My eyes are dry from lack if sleep and the interminable waiting. Still I wait. I wait for news from ‘new york’

This morning was a conversation with Kathy about art and photography with a bit of printmaking thrown in. Then it was off to the Guggenheim.

The main exhibit is of the Gutai, an Avant Garde group in post war Japan that focused on children & play as a way of moving away from the root causes of the war. By avoiding and moving away from the structure of art they sought to work with the materials rather than force them into the art.

Throw away the paintbrush; it’s the oppressive tool that forces us to repeat the art of the last. It reminds me that culture is a reaction not an action. Art and literature etc are always reacting to what came before and if you don’t know what that is then you will have trouble understanding what the artist is doing.

What does this mean about books? Books are the paintbrush and it’s time to put it aside and see what publishing really is. To see what the true meaning or purpose of the content is.

There was a lot of “I can do that…” In this exhibit. For me in this exhibit, if you remove the intellectual process they used to create art you are left with a lot of common, albeit cool, art projects. Still struggling with what that means.

Time was running out so we popped in on the 3rd floor for Kandinsky 1911-1913. He was residing in Munich at the time but returned to Russi0 at outbreak of WWI.

It was getting late so we hopped a bus down 5th Avenue back to 59th Street. I noted that the bus is only $2.25, a dollar cheaper than Edmonton. And way way more effective. Viva la big city.

Up next: Foxwood Theatre for a matinee of Spiderman. I wanted to see it for the technological aspect. The music is apparently so-so but then I don’t like musicals anyway.

On a related note I was saddened to note the other day that the live spider exhibit at the AMNH was closed. Not. I hope they had fun ‘closing’ that exhibit: squish-squish.

Spider-Man isn’t an actor. There are about 9 of them who fly in and out or tumble across the stage. Awesome, awesome technical stuff, and watching the conductor on the screens mounted below the first balcony is a hoot. She really gets into it. I imagine the band is in another building and it’s all piped in. Anyway we are in a box on stage left so have a good view of the stage and the audience.

All in all if you came to see it as a musical you’d be pretty blah about it. Nothing memorable and no real big dance numbers or great choreography. They are relying on aerial stuff that is impressive by not so ‘theatrically’ creative.

The final aerial battle was mucho pressure and the music (by U2) certainly was rousing and by the time it was over you had really gotten into it. All in all it was worth the price of admission… once.

Back on the train we ran into Jamie and Brenda (what are the odds) and we rode home together. They are off to some music club tonight (although Brenda is hitting a cello recital at Juilliard first). They headed to Murray’s bagels and we headed back to Patsy’s Pizza for an early supper.

Mmmmm. Now it’s time for some updates and perhaps some reading with our eyes closed for Leslie.

After her nap Leslie watched me don a tie and we soon were on our way. Down the block and up the red line 5 stops and we arrived with the well-dressed hordes at Lincoln Center.

Tonight is Bizet’s Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera. We are up in the Family Circle, which is essentially the fifth balcony. But the tickets are only $37 apiece. Awesome prices that ensure a full house for this classic.

It didn’t, however, end until 11:30. Tired.

I awoke with a start as the tube rattled and hissed. Problems? No, no, all was well. I could hear the next missive hurtling towards me. I reached for my glass, then paused. Later, time for a drink later.

After breakfast we headed out with Jamie and Brenda for the art walk through the galleries of Chelsea. No one else took up their offer, more fools they. We did about 7 or 8 galleries with a broad range of artists. I loved the Russell Young print of Frank Sinatra and the Frank Gehry conceptual sketches of his architectural works (including the Guggenheim in Bilbao) were awesome. Leslie fell in love with the collection of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Look him up, it’s an awe inspiring story.

We stopped at a park to use some washrooms and checked out the dog park; it was half the size of our old St Albert house’s back yard. Small.

I loved the $16,000 bronze of a rooster’s head and the $8000 iron resin horse-headed man. There were also some super cute bunnies with a fortune cookie saying “Next time order the shrimp.”

