Through panes of glass...

One of the many windows in the city from the old Custom House, now the Smithsonian's NYC Branch of the National Museum of the American Indian.

My oldest sister, Sariah, had a fascination with windows and the world outside of them. From the time she was a baby, she was attracted to the things on the other side. There is a yellowed photograph from an old battered album documenting the brief history of the (remarkably dull) events that occurred in my family during the few years before I was born (a remarkable event which illuminated their drab little lives). The image in the photo was Sariah as a baby, climbing up to the window in a shanty farm house my parents lived in for a brief time, and she was staring ever so majestically into the sunlight, looking as wise and as noble as an 18 month old can. She began her existence already enamored by life on the other side of the glass, and she never quite grew out of it. While she was always looking at the world outside of the windows, I often found myself taking the alternate approach from the outside looking in...

In the City of New York, there is no shortage of windows. On sunny days, much of the city shines as if tiny jewels have been embedded into the masses of stone that aim toward the sky, full of busy hives of people all trying to stay one step ahead of impending poverty. In this way, the city can be reminiscent of a really colossal ant farm, if all the ants had smart phones and caffeine addictions. Most of the people milling about in the buildings of midtown are so busy trying to get through the tasks of their day, they hardly have a chance to look up or follow Sariah's lead and peek out a window every now and again. I make it a point to look out of windows every chance I get, but generally, I just find myself looking into other windows as a result.

My office is situated in a very "no-frills" district of midtown Manhattan, just below Pennsylvania Station. Although there are several windows in the room, they all have a fantastic views of the rear-facing brick walls of the surrounding buildings. There is enough of a view to at least clearly see four or five floors of the buildings to the side and the back of my own, and during the moments I need to avoid the insanity of my job the most, I escape into the views of the other offices around us. Directly across from me there is an office full of clean looking thirty-somethings, sharply dressed in smart business casuals, and different members of the group meet at least once a day, sitting around a table facing a large flatscreen, where I assume they either do video conferencing or else they just really like to actively talk back to television programs for sport. Their workspace is brightly, but not TOO brightly, colored in a sort of "retro-mod" motif and there are always bagels (I wish my office had bagels). There are certain members of the group I have singled out as my favorites, and I periodically look out my window to see if they've entered the meeting. There is one man, tall-ish and balding with a cocky face - always wearing some sort of tasseled footwear, and I've decided I don't care for him. He's probably one of those people with a name like "Preston" or "Dayton" who drinks brandy out of a gold-rimmed snifter discussing his salary with members of his prep school alumni association while making jovial guffaws about his subordinates. When I get to the point where I begin fancying him to be a womanizer who has broken the hearts of all the female members of my office window soap opera, I know it is time to stop and get back to whatever task I've been avoiding by spying on my neighbors.

In the floors above and below the office full of young active people are two very dull views that rarely provide more than a momentary distraction. One window, the office above, peers into a room piled high with disorganized books on sagging shelves, where a very uninteresting old man sits in front of a computer all day, occasionally visited by a secretary of some sort who brings in beige folders full of what appear to be multi-colored forms (I like to call her "Helen"). He often eats his lunch out of a brown bag, prepared by some wife called "Marge" or "Barb," no doubt, and then he leaves every day, promptly at 4:30. In the office below, there sits a middle aged man with bushy peppered hair who seems to do little more than read magazines or the New York Post all day with his feet up on the desk. One time I saw him take a swig from a flask. I always try to see if I can catch him do it again. The only other point of interest in the views I have available to me is into a building directly behind mine. There is an office occupied by two uptight women who do not seem to get along. The sit, all day long at their computers, not speaking, one often pulling her hair back tighter and tighter as the day progresses. At least once a week, the tight-haired lady has to sit and listen to a paunchy older man, who has nose hairs that are visible from a building away, angrily talk at her for fifteen to thirty minutes while making severe hand gestures. I imagine he has bad breath. She then tightens her hair some more and furiously pecks at her keyboard until she leaves.

I realize at times that I may get a little too carried away with my imagination when escaping into the ambiguous scenes of the lives progressing around me through panes of glass, but I feel it's generally a way to connect with a much larger reality that is so easy to feel excluded from. Leading up to my apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, there are several little cafés that attract neighborhood residents and their visitors each night. Often when I'm walking home, and especially on cold nights, I like to look in the windows at the people sharing their evenings together over warm food and cool drinks and I like to pretend I know them and I can hear what they're saying. Often I'll see someone I recognize from the subway platform or the market or one of the apartment buildings on my block, and I feel glad, as though I've seen a friend (when in reality I rarely ever talk to my neighbors unless absolutely necessary). For a split second, in my glance, I've shared a moment in time with a familiar face, and in a city of eight million little ants running around behind glass, it is a comfort to feel human every now and again.

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My weekend museum adventures in the city: indulging the curiosity of my inner child...

One of the many beautiful statues adorning the Brooklyn Museum

Growing up in the mountains of Colorado, sequestered away in a tiny town, I always dreamt of taking off on spontaneous adventures to far off places and seeing exotic and beautiful lands and people yet undiscovered. Although the San Juan mountains were beautiful, they acted as a barrier between me and the world outside. In my imagination, I would fly up over the snow-capped peaks to worlds beyond my own grasp and comprehension. My weekends were often occupied by bicycle excursions in the wild adobe hills or the alleyways of the town, but more often than not, my end destination would be the small public library I affectionately revered as my tangible portal to the places and things on the outside of the scope of the Rockies. I would find piles of books about art, history, fairy stories and travel to wonderful places. The stern and humorless librarian, Rosalie, who seemed to hate all living things - especially children, took a strange liking to me and she would tell me new subjects to explore or even hold new books for me as they came in. During my nerdy Saturdays of youth, while my peers were playing baseball or having slumber parties, I was immersed in the alternate reality of dusty books, socializing with misanthropic librarians and perpetuating my budding eccentricities...

Now that I live in New York City, there is no shortage of imagination-inspiring curiosities and/or world view-broadening places to see. As a sort of New Year's Resolution, I decided two things; I really need to start taking more photographs and I have to do all I can to take advantage of living in this city - I owe it to the dorky small town child inside of me. As a means to satisfy both desires, I have begun planning little weekend "adventures," mostly focused on museums or historical sites where I can feed my hungers for my childhood love of exploration and brain-filling afternoons spent around ideas and artifacts from the past while having many subjects to photograph. Rather than the outdated books and magazines that somehow made their way into rural Colorado, I now have the privilege of seeing concrete and attainable pieces of the vast world which occupied my youthful daydreams. Even in college, earning my second undergraduate degree in Art History, the closest I could be to the things I so dearly loved were the slides projected onto cold and empty walls in darkened classrooms, like phantoms, so far from anything physical or "real." Now a sampling of anything existent in the entire world is just a subway or bus ride away.

