Can't take my eyes off of you
Yesterday was good. I met up with Tenaya for lunch, we went to some random place where I got udon and she got a pizza. But we caught up and talked. She works at the MoMA, and I must say people, be nice to musuem employees. She was telling me about this crazy lady who comes and yells at them every day. She had yelled at one guy about why were there no chairs in the sculpture garden? and he had said hold on, let me ask a manager, and then she stormed off before he could answer, only to come back an hour later when Tenaya was working and yell at her about the same thing, now adding "ANd why isn't there a manager to answer my question?" Naya held her tongue on the "well, if ou had stuck around before, that other guy would have told you" and politely told her that the chairs would be back wednesday, and they had been moved so something new could be installed. Crazy Lady said "By wednesday I could be dead!" and left in a big huff. When Naya and I got back from lunch, she grabbed my arm and pointed to the lady haranging some one else about wheelchairs and said "That's her! That's Cazy Lady!" I was so tempted to say "You know, by the time you get done yelling at these poor people, you could be dead". We hung out in the offices for a while before she had to go back to work, and while we were there, one of her coworkers walked by crying. Whatever was the matter? Crazy Lady had yanked her by the badge, and was now having her membership revoked. Hooray! I'm glad I was there to find out the end of the story. Though dissapointed that I couldn't watch while they told her. I hope they had security around.
It was really crowded in the museum. I wandered through all the floors, but I know I missed a lot. Oh well, I can go back any time Naya's working for free. What I did see- I don't really understand modern art. And I know it's kind of cliche to say that, but it's true. I will never understand Mondrian no matter how long I look at it, and there was a display of some one similar who worked with charcoal or somethhing, and had a wall of 6 or so that seemed the same, and were completely filled in. I don't get it. Admitted, I didn't really give myself a chance to understand that, but still. There was one that was just the ultimate in pretension. It was a room, a part of the gallery, where the lights turned on and off at 5 second intervals. Totally blank, just the lights. There was a little plaque about how each change, from on too off, off to on, was a statement that negated the previous statement. What? Bullshit. That's the kind of thing that I think it's fine if you believe, and you can even turn into an exhibit, but to be paid for? Especially since in the next room was a giant circle, filled with sand, and on top of the sand were two blades, one serated so that it made record-groove-like furrows, and the other flat so that it smoothed them out.
I think my favorite was either (and for totally different reasons) the room that was an inverted library, casts had been made of books on shelves, and so indented, you could see the negative space; or, in the architecture section, the giant table lamp. That one just tickles my fancy. I also got to see Van Gogh's Starry Night, and The Olive Trees. There was a giant crowd around both. I like The Olive Trees better, I think, though my favorite is still the night cafe one that I saw in Seattle a few years ago. There are some things that you really have to see in person to understand, and his paintings are an example of that. Sure, they look pretty in your postcards, and textbook pictures, but you don't understand how powerful they are, and how full of life and movement, until you see them and the texture in person.
I also sat in the Jackson Pollock room for a while. I like Pollock, but I think maybe for the wrong reasons. Though I don't know that there is a wrong reason to claim a connection with art. I like his work because you can look at it forever, and always see new things in it. You get an overall emotion from it, whether it's the same emotion he had or not, and then you can spend hours at a time finding shapes and little feelings in it. I don't think Pollock belongs in a museum. Well, maybe. I just think that they should be in places where people can spend those hours. It's the kind of thing I would put in my workspace, to stare at when I was avoiding work. Eh, who knows.
I wandered around for a couple hours, all told, then found Tenaya and talked to her a bit, and then went home and kind of wasted the rest of the day. The downer was talking to the guy who had the apartment that I thought was a good one, and him telling me that it was kind of silly to bother coming by before everyone could, and that it was going to be mighty tough without proof of employment. So Matt is going to write up some sort of contract for me for that. Also, I talked to my cousin, and she is not so keen on living with 3 cats, and is not yet commited to moving in the next, you know, week or two, so there goes that. I'm mildly bummed out by both of these conversations, but they're not unexpected. Everyone will be here tomorrow, and then we can start figuring things out. And who knows, maybe Sarah will meet Iso, and think she's the greatest cat ever, and then that plan will be back on.
