Monday, January 7, 2002

a dog comfy in his window in NYC

"It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing in the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."

Edward Gibbon, Memoirs

We set a goal. We'll walk toward the Guggenheim which happens to be open on Monday. We will window shop and grab a bite and, if we get tired, we will get a cab. It is snowing. Not freezing on the sidewalk but blowing in our faces sometimes. We are using umbrellas borrowed from Four Seasons. We stop in a very interesting little shop and buy FFP some vintage cufflinks. We peer in windows. And stop for lunch at the Gardenia. It's a simple little cafe where we get a couple of BLTs and SuRu gets some Matzo Ball soup and gives me the last of it.

After that fortification, we shoulder on. And before we know it, we are at the Guggenheim, drawn from one interesting shop window on Madison to another all the way to 88th.

There are two special shows in the Guggenheim. One is a lot of Brazilian works. One is Norman Rockwall. The center of the place has a several-story-high altar, there are multiple examples of all kinds of icons and paintings right up to modern Brazilian sculpture. In between, we veer off into Norman Rockwall. The actual paintings and the discussions of the social context are actually very interesting.

Halfway through we go to the cafe and have a warm drink and a rest.

We briefly consider walking part of the way back to the hotel to stop at a drugstore but the wind-driven snow convinces us otherwise and we grab a cab and go back. We give back the umbrellas and ask about a pharmacy and duck back across 58th to get more pills for me.

We decide to eat in the hotel. The main Four Seasons hotel restaurant, 5757, is not open. It's closed for repairs. But we reserve a spot in the Lobby Lounge to dine. We have some potato leek soup and I have tuna two ways (sushi and sashami). My appetite is so-so, but I finish it.

JUST TYPING
Reading about museums.
Can't reveal.
The experience of you.
And the painting or the shape.
I step into another place, guided by the artists and the curators.
To be. Otherwise.