Over the past four weekends, I've made it a point to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (one my favorite places in the world), the American Museum of Natural History, The Cloisters Museum, El Museo del Barrio and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as the neighborhoods around these wonderful places while documenting points of interest with my camera. New Yorkers, overall, seem to have a stigma when it comes to going any place where there may be an abundance of tourists, especially to take photographs and appear to be a tourist like the other "riff raff" infesting the pristine utopia of our urban habitat. I do, so badly, want to one day be worthy of being considered a real "New Yorker," but I know I still am in my "training wheels" phase and have a very long way to go. Since I am still quite a rookie, I figure it's reasonable to indulge in childish fancies and idiotically bring my camera to the sacred and hollowed ground of these wonderful places and look at everything as if it were a moment to be captured for future use. Being a tourist in my own new home has been an addictive and wonderful thing. I want to see and know every corner of the place. I want to have it all imprinted within me. I want to feel my footprint on the pulse of each street and feel like the city knows me as well as I may one day know her.

Erring on the side of childish geekdom, I would love to say eventually that one day I've seen every museum in the city, but as there is no conclusive or agreed upon figure for how many "true" museums there are within the five burrows, it makes seeing all of them a rather subjective goal. The various declarations are that between 70-200+ museums exist in New York, but the definition of the word museum, I have found, varies quite curiously depending upon who one may ask. The town in which I was raised had one museum, dedicated to the local Native American group that had been mostly forced out and ostracized from the area over a period of prolonged struggles and hardships and scattered about in reservations. To see such an abundance of institutions dedicated to the triumphs of human progress and achievements in one place, rather than a necessary and important, but quite grim reminder of human tragedy, is a tremendous thing. Overall, during my time in the city, I've been to a dozen or so of these museums, but now I'm on a mission to to see them all.

I will continue my quest for experience and knowledge indefinitely among the museums of New York. I will also continue my photographic exploits, as well, to connect with my inner tourist. Most of all, I will prove to the anti-social child I once was, that the anti-social adult I've become still understands. I wish that I could somehow find Rosalie, the people-hating librarian of my youth, and thank her for all she un-knowingly did for me. Rosalie, wherever you are, this one's for you...

A Small Sampling of my Photographic Experiments:

Tiny dancers by Degas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Butterflies at the American Museum of Natural History

Outdoor courtyard garden, frozen for the winter,  at the Cloisters Museum

Neo-Classical sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum

On my way home one evening, I stopped in Battery Park to see the sunset, and look who I found...

How shaking my behind made me who I am today...

A small visual sampling of my awesome moves...

In retrospect, it seems that during the time of adolescence, there were at least three distinct genres of people: the people who were "cool," the people who were willing to do anything or die trying to "be cool" and those who had college to look forward to for any small hope of a social existence. I definitely fit into the latter of the categories. Unlike my mother who, by the age of 12, was tall, beautiful and charismatic with long, formerly-blonde hair (she still claims to be blonde, but it's just not the case), I was a scrawny four-eyed runt with a big mouth and an overly-active imagination. The fact that I survived junior high school was by divine providence for certain. Had I been born in a more primitive time, I would surely have been phased out quickly under the auspices of "survival of the fittest," that is unless dorky butt-shaking and high kicks to eclectic and out of style music would have been considered a survival skill. If that were the case, I would have at least been able to puzzle my predators before making a quick getaway...

For me, college was the time I finally blossomed into the amazingly wonderful person that I am today. In art school, nearly everyone was a little off-center, so having a few bizarre personality defects wasn't looked at in a negative light. I went to a large state university where the visual art department was sequestered safely in a forgotten and undesirable corner of the campus. Aside from required general education courses, I rarely left the little art bubble which was always engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, the aroma of cheap coffee and fumes of paint-thinner. It was there I learned how the fantastic side effects of prolonged sleep deprivation and mental over-exertion could bring people together to form unlikely bonds over seemingly meaningless common experiences. I also learned the importance of letting loose every now and then to deal with sleepless nights in the painting studios finishing countless assignments that have since been forgotten completely. All that remains are the friends I've held on to, and the knowledge that we were all part of the common struggle that has lead us all on sordid paths of ruin and financial instability. Every Thursday night, a particularly special group of friends would all meet at bicycle shop/bar for $1 local microbrews (oh, how very Colorado) and old music on the jukebox. To the tunes of James Brown, Michael Jackson, Devo and other fabulous entertainers from the murky recesses of the available albums in the machine, I learned that although I may not have looked very smart or conventionally "cool," my bizarre and inventive dance moves made me quite popular among the well-libated college crowd of artists, hippies and other friendly drunks.

Although my undergraduate years, all 6 of them, were filled with many good times and happy booty-shakin' memories, I quickly learned that life after school became progressively less exciting. Slowly all of the bicycle bar buddies from Thursday nights of yore went our separate ways and, for the most part, we all found new adventures to pursue.  Upon finding myself eventually in New York City, far away from friendly faces and familiar beers I had grown so fond of, I realized just how precious those quirky experiences were. I've also realized that age is a funny thing, and although I still believe myself to be both "young and fun," youth and amusement are very relative terms...

This winter I was thrust into a lively social situation during a seasonal job in holiday retail with Esprit on Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center. I worked there, folding sweaters and swiping credit cards during my evenings and weekends for three months, in which I decided to forgo sleep and/or sanity. The majority of the people I worked with were not born until after the ball dropped in 1990, and for the first time in my life, I was one of the "older people" in the group. This was a startling new experience for me. Given that even in my own age group I am quite a bit out of touch, to all of these people, I probably seemed like a space alien. I know very little of current TV, as I've not had cable since Friends was on the air, and I know even less of popular music. I should also mention that by the time I arrived at Esprit every evening, I had already worked 9 hour shifts at my "real job," and my mental clarity had been worn quite thin. In addition, I should also mention that when tired, my socially awkward tendencies burble to the surface and my concern over the rules of propriety wanes. As the environment was one of fashion retail in one of the most exclusive shopping districts in the world, a horrible mixture of utra-hip music was always pouring out of surround-sound speakers abundantly furnished around the store. To pass the time, I did what any frazzled idiot might do, and I would channel my youthful days of Thursday night splendor and make my own dance party on the sales floor of Esprit Rockefeller Center. Doing my own modifications of the mashed potato, the Charleston, strange references to high kicks by the Rockettes and variations of moves from Frankie and Annette films, I would blithely pass my time physically making fun of the Lady Gaga remixes and Rhianna songs I was subjected to as my coworkers stood by. After a while, I was accepted as the funny "older" nerdy guy who made people laugh by making an ass of myself. Some of the people would even join in and try to either match or out-do my awesome moves (which really isn't hard to do). Eventually, my willingness to be an idiot paid off and made me quite popular in a strange sort of way with the crowd of retail workers, mostly in their late teens.

