Day 34

And looking forward to tomorrow?

It's silly how ambivalent I feel about tomorrow. On the one hand I'm excited: another day to hang out with Steph a little, I get to see Jared and his dad for lunch, and (of course) it's another chance to get a little good news. On the other hand, I'm nervous: it's another chance to get some bad news.

Every weekend is a little relief. No potential employers can email me. No jobs get posted. I can relax.

Monday morning gives me something to look forward to and something to fear a little.

But I'm keeping a level head, really. I won't let myself hang everything on one job. I've applied to a bunch of places. Maybe one of them will hire me. It'll be ok if I get rejected. Just move on to the next thing. Really.

Today Stephanie and I visited the MoMA, which was interesting-ish. Again, it was cool to stand close to something Van Gogh made himself. Steph also helped me with one of my goal three projects: learn a little French. She says my accent's good.

What's the French word for anxious?

Je sui anxieuse.

Good night.

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!

Day 17

And liberated?

Renoir once said, "There are enough ugly things in the world not to add to them."

So today after I emailed O to follow up and found out that they already hired someone, I figured I ought to get out and see that Met exhibit I've been looking forward to.

I headed uptown and checked out an audio guide (always worth the $7), got the student price on a ticket (the saleslady was nice), breezed through the statues and busts and things and headed up to the second floor. I was headed to the American Woman, but keeping an open mind, I stopped off at "Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950–1980" The photographer is supposedly known for his unemotional approach, but I don't think I'm sophisticated enough to appreciate that yet, because I preferred the photos in which one subject was looking at another. For instance, in one shot, a girl in very short shorts was crossing the street and a guy was checking her out from behind. Or in another, a group of conservative-looking women were ogling a heavy-ish woman with super-coiffed hair wearing a short dress and heels. I just liked the expression.

The best part of that exhibit had to have been the people, though. These two girls behind me rushed from picture to picture. Passing me, one of them said to the other, "You know how when you watch an old movie and you can't tell who's popular and who's not because all the fashion...(here she started to giggle and I lost whatever else she said.)"

Sometimes people are the art.

Continuing on my way, I saw a picture of Joan of Arc I really liked, because the setting was so earthly and her expression was so eager, but I don't remember the name.

So on to American Woman.

I love that the audio tour was narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker. I wish there had been more information about the history of the dresses (Where was each piece worn? Why?). But the pieces were exquisite. Paint and stone may lose me, but embroidery I understand. The exhibit started with evening gowns from the 1890s, moved to turn-of-the-century sportswear, then moved to the bohemian look, the Gibson girl, the Suffragist and the Patriot, the flapper and jazz babies, and the starlet. I wish it went on longer--the fashion of the 60s was so important!--but I loved what I saw. Could I have done without the constant insistence that the image of American women is slender to the point of being androgynous? Yeah, I probably could. I actually felt guilty being so hungry while I toured. I should have grabbed a box of croissants and helped kill the stereotype. Nonetheless, the exhibit was very well done. Each era had a room decorated to look like the perfect setting for the time (a ballroom near Washington Square Park for the 1890s' heiresses, skyscrapers for the flappers). Each room was circular, and the final room was lined with two semi-circular screens. They flashed so many images that I watched the show straight through three times. The pictures and videos drew such wonderful comparisons. Caroline Kennedy in an evening gown, then the Obamas dancing at the inauguration. A black jazz baby shaking her hips wildly next to Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video. A video Venus Williams celebrating after a black-and-white shot of another female tennis player going for the win. Of course, there was more than one video of the Sex and the City girls.

There was a lot of talk about liberation through fashion.

I came home and baked cookies. Red and white for Independence Day.

Liberated, huh?

Day 11

And cultured...sort of.

Today's mission was to tackle goal four: get cultured.

I thought I'd start with the Met since it's less freaky than the MoMA and a girl I know from college is giving tours of one of the exhibits.

There was a little confusion and rescheduling and I ended up hanging out in Central Park in a pretty little quiet area where the trees blocked out the heat for most of the afternoon. Not too shabby, really.

In the end I did see a little of the museum, but I'll get to that later.

I firmly believe that you don't need a ticket to see art in New York.

I stepped out of the subway into one of my favorite parts of New York: The Upper East Side. Doormen in funny uniforms greeted tenants. Pretty urns and fancy desks peeked through windows, even on the bottom floor, as if the offices were trying to keep up with the homes above them. Women with weathered skin hung their heads and pushed strollers while toddlers who look nothing like them gazed at the sky. It's a fanciful picture, a facade, I know, but as long as you don't think too hard about it, it's a nice part of town.

Turning left on 84th, I saw just the corner of something mammoth in the distance. Rounding onto 5th, I got the full view. Suffice it to say that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is striking. It fills every corner of your vision. Difficult to take in, impossible to ignore.

The guards at the entrance are bored. I'm gawking at the dome, they're calling me forward so they can search my bag. But they are hired to protect this majestic place so that tourists can come and stare in awe, and I'm staring.

Here the confusion sets in and the plan gets muddled and I leave for the park until Roshni (college-Roshni, not best-friend-Roshni, for those in the know) has some down time and calls me in.

With an impressionist's take on a simple button/pin clipped to my dress, I'm allowed in free of charge (thanks Roshni!). Roshni breezes through the impressionists where I get to see works from my childhood favorite, Monet, up the elevator and onto the roof.

It turns out that Roshni was hired just to give tours of a living art piece on the roof of the Met. It's called Big Bambu. I say it's "living" because the artists' concept was to create a piece that reflects human life and is constantly being assembled. When the work is complete, Mike and Doug Starn (identical twins!) will immediately set to work taking it apart. Roshni tells me that when the artists began Big Bambu, they were afraid of heights, so rock climbers are helping them fasten the colorful nylon ropes around the bamboo shafts.

Got your interest? Let me explain. Big Bambu looks something like those play areas behind fast food chains. But it's all bamboo. It's part sculpture, part building. They even had to get a building permit. There are walkways high in the air and visitors need to follow certain guidelines to stay safe. When finished, it'll look like a cresting wave, but the art is in the performance. Big Bambu is alive. The rods are bones and the nylon are joints. The people walking through are blood. Roshni tells me they call the walkways "arteries."

If you're having trouble picturing it, click here.

It's amazing how a little guidance can illuminate an art museum. Roshni had to go, so I decided I'd come back as a paying customer some other day and get a full tour. There's an American Woman exhibit I think I'll have no trouble understanding. It's fashion, and that I get.