On the way back we took the highline for a couple of blocks; it’s an old elevated railroad turned into a walkway and park. Ingenious and beautiful. We caught a bus back towards the Flatiron Building and went to a deli called Eisenberg’s. Traditional New York deli so I ordered the traditional pastrami on rye. Delish. Leslie had the matzo ball soup, again very traditional.

< The restaurant was a study in awesome. It was long and very narrow with mostly bar seats. Each guy working behind the counter was responsible for about 5 or 6 patrons and whatever cooking stations were in his area. The yelled back and forth (mostly in Spanish) and food meandered back and forth depending on its needs or ingredients. All in all a very traditional, and very New York, meal.

It had started to rain but we were off to the Intrepid Museum. A short train ride and a longer walk and we arrived at the USS Intrepid, an aircraft carrier vintage 1943 -1974. It houses a number of planes including the closed (as a result of Hurricane Sandy) exhibit with a space shuttle. One of the highlights for me was the Blackbird, a Cold War vintage CIA spy plane. Afterwards we walked down the pier and checked out the Concorde and the Hudson River. On the way out we toured the Growler sub; this was a short-lived 60s-era design that launched early cruise missiles. Not as small as the WWII sub I saw in San Francisco but small enough.

After we toured the sub we walked east to Broadway and Times Square and grabbed tickets to the Albee show at 40% off. Then we hopped a train to Lincoln Center to pick up tomorrow’s opera tickets and scooted back for the 7 o’clock show. Somewhere in between we grabbed a hotdog with relish… a real treat here in Yankee-land.

After a bit of hanging out under the canopy at the Booth Theatre we watched the pack of teenagers grow and grow. “Why,” Leslie asked, “are there a bunch of teenagers going to an Albee play?” “Why,” I replied sagely, “they must be a school group.” We’ll I turns out they were just waiting for the theatre doors 2 theatres down to open so they could see Once.

We found our seats but were moved closer to center due to a camera being in our way. Better seats. The play? Abso-fucking fabulous! I had seen it done in Edmonton but honest to god it was crap compared to this. I still don’t like musicals, but I just might be a Broadway convert.

Back on the train and then we hit an all night diner for a late late supper. Challah French toast for Leslie and a chicken triple decker for me. Then it’s home to beddy-by.

My mind is swirling yet I shall not sleep until tomorrow night. What odd spell is in these missives?

Last night’s missive had been marked by perfectly round water stains as if someone had been writing these notes with glass on hand. A preposterous notion, full of disregard for the literary arts, but these are strange times indeed.

This morning I woke before the alarm as Leslie snored and slept on. I grabbed a shower, woke the sleeping nymph and headed down for a coffee.

Pokey puppy finally showed up and we had breakfast and hit the road. We took the train to the Port Authority and hit the express to 125 street then crossed over and headed back to 81st, a couple of friendly New Yorkers offering advice along the way.

This place, like everything in New York it seems, is huge. It has a blue whale, a multi-ton meteorite, giant dinosaurs and more roomies than Versailles.

I was strick by the Widmanstätten pattern on Ahnighto (the aforementioned meteorite). It’s a pattern unique to iron from outer space; it doesn’t form on earth. Ahnighto itself and its companions Dog and Woman were apparently stolen (my word, not the museum’s) from the Inuit by Robert Peary a hundred years ago in the name of science after he discovered that they had iron-tipped tools where there was no iron. The Inuit had been chipping it off the large meteorite; and then they weren’t. ‘Cause it was gone. To New York. ‘Cause Peary wanted to. Even though it took two years. To steal it. Sheesh.

Rocks minerals and gemstones, then more dioramas; Leslie loves dioramas. Even dioramas of North American animals we’ve actually seen. Girls are weird. Moose are weird. Dioramas are weird. But girls aren’t moose dioramas. I think.

Outside for a dog & pretzel and then back at it. The Hayden sphere is this huge suspended ball with a planetarium and theatre inside of it. After a short film about the Big Bang we walked down a spiral ramp learning about how old we are. Old.

