New York Trip: Day 1

I thought I'd go ahead and write some quick blogs about the trip to New York City. It's my first time here, so I have some serious New York virginity going on. Kirsten's brother Jonathan lives here and had lived here for a few years, so we're not complete tourists here but actual travelers and visitors. In fact, I'm pretty proud that I haven't opened a map on the street or on the subway since we've arrived. When I was a kid, and even now, I was really into maps of any sort and I remember I had this great National Geographic map of Manhattan. Some of it has honestly come back to me as we've been walking around - remembering what street crosses what other street and how many blocks it is to another street. I still have so little sense of direction in general, and have been lost a few times but every time the direction comes back to me, I feel a little invigorated. I've never been here in my life but actually know my way around occasionally.

No surprises so far, to tell you the truth. The enormity of the city didn't really leave much of an impression on me at first. We came in at night into northern Manhattan and quickly crossed the George Washington Bridge into the Bronx (where Jonathan lives) and the towering Manhattan skyline seemed quite distant. I didn't really feel the true force of its presence until we took the subway this morning into Manhattan. It was the mass of humanity and not the mass of buildings that truly awed me. A few stereotypes are appropriate: people do walk very fast here, but I already have a very fast walking pace, so I didn't ever feel really out of place. People honk all the time on the street; I think it's just like a regular "hello, excuse me please" noise, but this is odd when you live somewhere where the horn is reserved for "Holy crap, I'm about to run into you!" Also, there is garbage all over the street. I suppose that's just what happens when you put 17 million people into a few square miles.

We got through some touristy stuff today. The first thing we did as the late morning yawned into the early afternoon was head to the Museum of Modern Art, of which Jonathan is a member. This helped as we paid a very reduced fee to enter. The day itself was cloudy and gray, misty at best and rainy at worst, though the temperatures were rather cooperative, hovering around the upper 40s - a great change from the 20s and 30s we've been experiencing for the past month in Michigan. Kirsten and I bought a week's worth of Metro travel and headed from the South Bronx (the birth of hip hop! as Jonathan has told us several times) to mid-town Manhattan where we walked a few blocks to the museum. We spent about three hours there. Modern art isn't really my thing, and some of that feeling bore out in this visit. I'm almost always interested in it, but rarely find it good. However, there were some surprises. I was certainly awed by the Picassos and the Monets and the Van Goghs and the Klimts. The colors in the Picassos were especially refreshing. They were much brighter than the prints I've seen. I really wish there had been more Frida Kahlos. She's one of my favorite artists and there were only two small self-portraits. The biggest surprises, however, were the Jackson Pollocks. I definitely have never been a Pollack fan and have shunned and occasionally berated his works when I've seen them in art books or in TV specials about "great American art." But, I didn't realize how much his art is like opera: it loses an incredible amount in the recording. Being in the presence of his most famous and enduring abstract works was, quite frankly, incredible. The power conveyed by these seemingly simple compositions is amazing. By lacking a focal point, or even any immediately discernible structure, Pollock has made his paintings literally difficult to look at. This is evident especially in the largest ones because once they fill your entire vision, your eyes begin to play tricks on you. Your brain looks for patterns, looks for an actual picture, and nearly tricks you into thinking something is there. There isn't. It is patternless; it is purposeless; it is meaningless. It is modernity. As Kirsten said, "You've just been Pollocked."

After the MoMA, we got some pizza (real New York thin crust, greasy and foldable) in the Village and though Jonathan said it was from a less than reputable place, we went in because we were starving and it smelled delicious. We then got some coffee, to help overcome the exhaustion of all the walking, and hopped over to some books stores. We went to a small local one at first, but it didn'thave much. We then popped into the Strand, which I think is the second largest bookstore in the country, and browsed their collections for a couple of hours. It was pretty great, but I didn't really see anything there that I couldn't get for cheaper online or at the bookstores in Lansing. Except for the rare top floor book collection, but I can't afford any of them any where. We met up with Jonathan at his school around 5:30, helped him set up for a round of science experiments tomorrow, and then went to get some dinner. We ate at a tapas place on 12th Street with great Spanish pork kababs and even better wine from the Jumilla region of Spain. It was a pretty relaxing end to a great day.

I'll try to blog a bit more as the week goes on. We are planning on hitting the Natural History Museum, the Metropolitan Art Museum, Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station, Times Square, the New York Public Library, (OK, fine, I'm a tourist!) and fa ew more places before we leave, so if anyone has any more suggestions of places to go, feel free to comment. More to come!!!