last year sometimes.
i found a few pages from my visit to new york this past may.
i spent one day on my own as the texas boy i was visiting had to work his long and hard hours, and i decided (it being a beautiful sunny day in springtime) to spend the majority of it in the park.
i wandered up and down central park, taking pictures and listening to the old men, you know the ones with the boats. i played with a couple of the kids by the carousel because i guess i just look like the type of person who will be willing to roll around in the grass and laugh a lot. they seemed gracious.
i ended up in the met, and heel to toed it through long halls of ... well... mostly i'd heard of all of the artists, and if i hadn't then i knew of one of their friends.
i saw a foreign woman go up to one of the (ahem ... informative) security guards that are strewn like dropped marbles throughout the place ... and she said, "hello," and she was looking at the little complimentary map in her hands, "i'm confused ..." and she trailed off.
he laughed a big laugh and became deathly serious, "no, you're not. you're just having a good time."
i couldn't help it. i started laughing hysterically, because to him, she must have seemed so ridiculous. to him, she must have been having a good time. to her, it was all terribly important.
hopefully, she found the art.
at one point, i was just standing around at one of those t-shaped junctions. i had just had a too expensive cup of tea and a muffin, and i was feeling a bit proud of myself for spending so much money on such little substance, truly artsy. so, i was deciding which way to go, and a security guard came up to me and asked if i needed help.
i wasn't aware of needing help.
and so, i shook my head and tapped my headphones to indicate, "no, thank you, sir, i don't need help. in fact, i love wandering around museums and am enjoying profoundly the experience of miro and bad religion."
he did not understand this universal sign language of mine and continued to talk to me ... to the point that i took off my headphones to relay to him the fact that he was interrupting some very important points that greg gaffin has on color representing conflict ... but he just took this as an opportunity to talk to me more.
"where are you from?"
"texas."
"where?"
"texas. big state down south."
"you do not look like you are from texas. you were born there?"
"no."
"where were you born?"
"doesn't matter."
"where did you live before?"
"boston."
"ah, boston is more like your face."
"i don't understand that statement."
"when are you here again?"
"idunno."
"can i buy you?"
"excuse me?"
"i would like you buy you."
at this point, i was curious as to whether or not we, in fact, enter into an entirely different set of ethical laws when you pay that 12 bucks at the door to the met.
"excuse me?"
"ha. ha." (and that's how he laughed, punctuating each ha.) "can i buy you dinner?"
"well, that's a start, but no."
"when are you leaving?"
"monday."
"i would like to have you as my very own. you let me know when you come back, i will buy you."
this kind of turned me off to the whole art thing for a while, nothing like feeling the creepy slavery innuendoes over priceless canvases while you try to figure out where they're hiding all the warhols.
i made my way out to the steps to wait for my friend.
excellent and beautiful-- the day by myself. there are people everywhere and i can enter into their lives, live and bright, i have no excuses for them as i am just what i seem.
it all made me miss the short stacks of back bay - the traffic of storrow - and how we were all luminescent among each other - i am a city girl with moving feet to match. we have no other way to tell it but that my movements are deliberate, and my feet continue on long after my body has tired. without what sems to be lasting over my mouth and nose, i breath the dirt in the air freely and become gracious for a break in the monotony.
my roots and feet are free to move around, harboring only as much grave and instinct as they wish to possess. there is no noticeable eagerness to my watchfulness and my motion, merely coexisiting for the sake of shared space and blurs of colored cloth.
i have saved face, allowed it to remain with no distinctions or cutting lines - they are unnecessary in places like this. i'd find them overwhelmingly distracting and somewhat disgusting when arranged on the concrete of manhattan.
there are creatures slithering around my head.
travel breeds them.