From the experience, I learned that even in the unlikeliest of circumstances, a positive attitude and a lack of pride can go a long way in breaching certain social barriers. As time moves on and I slowly settle into being a "grown up," I know that I have a great deal of youthful "joi de vivre" to draw from in the form of moronic body movements. I am certain that even in the most taxing of circumstances, such as working the equivalent of two full time jobs at once, there is joy to be found when you can let go and dance like nobody's watching (even if you know people are staring and pointing and laughing)...

Life in a frozen metropolis...

A day spent walking in Central Park, enjoying the balmy New York winter...

The fact that there is any sort of tourist industry at all in New York City is a testament to the number of cultural offerings and fine dining establishments for which the city has to boast, for nobody in their right mind visits for the weather. I have concluded that there are roughly 4 weeks of pleasant weather during the entire year in the city, two in the spring and two in the fall. During the summer, the heat and humidity are reminiscent of a moldy locker room shower stall in a junior high school located on the outskirts of hell, and in the winter the howling wind and black snow that refuses to fully melt is a happy reminder that frost bite isn't just something you were told about in stories, but it is an experience available to all. This being said, my first winter in the city, although rather uncomfortable, has been filled with many crystalline wonders which are inexplicable to me considering how much I dislike cold in general. Somehow, with chattering teeth and cheeks burned raw by the icy winds, I have managed to find the frozen world of the city quite beautiful...

Although my childhood was spent in the snowy mountains of Colorado where my father taught specialized courses in winter survival with the sun shining on high alpine peaks and the birds singing songs in the fairy-tale-esque environment of the Rocky Mountain winters, I feel completely ill-equipped for the season "back east." When we would have blizzards back home, it just meant we'd turn on the 4 wheel drive in our Subarus, get out our polar fleece lined Columbia jackets and lace up our Sorels while continuing on with our lives. Sure, a foot or two of snow on the ground would slow us down a bit, but it wouldn't stop us. In my entire K-12 education, despite numerous heavy snow storms, we had one "snow day" ever, and that was in 1990 when there were two feet of snow that fell over night, and the school buses couldn't be freed from their ice-prison before the morning.

On the day after Christmas this year, we had a snow storm in the city that shut everything down, causing chaos and pandemonium for all five boroughs. I happened to be working my temporary job in holiday retail that night as the blizzard was in full force. Even snow blowing in horizontally from all cardinal directions wouldn't stop bargain shoppers on Fifth Avenue. As taxis slid past stop lights and hot dog vendors drug their carts out of the streets into unknown shelters (where do they go at night?), the lure of 50% off on all outerwear accessories kept salivating bargain hunters going through the thick of little Jack Frost's temper tantrum. By 9pm, the buses had stopped running, but the sales went on. By the time I got out of work at 11pm, the scene was akin to a cold war era film about nuclear holocaust. Taxis had stopped running completely, and bicycles were abandoned in the middle of the streets. Half the trains had been shut down, and so the few subway stations still in operation looked like bomb shelters with weary frozen souls huddled together hanging on to the hope that the train would eventually come and warm beds would be waiting at the end of so many long journeys home. I saw one woman with a rosary clasped in her hands, whispering prayers to herself while a herd of tiny children clung to her soggy legs.

The train finally came, and slowly it slid into each stop on the icy tracks until I finally made it back up to the Columbia University station. When I made it out of the frozen little hole in the ground, back up to the street level, I had to walk in the tracks being made by a woman 3 feet ahead of me. We made an unspoken agreement with our eyes that whosoever should be blown down by the wind into the snow would be the responsibility of the other. It just so happened that she turned two blocks before my street, and I was blown on my backside down into a snow bank exactly one block after we parted ways...

It took nearly a week for all the streets to be plowed and for the city to begin operating on time again. I found it humbling that in one of the largest metropolitan cities in the world, filled with vast resources and cutting edge technologies, life could still be brought to a lurching halt by a phenomenon as basic as the snow. It seems that only in a "state of emergency" will the city slow itself down and take a bit of a needed rest. It was a beautiful thing to wake up in the morning without the sound of a single car horn or ambulance rushing down the streets. Everything was still and calm, and for the first time since moving to the city, there was a soft quietness in the air. Once the snow had stopped, the sun came out and children were sledding in the park outside of my front window. It felt like some sort of Frank Kapra type moment that should have been experienced in black and white. By the following day, life was delayed, but slowly went back to the normal loud and intense hustle I have grown accustomed to. I was glad that after a season of working 75 hours per week between two jobs, New York had given me a much needed snow day to sit back and catch my breath.

The underground kingdom of Dr. Zizmor...

The good doctor himself, looking down at the world from above...

As a child, my relationship with daily transportation was one wrought with toil and grief provided by a succession of partially-functioning automobiles my parents seemed to attract like lost kittens. Often, our Volkswagen Microbus would only start with the aid of my mother's prayers, said aloud in the front seat after numerous failed attempts at getting the wretched thing to start. On occasions when the prayers went unanswered, during particularly cold winter mornings, she'd have to get a hammer from the glove box and crawl under the car to beat on the machine's underbelly, which did the trick, and off we'd go to church. Getting from point A to point B was frequently a great deal of work, especially when relying on divine intervention. Now, relying entirely on various forms of public transit to make it from one place to another, I have become a mean and surly urbanite with sharp elbows and a furrowed brow. Transportation in New York is proof of Darwin's theories regarding the survival of the fittest. He who doesn't fight for his life doesn't make it on the morning train...

Deep under the ground, there is a world that exists free of sunlight and taxis and the warbles of dirty pigeons. It is a world where the rules of the vertical world seem vaguely inconsequential and a subterranean horizontal reality takes over. Surrounded by strangers, packed into small metal boxes that are controlled and thrust about by unseen hands, one tends to pay more attention than usually given to any brightly colored distraction from the rush-hour transit claustrophobia festival at hand. Peering out at the huddled masses from illuminated placards running along the ceilings of the subway cars are static faces offering promises of varying nature. Some promise wealth, some promise speedy divorces and some promise medical miracles, but the faces promising eternal youth and beauty are the most powerful of all, especially when surrounded by so many specimens of the human race that appear to have seen better days.

There is an undisputed king of these purveyors of affordable hope; he stares out from a backdrop of sunshine and rainbows. He is the great and powerful Dr. Zizmor and for an agreement of mere financial servitude, he will make you beautiful in as little as one lunch break with his collection of magical potions and mystical secrets. Somehow, although time keeps passing, his likeness in his photographs hasn't changed in 20 years, nor has the quality or aesthetic sensibility of his graphic designer. Having never met the man myself, he seems like a mythical creature, akin to the great Oz behind the curtain. While the other subway wizards may offer things like "free" abortion alternatives, help with sexual dysfunctions and speedy bankruptcies (seemingly grand and complicated problems with even grander necessities for resolution), Dr. Zizmor tells you that YOU TOO can be beautiful with little to no effort on your own part. Although he uses outdated and rather pathetic methods to do so, there is a simplicity to his offer that is warm and inviting, and besides, who can be very intimidated by a man who looks like a muppet? I find that the testimonials from his loyal subjects, which are a key component in every version of his subway posters, add that little something extra to make you feel like you're reading the cliff's notes from an infomercial, and who doesn't like that?

