New York Interlude: leaving the city

I’m on my way home to Madison today. I have a morning in the city. Did I miss anything? Should I have gone somewhere, done something differently?

Yes, definitely. Why is it that over the years I have shifted in my thinking so that these days, more often than not I am convinced that each day could have been done with greater panache, savvy, strength, cleverness? Only when I was much younger (twenties, thirties) did I believe that my days were forgivable lessons rather than correctable mistakes.

So on a practical note: what does one do with a last morning in NY?

The obvious is chasing down the cursed purse. Perhaps I should strive for the less obvious.

New York Interlude: once a brat always a brat

Continuing on my trend of seeing NY-specific movies when in New York, I took in two in the last couple of days. Both pleasant and nicely big-applish. One, the Interpreter, struck a chord.

This is not a post about how I could not get enough of Sean Penn’s face – especially in the last scene. Were I to write on that, I would have to add that in addition to great chefs and great writers I am prone to falling in love with men with expressive faces. Or at least with that particular expressive face.

It is, instead, a post about the UN – an organization that elicits tremendously strong feelings in me, though not of the “I am in love with Sean Penn’s expressive face” kind.

Now that I live in Wisconsin, the word brat connotes big greasy sausages, on a bun, with beer.

But many decades ago it was a label thrust upon me by virtue of my father’s work for the United Nations. I was a UN brat. We, children of the diplomatic corps, we ran around the UN building thinking our parents would save the planet for us. We believed in their work and in the hundreds of relief agencies that came to the aid of forgotten, neglected people in far off places.

And I am sure every one of us, even the greatest cynic who’ll flaunt countless examples of failure will acknowledge that the world without the UN, would be worse off. Even without the top fifteen floors of the Secretariat building, it would be worse off.

Today I watched the mayors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima sign declarations of peace just next to the General Assembly (Ocean felt that it ought to bear witness). The Japanese media were there en mass, but ours was conspicuously absent. It struck me right then that in the parts of the UN open to the public, foreign visitors outnumber Americans ten to one.

As I was waiting for the signing, I looked hard at the 1945 photos from Nagasaki on display in the background, the kind of photos that you don’t really want to remember.

Forty years ago, you did not have to pass through countless security stations to enter the UN. Forty years ago we, at the UN School sang songs about Zulu tribes and kookaburras and Per Spelman and his cow. Such brats we were!

And so where has this bold confidence taken us? We, the unhappy surveyors of the now damaged organization, resurrected to prominence in a movie, but not in real life. Even as it keeps chuggin’ away, mostly quietly, providing relief and promulgating dialogue. Not enough, we say, and kick it around some more, listing all its failings, in the same way that bodies were counted after epidemics, ethnic cleansing, nuclear blasts.

Nagasaki, Hiroshima lessons 

United Nations: as good as the nations and the people represented therein 

New York Interlude: waiting

New York is always described as a frenetic city. The legendary rush hour, the quick pace on the sidewalks, the subway -- all speak of a crazy speed. You forget that here, like elsewhere, so much of time passes in simply waiting: for events to occur, for the game to begin, for problems to resolve themselves, for the sleeping person to wake up.

Two photos this morning of people waiting, just as a reminder that patience is needed here as well, every day, just to get by.

waiting: to start playing 

waiting: for the library doors to open 

New York Interlude: sex and the city

Warning: If you are offended by any references to sex and sex-related activities, including pornography, read no further. This post will offend you.

There, I’m sure that eliminated no one from the reading pool. Ocean is a clean blog, but it would be difficult to keep to its regular standards of innocence and purity and still write in any meaningful way about this day.

Because after a morning of chasing down purse acquisition ideas – all the way down to Herald Square, I decided that I needed to pause for some culturally uplifting experience. So I went to the Museum of Sex.

I had passed this place before and had wondered if it was serious or seedy. I thought no more about it (really), but then, at various junctures, references to it kept cropping up. Like, Time Out Magazine lists it (“gawking is okay; snickering is not”). Gerry Frank’s guide to NY says this about it “the entire affair is a bit tawdry…but crowds are streaming to the place and its first exhibit at least tried very earnestly to take itself seriously.”

I was curious as much about the idea of people coming to a museum to see exhibits about sex as about the exhibits themselves. It becomes fascinating to consider when boundaries are crossed – from a display of porn for art’s sake, to a display of porn for the thrill of displaying porn. I had read that this place crosses over into softcore stuff, avoiding the out and out naughty hardcore porn.

Okay, so now I have a couple of observations:

Am I naïve or what? If, at least in the exhibit about the history of pornographic film, watching a series of flicks where there is absolutely nothing left to the imagination, save, perhaps the smell of it all, if that is not hardcore porn then I really have been using the term incorrectly all my life.