Right, back to the last few legs of the road trip.
We didn't get to DC until 9 pm wednesday night. In part because Jill pulled over to sleep from 2-5. Which on the one hand, I totally understand and support, and on the other I think it was totally wimpy. But, you know, it meant we didn't crash and dies, so I guess that's good. Also, Jill had talked to her dad, and he had said something about 'don't go over 75 if you want to have an engine left' so we had to scale back from going up to 90. We got to Vanessa's, walked through Old Alexandria a little, commented on how it was Charming McCharmerville, and crashed. We slept in way later than intended, tried to drive to a few different metro stations to park at, failed miserably, went back and parked at Vanessa's and walked to one close by. We were originally parking somewhere else because it's 3 hour parking until 5 or 6 by Vanessa's, and by the time we had tried 2 different train stations, it was around 2. So there you go. DC has a pretty good metro system, from what I can tell. Bart has more comfortable seats, but in DC, people understand that you let everyone off the train before you try to shove your way on. We walked around on the man drag, where all the monuments are. Jill has pictures of all this that she needs to send to me. We ended up going to the Air and Space museum, which was pretty cool. I think I went there when I was 8 and visiting my uncle, but I really don't remember anything from that, so who the hell knows. For some reason, in the AaSM, there is a section of American artifacts. Like- Dorothy's shoes, and Kermit, and Abe Lincoln's hat, and the Seinfeld puffy shirt, and R2-D2, and all kinds of cool junk. We spent the most time in there. I had to meet my uncle's ladyfriend (seriously. They've been together for at least 15 years, but haven't gotten married, and I think some one in their 50's can't be called a girlfriend) at a far-away metro stop, so I walked with Jill and Vanessa to the (blatantly phallic) Washington Monument, and then cut out to go find a metro station. I was kind of dissapointed, I had wanted to see the Vietnam memorial. When I was in high school, I think, I watched a documentary about the contest for the design, and how it was built and all, and I really liked it, that it was a scar in the land. Oh well. I'm not that far from there now, and I'm planning on visiting my uncle pretty soon.
We went out to dinner with my cousin and his wife and two kids. My uncle whipped out a straw and spitballs as soon as the kids showed up. Katie, the 4 year old, just giggled quietly and tried to hide, but then she wasn't paying attention for a minute, and he hit her square on the nose. He and I burst out laughing, and after thinking for a minute, she started crying. Both of the kids were pretty wiped out, but once dinner was over and we got back to the house, they perked up significantly. Katie even drew me a bug ("Hey, thanks, Katie, what's this?" "It's a bug" "Oh, how cool, what kind of bug?" "It's a
We got off to a crazy late start the next day, because Jill needed an oil change (we did one in Oakland, and had gone nearly 4000 miles since then) and then we decided to go out to lunch. So we left at about 2 45. Worst desicion ever. We should have realized that being the friday before christmas, everyone got off work early, and we should have left way way way earlier. As it was, there was crazy bad traffic all the way out of DC, across Maryland, and into Pennsylvania. Oh, and it was raining the whole time. It kept raining pretty bad across New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. We got to Jill's at about 1 in the morning, and she was crazy stressed out, having been the one driving the whole time. Her brother was awake, and we stayed up and talked to him for a while. He kind of looks like the guy in Jurassic Park who meets the little spitting dinosaur, the one who's also on Seinfeld. Jill went to bed around 2, but I somehow got sucked into an incredibly geeky conversation about Star Wars Galaxies and so was up till 3. After which, I woke up at 8, and Jill's dad drove me into the city. Hey, cool! We're all caught up! Now I can start dredging my memory for everything I meant to comment on, and forgot to while I was writing. Oh boy!