Anyone who has lived in New York for any length of time knows of the technicolor subway skin doctor, but perhaps not all have the fondness for him that I do. There is something endearing about the way his images seem to be frozen in the late 1980's, and they never seem to progress or innovate. His schtick hasn't, and most likely, it will never change. He connects us with memories of an increasingly less-tangible past, one without wifi and text messaging and photoshop, a simpler time when lots of labor would go into making a single mix-tape on cassette. I suppose that my recent fatigue brought on by working 70 hours per week between two different jobs has taken a toll on my sanity, and this is why Dr. Zizmor is speaking to me in such a way. At least he hasn't animated himself in my mind when I am stuck focusing on him rather than the fact that I've been physically violated by everyone who has gotten on and off the train while I patiently wait for my stop. In a city that is so focused on forward motion, I find it sort of wonderful to see something that refuses to move on...

Autumn in New York...

A very picturesque scene of the Central Park Mall - It actually looks even more charming in person...

Perhaps it's due to the fact that I'm somewhat of a curmudgeon at heart, but the autumn is my very favorite time of the year. Ever since childhood, I would look forward to the leaves changing colors and flying through the air in dancelike patterns until falling into the community of their previously fallen compatriots, already stuck on the ground, which depending on how you look at it, can be either inspiring or really depressing. In New York, a city known for its fashion-savvy residents, it is safe to say that even the trees seem to be modeling some trendy sort of seasonal wares this time of year, competing with the other trees to be the most outstanding, not unlike their human counterparts turning the sidewalks of the city into runways and catwalks of extravagant outerwear...

My Stupid Hat

Recently my office moved to a neighborhood near Penn Station known as the fur district. It's a rather dingy little section of mid-Manhattan with an abundance of tired looking gray industrial buildings in need of sandblasting and lacking very many good places to eat (I am most affected by this aspect of the move). There are more fur suppliers, resellers and designer fur-clothing manufacturers concentrated in these few blocks than any other place on Earth. I am not surprised at how many of the fur merchants seem to be surly Russian mafia members, but I'm definitely surprised that the streets aren't overwhelmed with PETA protesters holding overburdened paint cans, ready to for action. Being neither an angry animal rights activist, nor a person of wealth, I recently purchased the most ridiculous giant faux-fur winter hat I could find. Aside from looking like a reject from the Sonny and Cher collection, it keeps me warm in the oppressive New York winds that blow through the narrow streets between the buildings. My bargain-priced fall fashion decision earns me disdainful glares from the beady-eyed shop keepers surrounded by their menagerie of animal carcasses. They can notice from a mile away that my hat is both fake AND stupid-looking, as I blithely make my way down the sidewalk in search of lunchtime burritos (ah, Chipotle barbacoa), enjoying their squirms and malignant disgust.

Coming up on "the holidays," I have taken an extra seasonal job in retail working at a clothing store on 5th Avenue at Rockefeller Center. As glamorous as that may sound, retail is retail no matter the setting. The store can best be described as a more drab and less-edgy European version of the Gap (if more drab and less edgy than Gap is even possible). Being as "fun sized" as I am, the employee discount program is not extremely beneficial considering few of their garments even come close to fitting well on my impish frame, so my favorite perk of the job is the opportunity to observe a steady trickle of confused tourists who try to avoid salespeople, like myself, at all costs. I'm learning that I am unable to convincingly lie to strangers to get them to believe that they look "great" in faux fur-hooded parkas that would look strange on even eskimos. I blame my mother for my inability to successfully tell mis-truths as I was never allowed to get away with it when I was younger which killed my chances to hone the skill. Instead I have to find unrelated statements that will sound better, like, "I bet you'll be the only person back in Arkansas with a giant man-bag like this one," or "I'm sure you'll really stand out in that plaid hat when you go back to Japan..." Perhaps if I really believed in what I was selling, I could more convincingly lie about it, much like a politician or televangelist. We'll see how far I go in my sales career, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hope that I make it through the season unscathed.

Retail and unfriendly Russians aside, when all is said and done, New York is a beautiful place to be during this transitional time of the year, even when getting the stink eye from passersby, comparing outerwear. I now can vouch for all of those cheesy movies and songs based on this very phenomenon in the city. Between the beautiful leaves lining the gutters, preparations for window displays on 5th Avenue  and the smell of "a little something extra" in the coffee cups of certain businessmen walking out of Penn Station, there is a magical crispness that makes one feel truly alive.

Central Park Photo taken from http://www.kiamoy.com/?p=144

The wilderness lady in the Big Apple...

My mother in Rockefeller Center absorbing the essence of Al Roker...

No matter how far one may roam, it seems like remnants of your past are never very far away. Now, nearly two thousand miles from the tiny rural town where I grew up, the first instance of my old life colliding directly with my new one occurred recently in the form of my mother taking on the big apple...

My mother is a "real hoot," and she would be the first one to tell you that. Being a self-proclaimed city girl at heart (having grown up in Washington, D.C., - the daughter of a Pentagon accountant), living in rural Colorado for the past three and a half decades, teaching wilderness survival and baking thousands of loaves of homemade whole-grain bread to sell to the masses in her little town has definitely been a dramatic change from her upbringing. Even while butchering chickens on mountain tops and finding endless ways to prepare various bean-centric dishes over a smoldering campfire in the wind and the rain, she would always find opportunities to bring in saucy anecdotes about her former city life. She was always so very proud of her teenage exploits, whether they were stories of being chased by security guards down the banisters of the Lincoln Memorial or dancing around in public fountains with her psuedo-hippie riff raff friends. She was a non-conformist and in her ultimate non-conformity, she chose a life of peaceful obscurity in the wide open wilderness of the west, far far away from the noises and lights of the big city...

As a child, I could never quite actualize the stories my mother would tell of her former life surrounded by so many different people from so many different places. Considering that my parents took me on my first wilderness survival program in the mountains when I was just several weeks old, my world was quite removed from one of diplomats, generals and socialites all thriving together in one place. I lived in a world where feuds between ranchers of cattle and sheep generated the juiciest of gossip available. For my parents, our tiny house with its menagerie of non-functioning automobiles and our proximity to so many wonders of the natural world were much more appealing than living a fancier life anywhere else. Even in self-imposed poverty, they had chased after their own dreams and found themselves right where they needed to be; nestled comfortably in the heart of the middle of nowhere. Over the last thirty-some odd years though, living in her own private version of "Walton's Mountain" has softened by mother just a bit.