Secondly, I was astonished to see that you could pull this off and not have a bunch of deprived and depraved people basically sitting the afternoon long and enjoying themselves and I don’t mean in the “learning about the history of pornography” way. Perhaps the hefty entrance fee keeps a certain type of person away.

I did also wonder if the guard in the museum got tired of anything to do with sex – sort of like being in a relationship too long to get immediately excited when someone emerges from the bathroom less than fully attired.

The patrons were of mixed ages and groupings, but all were terribly serious, almost scholarly in appearance and demeanor. An older couple, several somewhat artsy-looking single people, groups of friends, all maintaining the dignity and quiet that one generally associates with museums. Except that (unlike in other museums) everyone read the explanation cards and postings very very carefully.

And indeed, it was a fascinating presentation. The photographs from the previous century were especially interesting: graphic and not unlovely, without the trashiness that later came to be associated with these kinds of distributions.

Alright, perhaps this is as far as I should take this post. Picture taking was permitted, but after the first photo or two, I decided that I was appearing like I wanted to take some thrills back home with me and so I put my camera away. I did take two shots: one of magnets in the gift shop (I carefully arranged for decent-ish ones to be visible) and the other of the top part of a quite old photo. You can imagine what the bottom of it is like and why she has that sweet little smile of pleasure on her face.

this may have been the only display in the gift shop tame enough to photograph and post here 

when you let loose all those corsets and layers of skirt, intersting pictures emerged... 

New York Interlude: Can’t trust that day…

So it’s Monday. I'm looking back at the things that occupied my hours (if not my thoughts) today and I've come up with a short list of five:

1. I looked for a summer purse. Anyone who has been to my house lately knows the saga of the summer purse -- I talk freely (and constantly) about it. And if you don’t know the saga of the summer purse, consider yourself lucky. It is the most indescribably boring story on earth, en par with reading a detailed account of the decision-making process involved in choosing the color of towels for your bathroom (spare yourself the tedium there: white always works). Suffice it to say that the summer purse issue remains unresolved.

2. I shopped for a Picasso. An original. To hang in the bedroom. More on this later.

3. I discovered that green and black/gray go well together. See photos below of black-clad park-goers.

4. I went grocery shopping and stood in line that was some 60 people deep at the checkout. Whole Foods is doing well in NY.

5. I read seminar papers.

About the Picasso. It’s brutally simple: I walked over to a small gallery on 79th that was displaying privately owned paintings by Picasso. (I sort of came across it by chance.) Thirteen canvases – none of them familiar to me nor probably to the general public, as most likely they had been hanging in various homes, only now the owners have keeled over and the next generation is lusciously picking through the riches and putting them up for sale in order to rake in some cash.

There were only three people in the gallery: a woman my age but way more polished and coiffed than I and her entourage of two: one gallery rep and one advisor.

The woman was deciding if she should purchase the biggest canvas of the lot – a nice blue and yellow rendition (Ocean perks up here) of people in some macabre poses. It was Picasso’s later work – maybe from the fifties – where the limbs and torsos were beginning to look….distorted.

I hung next to the little party of three (I’m sure they loved that) and listened to the back and forth, having never myself had the problem of laying out millions for a canvas for my bedroom. I was intrigued as to what would be the tipping point.

It seems that the gallery rep hit the right tone. He explained to her that the reason she (rather than me perhaps?) deserved that particular canvas was because she had enough Picassos to make her home a place where you could appreciate the progression of his work. He told her: you have a whole story of the artist… simply replace that painting you have in your bedroom (he knows her bedroom?) with this one (is it fair to the public at large to hide a huge Picasso canvas in a rich lady’s upper-eastside bedroom where presumably only her lovers enter?).

I left before she gave the final nod, but I could tell she was going to go for it. I would have taken a photo of the canvas – the last glimpse of a piece of art that would now be displayed only at the whim of just this one person – but I’ve been scolded so many times now for dangling a camera in private galleries that I no longer bother. It hurts each time.

Fascinating. Spending millions is actually quite easy. It works pretty much the same as handing $3 across the counter for a latte.

Central Park: a mom and her little girl, on a hill. 

Central Park: a stroller, entranced?  

Central Park: two boys in gray 

Central Park: a kiss is just a kiss... 

New Haven Interlude

If I could change the way roles were cast among strangers and friends, I would insist on balance. I would insist that no one gave more, no one gave less of themselves. I would ask that each listened to the other’s requests and, in friendship, gave of her or himself fully, with no excuse, no dishonesty.

I thought of this today as I walked the blocks of New Haven and looked up at the dazzling petals framing the spires and the buildings of Yale.

A Yale date 

A bridge of sighs? a clock? a flower or two, cheering the passerby. 

detail: flowers reaching up to ... a beautiful form 

Spring blooms and foliage almost obliterate an Ivy Tower.