My head in the stars

Day 6.

This was our final day in New York and in keeping with all the other days I will declare this one too to be fantastic.

As our last day, we wanted to do something special as a group and so we kept the jewel in the New York crown for last. The pinnacle of what that city has to offer. The stupendous, the spectacular, the magical Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Which only two of us ended up doing.

Making arrangements to meet on the steps of the Met at 5:30pm, closing time, I left the apartment first. There were a couple of places I wanted to visit before leaving. I abandoned the six in the apartment to the dregs of their breakfast and walked to the 125th Street subway passing, as I did every day, a wooden fence surrounding a construction area with the words “Do Not Post Bills” on it. By this point my confusion over why a fence would be protesting the mailing of invoices had cleared but it still gave me some amusement.

I went down to the Flat Iron district to see the offices of the Daily Bugle (in the film). I enjoyed changing my perspective: three dimensional, two dimensional, three dimensional, two dimensional. I wandered around the adjacent Madison Square Park looking at the sculptures that blended in well with the trees and absorbing the relaxed atmosphere.

I strolled up 5th Avenue buying a banana on the way. One cheap shop drew me in with some clothes in their window and I bought a top out of one of the boxes inside. I felt suddenly spendy and happy to be with myself. I continued up 5th Av until the Public Library (where Uncle Ben died in the film- he died at their home in Queens in the books). I poked my head in and wandered the hallways for some time but all of the doors seemed to be closed and I was too scared to open any of them.

I detoured to see the Chrysler Building (where the King Pin operated in the 90s cartoon series) and then hopped onto the subway to, I believed, join the others in our planned activity. On the way down Museum Mile, I passed people selling pictures. The money in my pocket almost leapt out when I saw one print. It was of two angels, one a classic angel with feathered wings and the other something futuristic with wings of circuitry. I steeled myself and walked on.

We knew that it would be hard to tour the museum as a large group so accepted that in all likelihood we’d just bump into each other a few times. I wandered the rooms expecting at any minute to run into their familiar faces. Amy and I had decided on a particular meeting place and time, however. It was 1pm at the Egyptian temple. Having been to the Met before, I choose the place to be somewhere obvious. It was large and on the museum map. I figured that there was no way Amy could miss it. Just as every supermarket starts at the fruit section, every museum begins with Egypt. I expected that she would pass through Egypt and notice the great big incredibly impressive temple bathed in light inside it.

Except of course Amy only just got to the Met at 1pm and hadn’t orientated herself. She stopped at the first temple she came to (minor compared to the one on the map, undoubtedly the Met’s star attraction, and so insignificant I had forgotten its existence in choosing a meeting place). I was seated in the great white chamber, windows from floor to ceiling on one side letting in the late-summer sun, statues guarding the small temple around a fake lake for half an hour. Amy was… elsewhere.

I thought perhaps I had the time wrong so left for half an hour to return at 2pm. During that short interval, I went to the American Mansion where the façade of a building dominated a plaza filled with statues and Tiffany glass work. There were many small Tiffany pieces as well as the main two windows (which required much gazing). I went into the adjacent rooms filled with European works of art. I tried to remember my pre and post Renaissance lessons from my holiday to Florence. I was amused by one picture of Jesus feeding at his mother’s breast, which was definitely in the centre of her chest.

I returned to the temple at 2pm but alas no Amy. Shrugging, I went to the café in the American Mansion plaza. In the queue I received a text message from Amy asking where I was and whether I was okay. I bought some tea and chocolate cake- I was very much okay. I sat and ate my cake and texted Amy to tell her where I was. Forty-five minutes later, I received a reply saying that she was coming. I waited ten more minutes and grew too impatient so texted to say never mind and left. I had spent most of my time in my favourite building in the world waiting and just wanted to get on and see things. Besides, I knew that our tastes in exhibits conflicted so it was for the best that we went around separately.

In my last visit to the Met, I toured around the historical exhibits falling in love with the temple and also the medieval choir screen and entire rooms decorated in period styles. This time I was going to concentrate on the parts I breezed through those years ago: the art. My first trip after refuelling was to the roof. Last time it was Roy Lichtenstein, this time an artist I didn’t know and found comparatively boring. The sculpture in the centre of the roof was a pane of glass with “dead birds” on either side, apparently because they flew into it. It was moderately amusing. Another piece just seemed to be a plaque. I looked in vain for the exhibit but couldn’t see it. Looking at the plaque more closely, I discovered that it was a black cloud, visible at noon each day the museum was open. There was a video by the lifts which I watched later depicting the daily show, firing chemicals into the air to produce a black cloud. The other exhibits were alligators perched on the sides of the roof. They were stabbed with an assortment of scissors and knives confiscated, so the plaque told me, by airport security.

The gallery of European art continued up to the 19th century and it was what I was really there for. It had entire rooms of Degas, the greatest collection of sculptures by him that I had ever seen. Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh: they were all represented well here. I felt like I was in a labyrinth as the rooms twisted and turned but never ended. I may have missed rooms in the serpentine layout but I tried to cover them all.

