In what is perhaps the most symbolically significant earthquake damage ever,

many news outlets are now reporting that the recent 5.8-magnitude terremoto just outside Washington D.C. has left our nation’s oldest, whitest phallus definitively scarred.

In the U.S. News menu, under the sub-heading Disaster, FOX News reports that there is a four-foot crack in the stones at the top of our great nation’s most recognizable obelisk — giving new and unnecessary meaning to the phrase, “just the tip.”

As a result of Mama Gaia’s latest adjustment, the point of geometrical opposition to our capitol dome — with it’s fresco entitled “The Apotheosis of George Washington” — will be closed to the public indefinitely.

As reported by the Associated Press in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Park service spokeswoman Carol Johnson could not say how many additional cracks were found but says engineers found three or four “significant” ones.

I’ll bet. Once you begin to really look, I imagine the symbols of American might might display some awfully obvious imperfections these days. To the point, perhaps, of making a person think they “could not say.”

NBC published a statement from the National Park Service,

…strongly reject[ing] a rumor circulating online that the earthquake had caused the Washington Monument to lean.

“Absolutely incorrect,” U.S. Park Police Sgt. David Schlosser said of media reports.  “It stands tall and proud.”

So it does, Sergeant. And so it does.

Although — as I’ve established in a 2006 paper for a Human Sexuality class in the Spring of my Sophomore year at GW — the Washington Monument was erected a touch to the East — out of alignment with the Capitol building — in order to accommodate the marshy banks of the Potomac River.

As you can see in the video at this link, the National Cathedral was decoratively damaged as well.

[[I apologize for being unable to embed the video; the following text will make more sense if you click the link and watch the video in question.]]

There are two comments that catch my attention:

The head mason mentions that they, “laid the last stone 83 years to the day that [they] laid the first.” 

& the park ranger claims not to have “a crystal ball, to tell you into the future.”

The first fact is curious for its numerological significance. 83 is an 11, a master number, indicative of pinnacles and highest perfections, but also engaging “the alchemy of yin and yang“. Head Masons tend to know this sort of thing, I think. And isn’t it interesting that it goes to pieces here in 2011, as if subject to the peaking of some other cycle(s)?

The second statement is an amusing abstraction; funny he should have chosen those words, implicitly alluding to gypsy fortune-tellers, dangerous magical women who carry glowing orbs and dress in flowy clothing. And so the ranger’s saying, No, no of course they have no business here, how could they? Why would I know? Analysis… repair work… Impossible.

May We, the People be kept at a safe distance from the crumbling of empires.

May we harmonize our dual hemispheres and rejoice.

Good luck out there, everybody. Be in joy.

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