Around the second floor balcony a series of exhibits talked about scale using the sphere as an example. For example if the sphere represented the sun then ‘this’ is the earth. Or if the sphere was a red blood cell then ‘this’ was a rhinovirus. Etc. Very well done but my brain still hurts.

A brief detour into African animals and we decide to finish off with dinosaurs. I had mentioned to Leslie that I had wanted to visit the Museum of America Natural History to see the big dinosaurs like the ones in Calvin and Hobbes but I don’t think she had taken me seriously. Well I was. I didn’t want to mill around and learn stuff, I was on a mission. And lo and behold I was so right. I am willing to bet anything that the dinosaurs in the Calvin and Hobbes comics were drawn here; the stegosaurus, brachio-whatsis and the mammoth were like old friends, they were so familiar. I bet I stood in the exact place that Bill Watterson did when he imagined and sketches those awesome strips.

I did read one sign about a possible dino-killing meteor strike on the tip of the Yucatan peninsula. I’ll have to do some reading when I get home because I had never heard that was a possible location.

After that we hit the gift shop for a lark. If we had thought the museum was big, well, the gift shop was bigger. Three floors of junk, clothing, books, food, art and rocks. It was too much so we ran away.

On to the subway, we got off at 42street and walked underground to Times Square. Man, is there a lot of electronic signage there. A lot. After milling around and finding out where the TKTS discount store was we decided against seeing a show. There wasn’t too much we wanted to see so we decided to beat it home for a nap and then see about a late dinner.

Cruising back to the station we investigated Evita with Ricky Martin (closed Mondays), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof featuring Scarlet Johansson (too expensive since I’d seen it recently and also closed Mondays) and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid if Virginia Wolff (alas also dark on… you guessed it, Mondays). But I could be persuaded to see some Albee on Broadway (or at least just off of it).

On the train, down the block and we are back in the teeny tiny room so Leslie can read with her eyes closed for a bit.

Dinner was Spanish. Seafood for Les and Pollo for me. Pretty tasty food and nice company.

Zzzzzzz

The next evening, another message arrived.

This morning we are on our own for breakfast. Apparently they give the sisters Sundays off. Then we head as a herd for a walk through Central Park. I’ve got a museum or two in mind but we will see.

The trains are a bit under repair so the ride to Central Park fell under the category of ‘adventure’. Still we managed to get off before we were out of Manhattan. We headed north from Columbus circle to the Dakota and Strawberry Fields and then headed across the park. The wind was up so our heads were mostly down.

After a pleasant walk we hit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the group fractured. We decided to head south and take in the Frick Museum with Ron and a few others. So that’s when the wind decides to come up. We only had 14 blocks to go but it was against the wind and we were pretty chilled by the time we arrived.

Then it turns out that the museums are ‘free’ because it’s a long weekend (tomorrow is Presidents Day) and the line up was around the block. Exacerbating that little fact was that they were only letting people in 20 at a time, every 20 minutes; that spelled out a 40-50 minute wait outside in the wind. So we bailed.

Leslie and I headed over to Madison Avenue to head back uptown. We had just missed the bus at the first stop so we walked two stops north and jumped the next one as it caught up. 5 minutes later we disembarked and walked west to the Met. It and I had a few things to finish up… like most of the museum.

We had visited it 5 years ago on our first trip and barely got through a quarter of it in our one allotted day. This time we were there to crush and win.
Well, to skip ahead of myself so as not to leave you in suspense, we sit here now with our heads hung low and our cultural spirits once again defeated by this monstrosity of an art museum. I would estimate we have definitely seen two-thirds of it now, but it won–we lost. Again.

Anyway as soon as we arrived we grabbed a dog and a pretzel and headed into the welcoming warmth of the Met. A quick orientation and we decided to hit the Arms and Armor section first, since that is what I had most missed last time. Next we planned in the musical instruments and then off to Asian art.

