What I Did On My Summer Vacation

It's not that I don't love Beacon anymore, but forays in NYC stand out.

We're renting the house out this week, which means a week in NYC. In late July, are you crazy?? And yes, it has been hot and the city smells like piss and trash, and climbing and descending 5 flights of stairs to do everything, including take dogs out several times a day, is a challenge. But there's lots to do and see and we've spent much time in the shade and in air-conditioned buildings, and it's been a rich week.

I did manage to get some work done, too.

Morgan Library. Xu Bing sculpture in the addition designed by Renzo Piano that connects the two original Morgan Library buildings. One of my favorite museums. I'm especially fond of the seals (as in ancient engraved, not as in animals).

Postcard from Robert Morris to Sam Wagstaff, 1967. Favorite piece from "Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists: Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art" at the Morgan.

Phoebe Washburn sculpture at Zach Feuer, Chelsea

Another Morris...this time, Morris Louis, also in Chelsea.

Terror in Madison Square Park

Shhhh, secret bookshop!

The irony of taking a cab in the pouring rain to get to a wine bar to see socialist singer/songwriter Billy Bragg was not lost on us...

Octopus tree, Cooper Hewitt garden

If Lisa Perry hadn't been closed (and if I'd had an extra $900), I would have bought this dress - in white, below:

Madison Avenue near the Whitney, Upper East Side

Kitchen window

NYC, July 2011

Summary

It's amazing what you can pack into a little weekend. Free Patti Smith concert, walking way more than 10,000 steps every day, Tenement Museum, Chinatown, New Museum, great Indian food, fruit from sidewalk vendors...

Battery Park

Fountain, Battery Park
(waiting for free Patti Smith concert at Castle Clinton)

Next to the New Museum
(where we saw a great exhibition, "Ostalgia")


Perfect peach

NYC, 5/30/11

Today we actually went to a museum rather than just buying sheets and other necessities at Jack's 99cents store and taking the dogs to Jemmy's Dog Run at Madison Square Park (which are both wonderful in their own ways, don't get me wrong - especially MSP right now with the Jaume Plensa sculpture).

Took the #6 up to the Met to see the Alexander McQueen exhibition (click on Selected Objects and Video to get a taste - and if you can go, GO) which far exceeded my expectations. Partly because I really didn't know what to expect, and partly because when I first saw the line, I wanted to turn right around and return on a less crowded day. But the line moved fast and so we waited, in a gallery of paintings and sculptures that, due to popularity of the exhibition and the need for crowd control, had become a mere hallway to wait in line in to get to the McQueen. Most people, including myself, weren't really giving the art its due.


This poor teenage kid was so tired from waiting in line, and so concerned about carpal tunnel from playing a video game on his iPhone, that he was forced to lean his arm against the plinth of a beautiful marble bust. And no, his friend is not admiring said bust by photographing it with her iPhone. She, too, is playing a video game. They did interact with each other, once, to report on what island they had gotten to. The woman in the painting looks on in horror, but frozen in oil and time, she can only murmur silently, "Kids these days."

Highs and Lows

Wow, what a week in my tiny little nano-speck of the universe.

The low point: Boo's near-death from asphyxiation, followed by emergency surgery for laryngeal paralysis, followed by pneumonia, resulting in a 4-night hospital stay. Still waiting for test results that may or may not shed light on why the hell.

Boo, before

Boo, after (but recovering)

The high points: Boo coming home..and us moving in to our NYC apartment. We are still in Beacon, too, so dare I call it a "pied-à-terre"? It's really James' studio but I'll be allowed to visit sometimes...

Why, you may wonder, an apartment in NYC if Beacon is so damned great? More on that another time.

Photo by Lucia M.

NYC, Sunday, May 1st, 2011

Other miscellaneous events: Nursery visit on a perfect spring day for big trees for the Roundhouse project; tick bite (from said nursery; fingers crossed for no Lyme); me getting published; James selling a bunch of vintage silk scarves and other items on eBay, and getting a nice write-up in 'The' magazine about the latest Richard Levy Gallery show; two great movies - The Parking Lot Movie and Waste Land; the waning of the cherry blossoms at Dia:Beacon, and garden growth explosion - including lilacs opening, ahhhhh - here at 55; and all of the usual quotidian stuff of life.

Cherry blossoms through Robert Irwin windows, Dia:Beacon

NYC, Sunday, May 1st, 2011

Now hoping for - perhaps even expecting - a calmer week.

Here's to health, love, and new beginnings.

