Gug

We walked to the Guggenheim one morning.  I took the mandatory picture, of course.  I've taken this photo before, but this one seems particularly blank and terrible.  There was the usual crowd inside and out, and I say this in a good way for I love museum crowds.  The major show was Agnes Martin who you can learn about here.

Her work was particularly well suited for the Gug, I think, but I wondered at the zen concentration that led her to draw line after tiny line again and again on the large canvases in varying patterns and designs.  It must have been like the small girls who pulled threads to make those incredibly complex Persian rugs.  What is life, one wonders, if a person is to stand such tedium.  Surely, though, it was not tedium to Agnes Martin.

I always enjoy the permanent collection and the Thannhuaser collection of modern art.  I am a fool for that, though that foolishness may be waning.  I'll wait to tell you why.  But I am of an age now, I think, where I enjoy the coffee shops almost as much, and of course we bought coffee and pastries and looked out the window at the living city beyond the museum.  That is the beauty of museums in cities like New York.  There is life all around the mausoleum, and all you have to do is step out to enter back into the din.  It is what makes the peace of a museum so wonderful.  Life within, life without.

I have been home sick all this day, sicker than the day before, but I am restless, too.  I cannot concentrate for very long so reading is out.  I picked up my little Leica CL camera and carried it around outside with me in my pajamas taking pictures of things lying about the property.  I just want to feel the whisper of the shutter, maybe, or to feel I am doing something.  It will be a very small series called "Sick Day."  That is what I tell myself.  We must believe in ourselves in some way or we cannot carry on.

Right now, I want to carry on.