirvana-oriented contemplation by Buddhists, people knew that.
Has it really all been downhill since the days of the 19th Century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his “serene greenswards”? The need for refuge, for rest, for peace remains with us always. Such need, in fact, is the highest need of all. And the chance of finding it in Millennium Park has utterly vanished.
