I swear to the almighty powers that be that I am in some kind of really bizarre time warp since moving to NYC. I DON"T WORK and yet I honestly do not know where the time goes each day that I can't find the time to make regular entries. I am simultaneously VERY BUSY and NOT BUSY AT ALL (kinda like from a Laurie Anderson song or something). I can make any time for any thing pretty much all the time except the things I need/want to do. --it's like a bad sci fi movie. Sometimes I get a bit distressed about how easy it is to fritter a day away, especially since one day just leads into another day of frittering. I can not believe it is now coming on to two months since leaving my job and moving to NYC. I have to remind myself (as does Bob) that I have attended to a lot of the necessary details of getting situated in a new home and city but still..........it's a weird experience. I always have felt very grounded by my professional life but also really stressed by it, so now I am not stressed but not grounded either. It's an interesting trade off. I feel a bit like a balloon floating about and easily directed one way or the other depending on how the wind blows--in this case the wind being some interesting article or fragment of informaton in the paper or one the many magazines I subscribe to that sends me to the internet to look it up and one thing just leads to another. When friends in Seattle ask me, so what do you do with all your free time?, I am so embarrassed as to how to respond. Anyway............on to life in NYC for those expanses of time that I can account for!!
So I think I mentioned that I went to Gracie Mansion but what was most significant about that outing was that I finally made it to the other shore of Manhattan island. I finally got as east as to walk along the East River. It's UGLY over there..........at least on the Upper Eastside where I was roaming that day. Not really worth the walk across town especially after being SPOILED by the beauty and sereneness of the Hudson River, my new found love. I wish they moved all the good stuff on the east side to the west side---by that I mean all the museums on the east side. All the really good ones are on the East Side, luckily not as far as the east river. I went to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum up at 91st. As part of some art event in NYC, admission was free and being the scrounger I am for cheap entertainment and freebies, I went! It came highly recommended by a Seattle friend. It's a very cool place.......the building itself is a wonderful historical landmark, probably several hundred years old, and the contents of the museum are all modern innovations for everything imaginable--fashion, furniture, transportation, housing, jewelry, engineering, cities, etc. Very cool and very clear that the place to be is in the Scandanavian countries--they have the most exhibits in the museum and are very advanced in their thinking for ecological salvation for all of us---thank GOD for the Scandanavians!
After the C-HNDM and my walk along the UGLY east river, I went to Sotheby's auction house because they were having a FREE exhibit of a collection they put together themed after Dante's Inferno. They had three exhibit rooms representing works that were grouped as representing hell, purgatory, and heaven. It was spectacular. The art pieces ranged across time (modern abstract to classical) and included paintings, sculpture, etc. There was one REALLY DISTURBING modern sculpture piece that looked like a representation of the worst psychotic hallucination...it was a collection of naked child mannequins with penises for noses and vaginas that joined various parts of their bodies and other really bizarre juxtapositions of genitalia and these child mannequins. I got into a rather thought provoking conversation with the security guard there. I asked him what was it like to have to stare at something like that for hours on end. He really got into telling me how he could not possibly see how this could be called ART and that they were all a bunch of kooks for buying and selling such crap. (Everyone's a critic!) He then took the conversation in a direction of telling me his experience in meeting an "in process" transexual in a bar and how he didn't want to get into a "dualing sword" situation with this person so told herm that he could only be friends. He then went on to say how this is happening EVERY DAY that men are becoming women and did anyone really sit down and ask them if they really wanted to cut their "swords" off. I think these poor guards are ABSOLUTELY STARVED for conversation, just standing around all day having to guard things they could not care less about. I would not be able to do their job or the job where people stand as human billboards for various companies. They have a work ethic that goes way beyond mine ever could go. So it was quite a fun time at Sotheby's! I highly recommend it as a FREE outing to see some really great and highly conversation starting artwork.
We had our first dinner party in our new home......Bob had a couple of his colleagues and their wives over for dinner. We made a selection of Indian curries and accompanying dishes. Despite our apartment kitchen being about a quarter of the size of our Seattle house kitchen, we managed to work well together preparing the dinner. In our old house we could easily sit 8 to 10 people with all the food on the table. Here we managed to squeeze six of us around the table and all the food had to be dished out in the kitchen off the stove. It was funny in that Bob had mentioned that we had such a smaller place to entertain than what we had in Seattle. OtO (one of our guests--who I only realized that night is Egyptian thus making him being an Oracle even WAY COOLER) stated that size is all relative and he has a right to talk. He and his wife just recently moved from a two bedroom two bathroom apartment that was 375 square feet (yes, non-NYC dwellers, you read that right, NYC archictects managed to squeeze 2 bdrms and 2 bthrms and a living room and kitchen into that tiny of square footage!) They now live in a spacious 975 square foot coop!
Our other guest and his wife gave us a terrific handy dandy compact book titled NFT (Not For Tourists) Guide to New York City. It breaks the whole city down to very specific sections, provides great tips on what all is going on in each neighborhood (culture, food, shopping, parks, etc) with maps, short descriptions of highlights, transportation, directions, etc, etc as experienced by the locals. I think it is going to become my new bible, especially when Paul gets here to visit. Such a great gift for newcomers to the CITY. They also brought some great Jacques Torres chocolates and tipped us to Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. Haven't gotten there yet to try them but I did spend time on the internet checking them out---one of my many frittering time internet explorations. I will take my niece there when she and her husband and baby come to visit in early December.
We were in CA last week visiting family with very intermittant internet access so that also explains some of why the entries have been few and far between lately. I just noticed (or one just opened recently) a hole in the wall pizza place at the END OF OUR BLOCK---with 99 cent plain cheese pizza slices-----They provide the extras--Italian seasoning, hot pepper flakes, and parmesan to doctor it up. It's actually pretty good with all the FREE extras on it----------DANGEROUS!!!!!!! I gotta watch myself in this town lest I go from a floating balloon to a giant hot air BLIMP!
Okay, enough for today.......this brings us up to date. Trying out Sardi's Friday night with colleagues in town for the AACAP meeting--it's a little corny but it is quintessential NYC and I would have gone at some point anyway, besides we couldn't get into any of the really good restaurants, looks like you have to reserve any of those well in advance. If the storm this week doesn't blow all the leaves off the trees and continue into the weekend, Bob and I are going to hopefully take a drive to see some of the remaining Fall foliage along the Hudson Valley and maybe into Connecticut or Vermont. Cheers everyone, I now need to get busy doing something I actually have a deadline to meet-------a little grounding and stress here and there can be a good thing!
No comments:
Post a Comment