Monday, September 8, 2008

New Old Friends



I recently enjoyed a wonderful day in New York City. The purpose was to meet up with one of my student friends from Baltimore who is working in Connecticut for the summer and a couple of my ooze buddies. The Ooze is a website (http://www.theooze.com/) that I hang out on. My Standing in the School of the Dead post was on the articles page. There is also a message board that was designed to discuss emergent religious stuff, but there are a lot of general discussions as well. This year a bunch of the ooze folks were gathering at the July 4 holiday in Defiance, Ohio for a chance to meet each other, eat, and fellowship. I was not able to that gathering, but I met up with a few oozers in NYC before they journey to Ohio.

Heather is from Colorado and we have yakked online for a few years. Liz lives in New Jersey and is a newer acquaintance. My buddy Victoria, who spent the summer as a nanny in Connecticut joined the party as well. I took the Amtrak Acela to NYC early in the morning. I was able to have a nice leisurely breakfast at an outdoor café while I waited to everyone else to show. The plan for the day was a trip to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Victoria was excited because her boss drove her into the city in his Maserati. Liz’s aunt is a member of the museum, and she let us borrow her member’s pass. We were able to bypass the lines and walk straight in free of charge. This was my first time at the MOMA, which is a large facility. We started toward the top with the impressionist. We all took pictures next to Monet’s Water Lilies.

















The most interesting exhibit for me was a special presentation on Dali and film. The showing included excerpts from Hitchcock’s Spellbound which had a Dali inspired dream sequence. The museum had the full sized set pieces drawn by Dali that were part of the film. Dali also worked with Walt Disney on a short film that was made in 1946vand only just released a few years ago called Destino.
Heather and Liz (with Liz’s mom) had to head out to meet some other people, so we said our goodbyes. Victoria and I spent a few more hours exploring the museum. She had seen most of the pieces before. My favorite piece was my Henri Rousseau.



After art viewing we head for lunch at the Modern which is a restaurant at the MOMA. We ate in the Bar area which is a scaled down version of the Modern. I started with a cava then we shared a bottle of an alvarihno. We both had a wonderful garbanzo soup with feta cheese before moving to the main course and of course dessert.

After lunch we window shopped along 5th Avenues nicer shops. We stopped in at Prada; Tiffany’s and even visited Trump Tower for its marvelous public restrooms. Victoria was really excited to visit some private art galleries that had some interesting works. One artist really had an obsession with wax flies. We strolled to St. Patrick’s then said our goodbyes. I took the regular Amtrak back to Baltimore which was running 45 minutes late. Okay, that was annoying. Otherwise, it was really a great time with some old and new friends.



The bar modern