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The strange glory of it: one listens to a program of Arvo Pärt's works, all familiar until the last, Adam's Lament, one of his more recent.  And suddenly Bach comes flowing through Pärt's sonorous minimalism.  Not by drops, but in a great, multiplying rush.  The 12/8 time, the walking base line, the counterpoint, the controlled chromatics, the hymnodic yearning.

And then, the next morning, to Roosevelt Island to see the new memorial to FDR, completed from the late mid-century design of Louis Kahn.  And, as suddenly, Egypt comes, like a granite spaceship from the past, in through the modernism.  A pyramid-made-plaza, of spectacularly massive, solid granite.  Construction that - at least at the tip, actually could last thousands of years.  Solid blocks of granite, perhaps two meters to the side and four meters tall, each standing just an inch or so apart, but perfectly aligned, letting the light cut through.  Smooth but unpolished surfaces, except on the trapped sides that face the neighboring blocks - forming waxy slits of sun.  Those surfaces are brought to a mirror polish, forming an aperture, as if Bach could shine through Pärt.