Next up was a selection of 20th and 21st century art which was, as always, patchy with some good pieces but many just begging the question why. I was actually surprised that one piece caught me and made me pause. It was a series of coloured panels, exactly the type of art that is ridiculed: just coloured canvases. But they were arranged in a rainbow of the artist’s choosing, stretching across a wall so clean and perfect. I looked at it from all angles I could muster and mulled over using my precious film to take a picture. I didn’t in the end- I felt confident that some Hobbling with a digital would take a picture.

I passed a photography exhibition of New Orleans post-Katrina and found my way to the Vollard exhibition.

Just after I returned from this holiday, I was asked what my favourite part of it was. I had to think for a while. Was it the madness of Accomplice and herding a party of thirteen? Was it laughing in the park with brownies and strawberries? Was it singing and dancing in the safety of the apartment? I thought about it long and hard and came to the conclusion that it was re-visiting the Met. Is it bad of me to prefer the afternoon I spent alone above all the others?

I don't think it had anything to do with being alone, just that the Met is amazing. The Vollard exhibition of Impressionists took my breath away. I was shaking with excitement to see some of the paintings; the deep colours, bold strokes, raw emotions of it all. Each room contained one or two artists with a piece about Amboise Vollard’s relationship to the artists or the paintings. He was the art dealer that brought many of the French impressionists to fame even though their talent (oh so obvious now) was not seen at the start of their careers. I looked at Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone in awe. And then read how it remained unsold after being exhibited. Without this man it seems that none of my favourite artists would have made it. I cannot put into words how I felt learning about someone who changed art for the world and for me. To put some names to my raving, there were paintings by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Renoir and Rousseau.

I was racing the clock to see this entire exhibition. The shops in the Met had closed by the time I was out and filled with the urge to purchase something beautiful. I burst through the front doors of the Met and grabbed at the print of two angels from the stall on Museum Mile. In the highest spirits possible, I went to the steps to wait to be joined by my fellow museum goers.

Indeed, Amy joined me fresh from her tour of the Met. And then Q and Em came from the street. They hadn’t been to the Met, they had gone off somewhere else including a luggage shop and the Empire State Building (which apparently they had had some problems finding and had to ask a policemen for directions: “Look up, ladies!”). Soon biped, sus and daisy joined us too. Also from the street.

Even though we planned the Met as something for everyone to do, only Amy and I actually had. This really hurt me actually. I had seen such wonderful dreams and even though I was alone, I thought others were sharing them with me. So I guess in the end my trip to the Met was bittersweet.

We sat on the steps for a while planning our next move. Amy scoured her guidebook for restaurant suggestions and we decided to try the Upper West Side (what a surprise). We walked through the park to get there. It was a pleasant stroll (or quite probably, skip). The lamps were just coming on. A set of swings provided a momentary diversion. Q complained that her pictures of that were coming out blurry just as I adjusted settings to make things more blurred. Emerging on the other side, we merely had to walk one block to find a selection of possible restaurants. Deciding where to go based on what we could afford, we went to a Mexican.

I hadn’t eaten well that day so had a large meal at the restaurant. It was chicken in a lemon sauce with rice and also garden vegetables. It was simple and delicious. As we exited the restaurant, Em declared that we were right by the Prohibition Bar, famous for being the place where Dana drowned her sorrows in chocolate martinis after Em stood her up on day zero. We went in and strode past the little tables set out at the front and the area for the band. At the back of the bar there was a separate room. In the centre was a red pool table. The walls were red. The lights were golden. And it was all for us. We took a table in the corner and ordered martinis all round, chocolate or apple, and a cranberry for Amy. Amy and I talked as the others played pool. I took a sip of my chocolate martini, looked up and saw that there was an empty martini glass on a ledge near the pool table. I am pretty sure it was Q’s. A little shocked, I got back to conversing with Amy and watching the game from afar. The waitress came up to Amy and inquired whether she was not drinking alcohol which I felt to be overly nosey. There was a reason though, it appeared, as she brought out strawberry shots for us all and left the alcohol out of one for Amy. I am still not sure why she did this. I am sure we freaked her out by calling people by their board names.

The evening was not long (it was over by 10pm) but Q got through quite a few drinks. When she went to the ATM to get money to pay for the evening, I felt like I had to accompany her to keep her safe. It was odd to be with someone that was drunk and I was extremely unnerved. We paid the bill and left. On the way she pinched my bottom. I didn’t quite know how to respond to that and tried to avoid her for the rest of the trip back to the apartment.

As we approached the apartment, a thought occurred to me. I wondered whether anyone bothered to set the dishwasher going that morning as it was normally something only I thought to do. Indeed, it had been forgotten. Someone put it on when we got in. I daresay it kept sus and daisy up as they shared a room with it and I could hear it as far as my room the floor above. I was a nice enough person to feel bad that I hadn’t reminded people to do the dishwasher before I left. A little bad.