Day 29

And still playing the waiting game.

I keep checking my phone and email, but still no call from O. Maybe tomorrow. I'm not getting my hopes up.

Meanwhile, I never did explain what I was doing during the hiatus.

After my weekend at Ciara's grandmother's house, my friend Amanda came to visit from Jersey for a few days. We kept it pretty mellow, checked out a comedy show, hung out at Sony Wonder and saw the Haunted exhibit at the Guggenheim, which I thought you might find interesting.

Haunted focuses on the effects of time. Some pieces are photographs whose subjects have long since died. Another part of the exhibit just shows front pages of the International Herald Tribune from a November long ago. The words have been removed so all we see are the photos and the masthead. It's haunting how unimportant yesterday's news is today. My least favorite part was a video that showed a little boy in black and white, lying in bed and biting his nails. The video cut out and restarted every few seconds, and every time it restarted, the pile of shredded nails in front of him grew. I left when his fingers appeared to bleed. It was manic, disgusting, too much for me. My favorite part, however, was a collection of photos cut out of ads and magazines. Collected into a series of 8.5 by 11 inch sheets, they documented a life cycle. Some of the milestones were obvious, like learning to walk, others we more ambiguous, like understanding authority. It was fun to stand in front of each sheet for a while while I tried to decide what it meant.

The downside to Haunted was that it left us feeling a little gray at the end of the day. The eerie, monotone voices on our headsets left us cold and numb and looking for a pick-me-up. So we grabbed coffee (for her) and a doughnut (for me) and shopped Times Square for a comedy show.

More on that later.

Goodnight!