Now I blame this next bit on Leslie, because it sounds way more like her than me. Since we had a plan, we proceeded to ignore it and stop at the Byzantine era and thoroughly lose ourselves in premedieval European art. Eventually, after freeing ourselves from the Coptic texts under the unfinished granite of the main staircase, we put on the blinkers, scooted through Renaissance decor and arrived in the Arms area. Lots of swords, pikes, suits of armor and an extensive Japanese section. Very cool.

We took a brief break in the gallery outside the American sections and then decided to scoot back out for a drink and another snack.

Once back inside it was medieval with a side trip to Bauhaus textiles and on to the renaissance decor. Again, very cool. Another side trip took us through the Robert Lehmann collection of paintings, mostly European from 15-18 century. I saw a few I’d like to own. Rembrandt, El Greco… you know.

Back out into renaissance and suddenly men and women in suit jackets were herding us to the door trying to convince us of the preposterous notion that the museum was closed. Bah. Still we were outnumbered and apparently underdressed so we vamoosed like good little sheepies.

As you can see, not only did we not finish the museum, we didn’t even finish the wish list. We’ll get you yet, Met!

Outside we hopped on the M3 heading downtown and got off on 50th street. That apparently was 3 blocks too far so we hiked back to 54rd and headed underground. A short subway ride and we were back in Chelsea and a half a block from home.

We decided on pizza and I had a few beer before we head to the room for a rest. Sausage and mushroom.

At 8:30 we met Jamie et al. in the lobby and it’s off for the 10 pm show of a bassist he’s enthused about. A short walk over to the orange line and we headed to the 55 Bar for some virtuoso bass’n. it’s a small basement bar with a 2 drink minimum per set and a sardine-like seating plan. The chaos of take a chair and claim a spot worked for Jamie and Lyle as they claimed a table on the edge if the stage. Leslie and I shuffled up the wall so we could see and Lyle’s dad stayed in the back and chatted up the UK couple whose sight lines we had originally been cluttering.

This band has a girl front man whose warmup was her singing through a funkified echo box and a whole lot of feedback.

Two beers, a set of some pretty spunky jazz and an Imogen Heap number by the aforementioned girl and we decided to call it a night. We bid Jamie and friends adieu and caught the train home. My direction sense left me
As we exited the subway and I headed east not west. Half a block later we reversed direction and were back on track, this time going against the wind.

Home again and nighty night.

That evening I opened up the first message tube:

The morning started, well, in the morning. Early in the morning. Last minute fussing and we headed out to the airport. 5 am is way too early for an airport. Security and then waiting for a plane; I was not awake.

Leslie and I are off to NewYork for a week. We are traveling with the MacEwan organized group and intend to knockoff the last of our wish list. Tonight we are off to Birdland to see Cyrille Aimee at 8:30 and we’ve got a show, an opera and another musical act booked with a couple of museums on the list and perhaps a walk through Central Park.

Right now we wait in Pearson for our connection and wonder why we are still awake. It’s either pretty foggy here or my brain is a tad fuzzy… or both.

I’ll be sending off these missives daily so all y’all can follow along.

***

If you’ve never seen New York (or any other massive city I imagine) from the air at night you are really missing something. But especially New York with its iconic buildings. We did a pass over Manhattan before landing at LaGuardia. We took off late because the plane was late getting into Toronto and the. A snow storm blew in so we had to queue up for de-icing and we were starting to worry a tad.

Then our luggage went to a different carousel,and our vans got lost and Allia all we were late getting to our hotel. No big deal but a bunch of us had tickets to Birdland Jazz Club to see Cyrille Aimee and the Guitar Heroes for 8:30.

We bribed our cabbie to hangout while we checked in and dropped out bags and ran. Cyrille is a French Gypsy jazz singer who has an awesome voice and her band of genuine guitar heroes blew us away. French scat… There is nothing quite like it. Dinner was great and afterwards we walked back 20 blocks to our ‘hotel’.

All in all a very long,but sweet day.

This was all there was on the square piece of paper and it was written I. Some sort of mechanically typeset hand. Most interestingly it offered the promise of more. We shall see…