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vaznettiNew York was wonderful. By our last day I was possessed by an almost physical craving to live there again, and even seeing three foxes in the garden this morning was not quite enough to console me.
We got in midafternoon on Thursday. It was very humid and in the high 80s, so we went for a brief walk around the neighborhood -- over to the river, basically -- and then collapsed in the hotel room, before meeting my cousins for dinner. Dinner was fine, but by the time it was over I was exhausted and felt like I was swaying in my chair.
I know we did something Friday during the day -- oh, yes, went to MOMA and the Folk Art Museum. I liked the latter better, but it was also interesting to see the two together, since there's a certain amount of material that could end up either in one or in the other. The most striking thing, I thought, was the Henry Darger material; the Folk Art Museum seems to have acquired most of his stuff. A lot of the commentary on Darger is to do with the extraordinary (and frankly kind of creepy) world he created -- the 15,000 pages of text, and art to go with it, all this imagined universe put on paper. The thing that struck me was that he did all of this in isolation -- I know plenty of people who create this way, maybe not to that great an extent. But we do it as part of a community.
Ha! Fandom as outsider art!
And speaking of community, we then met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elishavah, and then yahtzee63, geekturnedvamp, musesfool and coffeeandink for dinner; the company was excellent and I am only sorry that I didn't get enough time to speak to everyone. We should have rotated around for dessert. Instead, I will just have to make time to come back to New York.
Saturday was taken up by the wedding -- I had dropped out of touch with my roommate over the past few years, so it was wonderful to see her again, as well as my other roommate and her little girl, who is about six months old, I think, and pretty much the cutest thing ever. And the wedding was a lot of fun, with good things to eat and drink and the best band I have ever encountered at a wedding -- which makes sense, since the bride and groom are both musical. So we danced for hours, ate lots of cake, and then went back to our hotel room and collapsed. The next morning we went over to their apartment for brunch, and then down to Chinatown and whatever that Soho-Nolita area is to wander around and window-shop. I've also pledged to come back to New York more often to see her. Are you detecting a theme?
On Monday we metyahtzee63 for brunch -- I think she may have been surprised to see BH, but he finished his marking and was being sociable -- and more talk about fandom, and then camille_is_here, who came up to the city and brought be a copy of her book (I would say "her new book" but technically it's her "revised and reissued book," I think). We went up to the Met which was having special opening hours for the holiday, and saw the new Greek and Roman galleries and then made a whirlwind tour through the Venice and the East exhibit (Dunnett!) because the downside of the special holiday hours was the fact that the Met closed at 5:15. Both were excellent; I could have spent hours more in the new Greek and Roman galleries, though.
Tuesday was our last day, although we didn't leave until late at night. So we spent a quiet morning, then picked up some bagels and walked up to Central Park for a picnic. We wandered around a bit before discovering that BH's brand new trousers from Brooks Brothers had ripped (we'd gone shopping the night before after putting C. in a taxi). I'd noticed a flaw in the fabric when we were eating, but about an hour later there was an actual tear, two thirds of the way up the thigh. So we went back down to the store, where one of the salesmen tried for about 30 seconds to suggest that the problem was not with the material; apparently something we said made him back down and hand us off to customer service, and one of the women who actually deals with fabric took one look at them and went to get a new pair. Since we were already in midtown, by that point, we kicked around a bit and went to the top of Rockefeller Center, because it seemed like a touristy thing and we'd never done it. The views are in fact very good; probably better than the views from the top of the Empire State Building, except that the Chrysler Building was obscured. Then we did a little more shopping, ate dinner, and got in the car for the airport.
Flying is miserable, even when everything goes well, as it did. But it was a wonderful visit. I'm just sorry it was so brief.
We got in midafternoon on Thursday. It was very humid and in the high 80s, so we went for a brief walk around the neighborhood -- over to the river, basically -- and then collapsed in the hotel room, before meeting my cousins for dinner. Dinner was fine, but by the time it was over I was exhausted and felt like I was swaying in my chair.
I know we did something Friday during the day -- oh, yes, went to MOMA and the Folk Art Museum. I liked the latter better, but it was also interesting to see the two together, since there's a certain amount of material that could end up either in one or in the other. The most striking thing, I thought, was the Henry Darger material; the Folk Art Museum seems to have acquired most of his stuff. A lot of the commentary on Darger is to do with the extraordinary (and frankly kind of creepy) world he created -- the 15,000 pages of text, and art to go with it, all this imagined universe put on paper. The thing that struck me was that he did all of this in isolation -- I know plenty of people who create this way, maybe not to that great an extent. But we do it as part of a community.
Ha! Fandom as outsider art!
And speaking of community, we then met up with
elishavah, and then yahtzee63, geekturnedvamp, musesfool and coffeeandink for dinner; the company was excellent and I am only sorry that I didn't get enough time to speak to everyone. We should have rotated around for dessert. Instead, I will just have to make time to come back to New York.Saturday was taken up by the wedding -- I had dropped out of touch with my roommate over the past few years, so it was wonderful to see her again, as well as my other roommate and her little girl, who is about six months old, I think, and pretty much the cutest thing ever. And the wedding was a lot of fun, with good things to eat and drink and the best band I have ever encountered at a wedding -- which makes sense, since the bride and groom are both musical. So we danced for hours, ate lots of cake, and then went back to our hotel room and collapsed. The next morning we went over to their apartment for brunch, and then down to Chinatown and whatever that Soho-Nolita area is to wander around and window-shop. I've also pledged to come back to New York more often to see her. Are you detecting a theme?
On Monday we met
yahtzee63 for brunch -- I think she may have been surprised to see BH, but he finished his marking and was being sociable -- and more talk about fandom, and then camille_is_here, who came up to the city and brought be a copy of her book (I would say "her new book" but technically it's her "revised and reissued book," I think). We went up to the Met which was having special opening hours for the holiday, and saw the new Greek and Roman galleries and then made a whirlwind tour through the Venice and the East exhibit (Dunnett!) because the downside of the special holiday hours was the fact that the Met closed at 5:15. Both were excellent; I could have spent hours more in the new Greek and Roman galleries, though. Tuesday was our last day, although we didn't leave until late at night. So we spent a quiet morning, then picked up some bagels and walked up to Central Park for a picnic. We wandered around a bit before discovering that BH's brand new trousers from Brooks Brothers had ripped (we'd gone shopping the night before after putting C. in a taxi). I'd noticed a flaw in the fabric when we were eating, but about an hour later there was an actual tear, two thirds of the way up the thigh. So we went back down to the store, where one of the salesmen tried for about 30 seconds to suggest that the problem was not with the material; apparently something we said made him back down and hand us off to customer service, and one of the women who actually deals with fabric took one look at them and went to get a new pair. Since we were already in midtown, by that point, we kicked around a bit and went to the top of Rockefeller Center, because it seemed like a touristy thing and we'd never done it. The views are in fact very good; probably better than the views from the top of the Empire State Building, except that the Chrysler Building was obscured. Then we did a little more shopping, ate dinner, and got in the car for the airport.
Flying is miserable, even when everything goes well, as it did. But it was a wonderful visit. I'm just sorry it was so brief.