My mother recently made her first voyage to New York since 1972 as a means to cash in on an expiring airline voucher and also to inspect my new life, in person. On our first morning out in my neighborhood, she made it clear that she was to be the solitary member of the Morningside Heights neighborly greeting committee, and say "hello" and "good morning" to every soul she passed on the street. Despite my attempts to explain that people just don't do that here, she boldly walked ahead of me and made her wholesome small town gesture to all of Amsterdam Avenue in opposition to the puzzled looks on the faces of the people whose mornings she'd just interrupted with her mountain-fresh effervescence. Like a good son, I walked 5 paces behind her as she intentionally did her best to get the better of me, and I could tell she enjoyed every second of it.

Touring the city with her was like seeing everything through the eyes of a stranger deserted on an alien planet, and I enjoyed that. I thought she was going to disinfect the entire city with hand sanitizer before she left, but she seemed to take in every moment as a memory to be kept for later use. From the gilded doorways of Saint John the Divine to the dingy mosaics in the subway stations, everything was an object of interest to be admired. It would have been almost cute if not every single pebble on the street was seen with audible "oohs" and "aahs" coming from her direction.

One of the highlights of the visit was our trip to Rockefeller center. For some bizarre reason, my mother watches the Today Show devoutly and has always had a huge crush on Al Roker. Although seeing the darkened studio in mid-day through the windows on the street wasn't as exciting as being among the mob of early morning fans (I think I would rather be dead than to have to endure such torture), she was pleased to at least actualize the location of her early morning television nostalgia. This and many other little scenes of notable New York locations compounded into what seemed like a waking dream in my mother's outward reactions. Whether it was going to the Met's Egyptian collection, eating confections in Little Italy or seeing the inside of a real Broadway theatre, my mother's child-like excitement brought the city to life in a way I did not expect. Leading her through a new world and watching her discovery of it all made me feel, for one of the first times in my life, less like a child and more like the "grown up" in my mother's presence.

By the time my mother went back home to the mountains, I felt like we'd shared something unique. In coming and seeing this place that I've worked so hard to be able to live in, and actually enjoying it, I feel like my mother was able to understand me in a new way that she hadn't before. I think it was definitely a relief for both of us when she arrived back, safely, in her cozy quiet little mountain town, but she definitely left a piece of her heart in the big city...

Namastinkers

A herd of trendy exercise-buffs, similar to the likes of those found in Brooklyn...

Twenty years ago, I'm sure if a businessman (or woman) would have pitched an idea involving grown people paying lots of money to get together with groups of strangers, being forced to get into ridiculous and sometimes painful positions for prolonged periods of time while either being publicly half-naked or clad in bizarrely over-priced outfits, the aforementioned individual would have been thought to be describing a common and recurring nightmare rather than a cogent business opportunity. Now this adolescent nightmare is a billion dollar industry known as Yoga, and it's hit New York like a malignant cancer...

It's hard to walk a few blocks in the city without seeing some sort of yoga studio, even if on the 3rd floor of a condemned building with a string of Tibetan prayer flags hanging out the window. When you can walk down a crummy street in the Bronx and see posters for Bikram Yoga, you know that gentrification has extended its grasp and soon middle-class white people with baby carriages and small dogs will be roaming about the streets talking on their iPhones about fair trade coffee and the trials of knowing what's best for everyone else. This in no way is meant to imply that I'm denying the inalienable rights of bourgeois people to overtake distressed neighborhoods, strip out all the unique cultural characteristics, raise the rent, and push all the original residents out in the name of affordable "re-purposed" loft apartments. Luckily, in many such neighborhoods, there are already well established yoga studios waiting for these folks upon arrival.

On the weekends, I work at the front desk in a very posh and swanky yoga studio in Manhattan. It's a rather pricey and very exclusive studio open to members only. My job is to calmly and soothingly check people in and direct them to their yoga classes while wearing a T shirt with the word "namaste" printed in Helvetica Bold on the front. "Namaste" is an ancient Sanskrit word which originally had very important spiritual meanings for several cultures. Now it's been diluted to a trendy salutation that is commonly screen printed on mass-produced plastic objects for consumer cultures in order to make people feel alternative and spiritual. Our clients tend to be folks who don't really need worry about money, but do anyway. In fact, many of them seem to manufacture a great deal of unnecessary things to worry about as a way of keeping themselves occupied, and then using Yoga as a method of coping with self-induced stress and tension. Sometimes, this coping process involves maltreatment of unsuspecting customer service professionals, such as myself.

For some folks, there is no amount of combined stretching and breathing exercises in existence that would turn them into agreeable human beings. We have our favorites that make all of the employees brace for impact upon arrival at the front desk. For some people the studios are never the right temperature, for others the towels in the steam rooms aren't white enough, for others the scheduling of their favorite class is always inconvenient and for a select group, there is nothing remotely pleasant about their experience at all, and their masochistic tendencies must be why they insist on coming back, time after time, and prolonging their misery. I'm sure anyone who has ever worked with the public in any capacity has similar observations. It's always something...

One night when I had been working an extended shift to cover for a friend, one of my favorite clients showed up, in a huff, as usual. This lady could be described as the Upper West Side picture of pretension from her frail leathery figure, to her absurdly stretched facial skin causing a look of eminent surprise to be ever present on her sour face. She plodded down the stairs complaining to someone on the phone about the difficulty of catching a taxi, which had obviously placed her out of sorts. She set her giant Louis Vuitton bag on the counter, took out half of its contents until she finally found her membership card, and shoved it in my face (all this while continuing her phone conversation). I checked her in for her class, which usually gets people on their way, but she decided to linger in front of me while finishing up her phone call. When she finally told "Peg, darling" goodbye, she asked to buy a bottle of water, as she commonly had done before. She seemed rather annoyed when I asked for the $2.50 we charge for luxury bottled water, rummaged through her over-sized bag some more and then, for the first time since coming into the studio, she stopped and looked at me. I knew this was not a good sign. "Look," she said, "here's the deal, all I have is two bucks, I can't find the fifty cents, so you're just gonna need to figure this out..." as she tried to grab the bottle from my hand. I pulled the bottle back and felt like saying "what, figure out that you're a wretched awful person?" but I let that go by. Her sense of entitlement had superseded any shred of social propriety she may have had, and she kept on acting like I was the one who was causing the problem by asking her to pay for her water. Begrudgingly, she rummaged through her bag some more and miraculously found the change she needed for the water, slammed it down on the counter and snatched the water bottle from my fingers. As she walked away I muttered "namaste to you too" under my breath.

In general, I do like working at the yoga studio, in spite of the some of the crazy people who come in for healing, relaxation and rejuvenation. I suppose it's a good thing we are part of their lives, especially when contemplating how much worse they may be without the aid of costly non-religious spiritual direction. At the end of the day, without them, who would I have to write about?

