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VIRTUAL MUSEUM

This morning as a strong snow was falling I looked out the window of the train as it was pulling out from a country station and saw a stretched-out procession of travelers on the opposite unroofed train platform struggling forward into the snowy wind to await their train, colorful umbrellas held down as shields against the white dashes streaking down from the gray sky before a tapestry of snow-covered tile roofs that stepped up the mountainside, then the trees and bamboo of the mountainside itself, glimpsed beyond swirling curtains of trailing white, and there I was in a genuine woodblock print by Hiroshige-- his latest one, with the train in it pulling out of the countryside station-- that's me looking out the window of the fourth car from the back, with the red baseball hat on. The richer the culture, the closer it all is to art.