I Want My MOMA

Most of our last day in New York was spent at the MOMA. Our journey there was uneventful - breakfast at the same place as every day (next door to the hostel), train ride up to 82nd St., walk through Central Park and over to MOMA. On the way through the park, I saw a woman with a big, mongrel-y dog whose tail was entirely bald and a little scaly looking. It gave the dog the look of an enormous, deformed rat, and it had a downcast, dejected air about it as though aware of and embarrassed by its situation.

One of my favorite parts of just showing up at a museum is being surprised and delighted by whatever special exhibits they have going on. Currently at the MOMA, there's a special exhibit of the Afghani gold that was thought lost when the Taliban raided the Afghani national museum in 2001. It was well worth the extra seven bucks to rent the headphones and hear all of the professors and curators talking about the things in the exhibit. The point they made over and over was that Afghanistan culture, as early as 4,000 years ago, showed Buddhist, Greek, Chinese and Indian influences.

We also spent a couple of lifetimes at the Francis Bacon exhibit. While I understand that he's a pivotal figure in the art world and can see why, it certainly doesn't make his art particularly nice to look at. Screaming mouths, flayed bodies, streaky gray canvas - it's all rather depressing. Then again, listening to the commentary that accompanied most of it, so was his life.

On the way home, we saw a sight that's both familiar AND quintessentially New York - a big, fat old rat. This one was crawling around the subway and peaking the interest of two little boys waiting with their families.

We had a lovely dinner and then went back early. Our plan was to get to bed early because our ride was due at 4:00am, but I have to be honest, getting to bed early, even here on the West coast, is hard for me. Getting to bed early on East Coast time was utterly impossible. As it was, I ended up sleeping on the plane for much of the trip (although, like car sleep, plane sleep doesn't count).

Driving into San Francisco right after leaving New York made me keenly aware of how comparatively tiny (and therefore easily navigable) San Francisco is. And seeing both of those places made me realize that neither of them suits me as well as living in the middle of the woods.