The scientific method...

Figure 1.3: Study specimens ignore the idiot in the subway...

In my previous life before New York (which is what it now seems like), I would look forward to Thursday evenings in my studio with Gabriela, my very insightful drawing student. Gabriela was an Italian transplant finishing her Ph.D. in Ecology in Colorado (and I'm still not quite sure what that means exactly). In addition to science, she had a very artistic streak, and we'd spend one evening per week exploring that whilst discussing the connections between the artistic process and the scientific method - conversations that were nearly always accompanied by friendly libations (or "art supplies" as I call them). We never came to any definitive conclusions, which wasn't really the point, but it has made me view many things in life since then as mere opportunities for pseudo-empirical observation and testing using unaware human subjects and then making unfounded claims based primarily on my own opinions (or what FOX News does 24/7).

The streets of New York are like a giant petri dish for the social sciences; so many tiny little people all shoved into a big maze scurrying about in search of food, sex and money - some even wearing articles of clothing resembling rodent fur (thank heavens fashion week is over!). Part of the brilliance of living in a city of 8 million people is the anonymity that provides when doing really dumb things. Unlike my non-populated hometown where everyone knew everyone else, you can urinate in public on the city streets here, and nobody will tell your mother - they don't know your mother, nor do they have the time to care that you have one (too many people take advantage of this here, especially on St. Patrick's Day). Although the majority of folks wouldn't expose themselves in a subway station, it's always an option, not necessarily the best, but an option none the less. A side effect of this abundance of social impropriety is the fact that the "regular folks" are so desensitized that these events are easily ignorable, thus adding to the allure of doing really dumb things without the fear of permanent social ostracization. 

Sometimes I like to be evil.

On more than one occasion, I've been known to disrupt morning rush-hour sidewalk traffic by walking against the flow, just to see how many people would adjust their course to avoid me, and how many briefcases jab me in the ribs. I've since decided this experiment is not interesting enough to justify the bruises involved, but on a masochistic whim, I may take it up again. Another fun game to play is finding a subway car with an abundance of empty seats and then sitting right next to the only other person on the train; it's almost as exciting as the equivalent game played with urinals in the mens room. My very favorite social experiment is to do something that is rather bizarre and foreign to most New Yorkers, but was second nature to me growing up: holding the door open for strangers. I like to spice up the game a little, and hold the door open for several strangers while smiling AND nodding. As I don't have a uniform with stripes running down the legs, it makes people uncomfortable, especially the smile. They don't know whether to thank me, tip me, or report me to the authorities for being some kind of lunatic. Some just ignore me altogether, as a reflex acquired by exposure to constant over-stimulation. I'm not quite sure what any of these little activities prove, but they are definitely great ways to make the morning commute more engaging, and I get to live out my unrealized scientific dreams.

Although I don't urinate in public (at least during the day), I notice that I do take advantage of these unique social liberties more than I would elsewhere because I know that aside from a scowl or a suitcase to the rib, little more will ever come of my being an ass, and I like that. I'm able to let loose and be "the real me," or at least the me that I decide to be in a given moment. It seems that science has been teaching me much more than my junior high school teachers ever would have though I could possibly absorb. Using science to justify self-indulgent behavior really is changing my life. Thank you Gabriela, and thank you New York!

The view from the middle...

The view from my office window (à la my phone)

I'm pretty sure the tallest building in my rural hometown in Colorado was the hospital, which stood a whopping 4 stories in one of its small "wings." It was always exciting to visit sick or injured friends because of the rare opportunity to ride in an elevator, which was quite a novelty in a town full of staircases that only reached the second floor. I had heard rumors that if you jumped up and down while the elevator was descending, you could achieve weightlessness for a split second, but sadly, there was always some sort of "grown-up" around to thwart my plans of testing out this theory. I remember riding my bicycle past the towering structure, looking up to the very top and admiring its majesty. I wondered what it would be like to see the world from such great heights, in a room of one's own...

Structures like the Empire State Building were things only conceivable in films or the books I would read. I remember watching An Affair to Remember as a child, seeing Cary Grant wait and wait for Deborah Kerr on the observation deck while she lay crippled in the street down below, not knowing until the very end that she had tried to meet him until a car mangled her plans, as well as her legs. The thought of being high enough away from the street in a building that an event as big as a car accident could go unseen was unfathomable to my 5 year old brain. Sure, my hippie parents had dragged me up to steep mountain tops and pushed me off the sides of cliffs dangling from ropes, but the view of the endless San Juan mountains was vastly different than the cityscape of Midtown Manhattan. Had Deborah Kerr agreed to meet her clandestine lover on the top of Mount Sneffels, I'm certain she would not have been hit by that car, but something tells me that good ol' Debbie wasn't really the rugged type.

 A few weeks ago I began working in an office just a couple of blocks from Herald Square, with a great view of the Empire State Building right out the window. If you look really closely in the afternoons, you can see all of the tiny little people moving about on the observation deck, hopefully not waiting for injured lovers to whom they've made unrealistic promises. I see the world from a little perch on the 15th floor of an old brick office building whose 24 stories pale in comparison with many of the other mightier skyscrapers around it. The endless sirens and car horns from 6th Avenue act as an unsettling backdrop to my days, but never cease to keep me awake when my coffee buzz begins to fade away. Sometimes, when talking to clients on the phone, they ask if some catastrophic event is occurring just outside, and I simply explain that it's just a normal weekday in Midtown.

There are days when I pull myself out of my work coma and ponder what my 5 year old self would think about my life and my daily routine now. Waking up early, catching the express train in Harlem and coming up from the ground outside of Bryant Park is now just a way to get from point A to point B, but to a child would have seemed like a daily adventure. When I see children on the train, watching eagerly as the doors open and close at every stop, the contagious sense of amazement can make it through my impermeable exterior, if I allow it to. Most of the time my only amazement with the subway occurs when track maintenance or garbage fires stop the train underground, in the dark, for extended and unannounced periods of time. Perhaps I ought to search for my inner-child, or at least buy him an ice cream cone every now and then. Sometimes I still have the urge to test out the elevator theory while speeding down 15 floors, but now that I'm a grown up myself, I've become rather dull and predictable.

The world I inhabit now is one I'd never have imagined was tangible while watching classic films on our old black and white TV set (my parents were proud Luddites in their own right). Things seem so different when elevated so high above the ground, and I've only made it to the 15th floor. Although the view from the middle is grand, I'll be anxious to one day see the view from the top.

Womanizers on a train...

Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn: a really great way to make Southerners become awkward and defensive...

After the Civil War, I believe a council of boastful Yankees must have been formed solely for the purpose of erecting grandiose monuments in New York City intended to make all Southerners angry. There are 39 such monuments maintained by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation alone, and scads of others littering public spaces in every corner of town. Now that most of the world has moved on, the responsibility of dwelling in the past over the "War of Northern Aggression" rests heavily on the shoulders of red faced tourists and/or involuntary transplants from below the Mason-Dixon line.

