January 5, 1904, to protect the American legation in Seoul during the Russo-Japanese War.  They remain until November 11, 1905.

I didn't know that 'Enfilade' was a military term, used to describe "a military formation's exposure to enemy fire," from the French, "to skewer."  What I guess you'd call a straight shot.  Which probably inspired that quip, generally applied to empty theaters, galleries, restaurants, shopping malls and any normally well-attended venue or event which is distinctly not well attended: "You could shoot a canon off and not hit anyone."  The implication being that a well-written play, the gallery show of a really good artist, a truly chic and popular gathering spot would have a crowd and you'd simply have to hit someone without even trying but ... well, you get the point.  We've all bombed in New Haven, metaphorically speaking.  We've all, in the military sense and at some point in our lives, given our detractors and enemies a "clear shot along the longest axis of projection."

You understand, I was not looking for a military dimension.  I was not looking yesterday for guns at Christmas.  I don't always expect to find what I find or even to find what I'm looking for.  How funny, in a way, that we were in Korea in 1904 and then went back to have a war there later when I was alive, even if I have no memory of it.  Of course History has a military aspect.  "Enfilade" does too. 

 "Enfilade" also applies to that arrangement of rooms with its allignment of doorways or openings which creates a repetition of space and light which in turn mimics the seemingly endless effect achieved with two facing mirrors - the reflection of space repeated back and forth on itself in an Alice-in-Wonderland tunnel of an ever more distant vista.

A similar if more primitive concept surely obtains with those Russian dolls, one nestled inside the other down to a tiny acorn, or Chinese boxes, or I suppose even that graduated cannister set (flour to salt) of your Mom's, but they all lack the size and proportion and volume, and well, yes, the grandeur I'm after.

You see, I feel as if "Enfilade" in the sense of space is the best way to describe what I'm trying to talk about when I talk about experiencing Time (space = distance = time), and History.  Past and Present.   Then and Now.  

What I'm trying to say is that when you realize the world is a mirror and you are in it, the infinity starts.  In both directions.  Deja Vu is one way of describing it. 

"Been there, done that," is another. 

"History Repeating," to quote a song immortalized by Shirley Bassey (Propellerheads), but with a little more texture and layering. 

I'm sure you know what I mean.  You stand in a place you've been before -- or maybe even some place you haven't been.  It happened to me at Versailles, at the Conciergerie and in the ambulatoire of Saint-Germain-des-Pres  -- but you could be anywhere and in any case you are in some place and you can see how it is and how it was at the same time, you can see how by just holding still Time could stutter out a series of moments with the same dimensions that would be the same and not the same, like an endless arrangement of large oblong volumes of space, like dominoes.  One tap and you could reach out and put your hand through the world if you wanted to, you could reach back and ...

I'm not explaining this well at all, am I.  Now you see the problem. 

Still, I will say this.  It's impossible to look at you without seeing your depth.  Without the layering of all that has come before.  Between us, before us, without us, in spite of us and because of us.  For example, I see your youth in the ruin.  I see you then and you now.  I see what you meant and what you'd like to mean.  That's why some times it's so hard to focus.

You will say it's myopic.  The blurred vision is simply childhood nearsightedness not caught soon enough.  That I don't see clear edges and sharply defined memories because I couldn't see much of anything until I flunked flashcards in first grade and they figured I was retarded until with what must surely have been immense relief they realized I might only be a little blind.  Glasses didn't make the visions go away, but they changed them.  Of course I got older too.

My younger sister was even worse.  When they finally got both of us checked and fitted -- me with the black safety frames, her with a pair of those dainty feminine cat-eyes -- we left the optometrist's office and on the way to the station wagon my sister paused to speak in a tone of such wonder and rapture my mother said later she couldn't help feeling like a terrible parent: "Oh Mommy," my sister said, "Look!  The trees have leaves."