Tree

On my walk today I saw a fallen tree, probably a casualty from one of this past winter's many storms. And then again, perhaps not a casualty, after all?

The root system was immense – the tree must have been fifty years old, if not more. The heaved roots, so intertwined with their ecosystem of soil and grass and understory plants, had peeled up everything in their wide circumference. That great trunk, vertical for decades, now lies horizontal on the forest floor; and that earth’s skin, once horizontal, now stands oddly perpendicular, like a capsized ship moored in the sand.

But from nearly every branch of this felled tree, new leaves emerged glossy and brilliant green and full of spring's promise, little fingers seeking light, photosynthesizing, inhaling carbon dioxide through their tiny stomata, exhaling oxygen, then sending energy down to roots - no longer buried deep to retrieve water and nutrients to send back upwards. The cycle broken.

What will happen to those young orphan leaves, I wonder? Will they grow valiantly only to wither and die?

Amputees sometimes feel missing arms or legs long after they've been removed.

We think of and remember friends and loved ones who have died or gone away.

The body has an astonishing capacity to heal itself. Bark, skin, limbs, bones, hearts, all (more often than not) knit themselves back together with nary a scar.

I have seen strong, stalwart trees growing from fallen logs, sawn trunks, twisted limbs; new shoots emerging year after year from pollarded branches; bright pink blossoms bursting forth like little posies from the leaf scars (or is it the lenticels?) of cherry trees each spring. And I have seen trees, sometimes very old ones, growing from fissures in stone, even in the most unlikely and unexpected places.

And too, I have seen trees well-tended, well cared-for, in the right soil, with the right water and all other right conditions, wither and die for no obvious reason.

And today it is Easter, with little girls in their Sunday dresses; and frothy blossoms of cherry, apple and pear, like parasols over the city; and a soft green haze of new leaves climbing its way up the mountain, higher each day as the warm air rises. The way I see it, miracles happen all the time, every day. But who are we to judge? Who are we to know? I suppose I find comfort in the open-ended questions that don’t even care to be answered (as if we thought we could), and endless possibilities besides. A friend said recently, “Ours is to make what is real magical, using all of our respective powers.” We remain surrounded by mysteries that, if we have an open mind and an open heart, keep us watchful, curious, grateful, and ever full of wonder.

For another post with images of the cherry trees and blossoms at Dia:Beacon, click here.

A Week, Maybe Two

So much can happen in a week.

Nothing like a sick dog to put things into perspective.
Hang in there, little Boo.

March

This is the swelling time of year.

Streams and rivers turgid with spring rain and melting snow breaking their banks, flooding half-thawed ground. In sunny clearings, soft soil harbors seeds deep within. Buds plump with flowers and leaves. Sap rising up through thick trunks, seeping sweet. Ewes with round bellies, ready to lamb. Birds puffed in courting and, on these early March days, protection against the damp cold.

People talk of “swelling with pride,” and perhaps the whole world does this in spring. After all, we survived, didn’t we?

A messy time of year, too, even deep in the woods we consider pure. Not the grey snow and slush of cities or even of country roadsides, but the forest floor littered with needles and leaves and branches and churned-up soil, a winter's accumulation.

The woods ripe with the scent of itself – pine, hemlock, rotting leaves, wet bark, moist earth.

Progression

August 2005

August 2005

February 2006

September 2010
Photo by Brady Fontenot for ReadyMade Magazine ("School House Rocks")

February 2011
Photo by Karl Rave for the Poughkeepsie Journal
("Go green for a healthier home")

Putnam Valley Love

Who needs an Italian stallion? I have found love in Putnam Valley.

Stories and Pictures

Something about this recent New Yorker short story, "Getting Closer" by Steven Millhauser, spoke to me: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2011/01/03/110103fi_fiction_millhauser.

I'm thinking about getting a new camera. A friend is lending me her Panasonic Lumix (Leica lens!) for a few days, so here's today's witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Arnold's Promise'). Everyone should have at least one witch hazel in their garden.

Promise

Winter lasted too long.
I resigned to feeling cold and guarded
and fearful of its gnawing threat.
But spring did come, at last, as promised,
green and tender.
And – of all things -
asked me to dance.
And I - to my dismay - had forgotten how;
I faltered,
flustered and distracted,
unsure of foot. She sighed kindly
and brought me close, then, to her brave body
and held me
made my steps her steps
her rhythm mine
her breath my breath
and led me, then, warm and bright and laughing.

55

55 South Brett, winter 2005

Happy New Year