One night this week, I found myself in Brooklyn at Grand Army Plaza, which features an abundance of fierce looking bronze figures perched upon a fantastic triumphal arch and verses etched into the stone immortalizing Northern victory. As I am not Southern, and I am a sucker for gaudy remembrances of historical events, I enjoy going there. For Yankees, I believe these places provided a sense of camaraderie at one point, making everyone feel like they were a member of a winning team. Being a winner is only shiny and new for so long, but as the convictions of our drawling neighbors from the lower latitudes seem to suggest, being a loser is difficult baggage to be rid of. If ever I am feeling like I'm fighting a losing battle, I can find one of these numerous Civil War shrines dotting the landscape of the city and remember that no matter how bad things may seem, at least I don't live in the South.

After the novelty of borrowing the essence of proud Northern victory became more than I could handle, I decided to get on the number 2 train and take the long ride from central Brooklyn back to Uptown Manhattan. It was night time, which meant the trains were running very infrequently and making every local stop, so I found a seat on a bench and began to pull out a book when a pair of rather peculiar men appeared on the platform, making me forget all about my anthology of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The pair was comprised of two very charismatic, although scrappy, Latin men who appeared to have been pulled directly from a New Yorker Magazine cartoon sketch. The younger of the men was tall and lean with very sharp features, deep set eyes and a neatly kept pony tail. The other man was at least a generation older and seemed to be a walking public service warning for what happens to a person after too much sex, drugs and rock & roll during a prolonged bohemian adolescence. His glazed eyes, framed by abundantly overgrown brows, seemed to have almost an innate mechanical ability to detect, with laser precision, any woman within a mile radius. After taking inventory of the platform, the old hippie in his orange caftan approached me on my bench.

"Do you speak Spanish?" a mumbly surly voice asked me. "Oh, not very well," I responded, sensing his disappointment. He then beckoned his younger friend over, who obviously hadn't found any women attractive enough to devote any attention to, and the three of us began a very cordial little dialogue, in English (much to everyone's dismay). I found out the the older man was called Alfredo, and he was from Ecuador, but born in Argentina (for some reason he seemed very proud of this and repeated it several times). He was a photographer (of female nudes, no doubt), and had lived all over the world. He reminded me of an artistic, darker-featured version of Ozzie Osbourne with his slurred speech and rapidly decaying mind. He seemed completely full of shit, but he was friendly and I had nothing better to do than indulge him. The younger man was called Erwin and was from Mexico City. Apparently he was a sculptor of endangered animals, and also a photographer. He lived somewhere on 23rd Street in Chelsea, and thought it was peculiar that being an artist myself, I'd live all the way up on 123rd Street (I'm still not quite sure why).  Every time a woman would walk on to the train platform, they would both stop in mid-sentence to make an assessment, and then come back to the conversation.

By the time the train came into the station, we had become casual buddies and all decided to sit together in the same car, talking more about art and Alfredo's many travels. The conversation circulated to the subject of living in New York, and both Alfredo and Erwin told me about how much they enjoyed the many different types of women in the city. "White ladies, Latin ladies, Black ladies, Asian ladies, and not bad ones, really..." Apparently, the variety of women is much broader in New York than most other large cities in the world, according to these two men, who had obviously been around. When they began to ask me my thoughts on the topic, I quickly changed the subject...

Everything went well for two or three stops, and then finally a small group of attractive young girls, no more than 20 years old, entered the car next to us. I could see the two begin to salivate with a more than healthy appetite over the "cuisine" just one car over. Alfredo's speech became choppy and short, gazing longingly at the bottled blonde hair and cheap perfume that could be detected through the glass. It was clear that our lively conversation that was engaging enough just minutes before had lost all of its luster. As the train lurched to a stop in the next station, without skipping a beat, in mid-sentence both of the men bolted out of our car and entered the next. For the next 6 or 7 stops, I watched the unsuccessful attempts of Alfredo flirting with girls old enough to be his children, while his suave and younger side-kick obviously triumphed. Although I could not hear the high frequency giggles from these hollow headed girls, their stupidity was as buoyant as a beach ball on the Hudson and permeated through the cars. Eventually the girls reached their stop, and I saw the two men move on to fresh prey.

For the next 20 minutes, I sat digesting the experience while the train slowly made its way to my destination. I laughed a bit, glad to have met these rather comical men, but I also envied their ability to easily talk to strangers and have no shame in flirting, even against the odds. Being neither old, nor a product of one too many bad acid trips, nor a Southerner in a land of Yankees made the dreaded walk up my 5 flights of stairs to my apartment all come into perspective...

The Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Cathedral to Fine Art and Free Air Conditioning...

Whenever I'm feeling like life is getting the best of me, which happens quite regularly, I often find myself wandering about the pathways in Central Park, avoiding sticky-fingered children and foreigners with guidebooks as much as possible. Many times, as if willed by some greater power, I find myself facing Cleopatra's Needle directly behind the massive stone structure that is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or "the Met" as it is called for short. My attraction to this place, especially in contemplative moments of self-indulgent pretension, is likened to the following scenario between Holly Golightly and her unsuspecting upstairs neighbor in the film adaptation of Truman Capote's novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's:

"Listen...you know those days when you get the mean reds?"
"The mean reds? You mean like the blues?
"No... the blues are because you're getting fat or because it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?"
"Sure."
"When I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump into a cab and go to Tiffany's. Calms me down right away."

Although I can never justify the cost of cab fare (or the risk of personal injury and/or death that may result from riding in a New York City cab), I find that wandering on foot through the meandering walkways from the west to the east side of the park works sufficiently well. Furthermore, although both Tiffany's and the Met have many treasures that sparkle and shine, I prefer those which can not be purchased on platinum cards from any major carrier. There is something to be said for beauty that is truly priceless. These, and several other minute details separate me from the swinging socialite character of Miss Golightly, but our common need for a resplendent refuge from the cruel and unrelenting world unites us in spirit.

One of the most wonderful things about the Met is the fact that admission is by a "suggested donation" policy. They suggest that a reasonable adult should be able pay $20 for the buffet of culture that is offered, or even more if the aforementioned individual is really classy. Perhaps one day when I am, indeed, a reasonable adult, I will gladly pay such a fee, but whenever I get up to the desk and look at the unamused face of the fatigued attendant behind the counter, I flash a crispy $1 bill, and he or she who happens to have the privilege of accepting that generous donation from a starving artist, such as myself, hands me a brightly colored button with a rather decorative "M" stamped to the front that is to be worn at all times while navigating the maze of numerous galleries and great halls housed inside.

In addition to my love of art, there are two other primary attractions that keep me coming to the Met at least 3 times per month. One is the abundance of guaranteed free air conditioning. In July, we had a heat wave so bad, that I went to the museum 3 times in one week during the worst of it. I believe that many other broke artists did the same, as I saw more genuinely tattered clothes and bony scabby knees in those days than any other. The other attraction is the abundance of foreign tourists who seem hell-bent on perpetuating every stereotype about their respective native countries. I know that we Americans have a quite a reputation throughout the world as being rather obnoxious visitors wherever we go, but all those places seem to be evening the score and getting back at us by sending the worst possible delegates from their own homelands to the museums of New York. I can't forget to mention the middle-American families, clad in matching cargo shorts and fanny packs, always dragging some dejected floppy-haired teenager about while loudly mis-pronouncing the names of even well-known American artists. I believe that their job is to make the Europeans feel more important, and even more European. The presence of this unavoidable human theatre always provides a healthy dose of entertainment to add to the flavor of the Met experience.

All sarcasm aside, for me, the Met has become similar to a holy refuge in the vast chaos of New York City. I suppose that I use it as a spiritual center, the way one might attend services at a church or synagogue in the hope of obtaining a sense of meaning or the feeling of being grounded and resolved about the daily struggles and torments of adulthood. When all seems doomed and hope seems out of reach, I can take my "medicinal stroll" through the 19th century painting collection and see drawings by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec or paintings by Van Gogh and my wilted demeanor perks up a bit (although when I pass Gauguin in the Van Gogh galleries I have to fight the urge to become spiteful and vindictive, but that's a tangent for another day). Perhaps seeing such beautiful work created by such flawed individuals resonates within me in a meaningful way that proves to always be uplifting. I've an attraction to the human will to create, and museums such as the Met function as cathedrals to that holy act of creation and human determination. When I'm at my worst, I can always drag myself into my very own version of Holly Golighlty's Tiffany's to regain, in true Truman Capote fashion, at least a few ounces of faith in life - enough to continue until my next episodic meltdown.

Monks of the Order of Saint Marilyn...

Marilyn Monroe in a moment of divine revelation...

People often use the phrase "only in New York" to explain or pass off certain bizarre or peculiar things that, in any normal context, wouldn't happen. For instance, if you see a woman casually walking down the street wearing a pair of shoes on top of her head, you can awkwardly shrug and shake your head while saying "only in New York" as a means of both acknowledging and attempting to validate the experience. When the lunatic in the subway assaults himself in a manic state of paranoia, and then chases rats up and down the train platform while talking to God, this is another appropriate time to say "only in New York," as a means of dealing with the event. Recently, I was exposed to an apartment that chilled me to my very core, and the pair of old queens who inhabited it. Upon reflection, the only way to adequately deal with the trauma of the situation is to pass it off as an "only in New York" scenario...

During a brief period of non-gainful employment, I was required to spend two days per week in the home of two rather peculiar men. The environment one creates to live in can tell you a lot about somebody, or in this case, two somebodies. Generally, upon entering someone's apartment, one might notice an eye catching accent like an antique lamp, an oriental rug, a reclaimed barnwood table, or even a copy of Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard sheepishly tucked away on a bookshelf. In this particular apartment, the first association that entered my mind upon walking in the door was Liberace. Actually, I wondered if the person responsible for decorating this apartment had been possessed by the angry spirit of Liberace whilst indulging in a cocaine binge. There was not one single surface left unscathed by some sort of hideous object that was either golden, jeweled or red velvet and tasseled. Proudly admiring his monument to new money and poor taste, one of the inhabitants of the apartment who was bald on top and had a sad greasy little pony tail the size and shape of an arthritic thumb, explained that he and his partner are "collectors," which is just the term that the wealthy use for "hoarders" of very expensive garbage.

Each room in this palace of kitsch had a name, and I was to know the names and always use them when referring to various locations around the house. There was "the Library," which was really just a living room containing bookshelves filled with every volume of Danielle Steele, every 20th century film reference and various books on art history scattered about to give the suggestion of dignity and pretension. The perimeter of the room was lined with statues and figurines that grew up from the carpeted floor like stalagmites, making it impossible to maneuver in a straight line from one corner to the next. Any of these sculptures that had arms or other useful appendages had been either draped in strings of glass beads or covered in used pieces of masquerade ball costumes. Apparently these men would spend months each year planning and preparing their trips to Carnival in Venice, which was evident in the abundance of sequined masks littering any available space on the bookshelves not already inhabited by a figure of a fairy or a member of Alice's tea party.

There was also "the Garden Room," which was home to a number of potted ferns and dusty silk roses. The walls had been hidden beneath floor-to-ceiling beveled mirrors to accentuate the illusion that the abundance and importance of the home was indeed infinite in the reflections. Like the Library, there were hundreds of gaudy sculptures, many made of acrylic resin, that seemed to multiply themselves in the mirrored chaos. Even the windows had stained glass pieces stuck in front of them. The theme continued in "the Theatre" which was covered entirely in red velvet curtains draped between golden columns on each wall. An enormous blown-glass chandelier, much too large for the room, hung from the ceiling, and also had colored beads and feathers hanging from its massive arms. Three rows of actual theatre seats were crammed into this space, two rows being occupied by over-sized plush animals, and oddly enough, a bronze replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The prized possession of the room was an original movie poster for the Italian release of "Some Like It Hot" with Marilyn Monroe, which had a special spotlight on it to amplify its significance. Among all of the collections of objects stockpiled in this one home, the only unifying facet of all of the rooms, aside from poor taste, was the presence of Marilyn.

From bits and pieces of conversations I had with the gentleman of the house, I was able to piece together reasons behind the necessity for dwelling in a world of fantasy. These two men, now in their sixties, seemed to be running away from some sort of disappointing and inadequate past while grasping on to a world of endlessly fabricated childhood dreams, now made attainable by a large disposable income. This home and these collections of hideous things were a Neverland, of sorts, and these two old men just lots boys caught up in fantasy. They revered their home as a cathedral, and as such, it was one dedicated to Marilyn: patron saint of lost boys. Her presence was like that of the holy virgin, ironically enough, and her elevated status of deity was unmistakable. From every corner of their home, she looked down from collectible plates, magnets, magazine covers, barbie doll effigies, photographs, coffee mugs, letter openers and even cookie jars smiling and offering hope. They even had a collection of ceramic Marilyn heads peeking out from between books in their Library shelves. This home, and all the objects in it, were a pretty hefty bandage meant to heal some type of pain I hope never to know in my own life. Although my time working in this home gave me a slight twitch, it made me grateful that I have not yet found the need to seek comfort in the arms of a dead movie starlet whose likeness can be purchased on the home shopping network in thousands of different forms. It also made me appreciate that, while I currently have nearly nothing to speak of, my living space does not induce visual migraines in myself or others. Like my mother always said, "money don't buy class..."