Happy New Year Chalice...

There's light snow falling and some people already partying in the New Year. 2010? It seems like just yesterday we were bringing in the Millennium, now we're already bringing in the second decade of the Millennium and probably tomorrow we'll be bringing in the year 3000 but we first have to get by Dec. 21, 2012, the infamous end of the Mayan calendar and supposed end of the world, two years and counting so as my first resolution it is my determination to live the next 720 days of my life with an abandon of realizing you only have so much time left. There's something to having a deadline on life. I thought about that as I ate an onion and olive slice at Delizio's on 2nd Avenue. Yes, that is what I said onion and olive, I have never eaten an onion and olive slice, I've stood by pepperoni through out my life, but change, that's how I roll with 720 days left. By the way, it's delicious, onion and olive, who would have thought? As I stepped out noticing that the Second Avenue subway construction has moved south and now is annoying people and storefronts from 89th to 85th. It leaves you wondering when the great construction project will hit midtown but then again why worry we only have 720 days and in that time this subway won't be close to midtown. My second resolution is very simple, just enjoy, there are many things that create an intellect to not enjoy or rather be damned pissed off about almost everything but those are worthless actions. I'm walking home, I'm going to fill my chalice with champagne and drink the whole thing in one gulp and then there is only 719 days left...

Louis Nevelson Revelry...

There are many great sculptures on display on the Upper East Side. They sort of jump out in front of you when you aren't looking. There's the Venus and Manhattan between 76th Street and 77th Street on Madison Avenue, it floats above and is a graceful depiction of half nude god and goddess. I could look at that for a long time. There's The Castle created by Priscilla Kapel on 79th Street and Fifth Avenue, the Unidentified Object by Noguchi on 80th and Fifth Avenue, there's my all time favorite Peter Pan in Carl Schurz Park but the sculpture that makes my day and purposely walk by when I can is, Presence IV by Louise Nevelson. It stands in the middle of the mall on Park Avenue. It's twenty feet and some change high, its lines and curves change and undulate creating a different image at every point from where you view it. From one angle it's a bird's head, another a door complete with gigantic door knobs, an ocean scene, a curvy woman and a linear man, a throne, a castle, a very modern totem pole. It is like all great sculptures, something to meditate on, to not judge but let it present itself to the viewer and change what you are seeing by just moving around it. On this brisk, cold day it makes me forget the chill. It's diabolical, it's calm, it stands guard silently as traffic running north and sound pass it by without a second look but I'm sure it has caused an accident or two from some more attentive drivers. Sitting under it makes you feel safe. When Louise presented the sculpture she said, "New York represents the whole of my conscious life and I thought it fitting that I should give it something of myself." I walk on remembering this epitaph and this encounter and wonder when my next one will be....

Drugstore Cure-All...

The media...It's quite obvious the media is not only the message it is Satan incarnate. It does no good, it is a riotous virus that infects and destroys and everybody who works in it is a criminal.
Hold on a minute, I guess I work in the media....And with this self loathing I decided to do my favorite thing to get my mind off of things I would rather not think about like Tiger Woods'
transgressions, the health care debacle, the lack of job growth, the build up of troops in Afghanistan, the Audi car ad that suggests just by turning on the headlights of an Audi it is more spectacular than a whole neighborhood of Christmas lighting jocularity or EBay's ad with the really catchy catch phrase, Come To Think Of It, the absurdity of Micheal Bloomberg saying he has a mandate after he captured 51% of a measly turnout against a guy who I already don't remember his name. Yeah, the media is the message alright it is the meandering, retching mind disorienting jetsam that is making it hard to have a good time in this day and age and I'm a part of this charade; so I decided to take a walk to my great personal diversion, going to the drug store of my choice and meandering down aisles looking for sales and taking in the scents and scenery of goods that not by any coincidence is a place that a lot of women go to supplement their supplies. Yes, Duane Reade, the pharmacy of my choosing on this day, is a great place to cruise the babes. Anyway, as I filled my basket with shampoo, razors and saline solution and lined up to pay for my fodder, a woman, seemingly homeless from the rarefied smell that she spread and her duct taped slippers scuffled in directly to the register in front of the five of us that waited in line. There was no protest from the line just a yawning of curiosity as the woman demanded an exchange of a penny she was holding. "I want another one!" she demanded. The cashier took it in stride, motioned to her to hold a minute while she rang up another shoppers goods. "I want another penny, not this one." The cashier took the credit card of the paying customer opened the register and with a courteous smile took out a penny and exchanged it with the one the woman held. She scuffled out examining the copper coin. The cashier feeling all eyes on her , smiled and when the woman had left the store said, "She comes in everyday to exchange a penny." And then shrugged . We all looked at each other and group shrugged. As for me all thoughts of media wickedness were gone. My drugstore cure-all had done it again...

Thanksgiving...

On the Upper East Side there are many ways to enjoy Thanksgiving one being that you don't live on the Upper West Side with huge crowds and even bigger balloons being blown up and then floating down Central Park West. Maybe most people think that isn't such a bad thing, it's an exciting tradition but it's a nightmare of gigantic balloon proportions. Don't get me wrong I've gone over to view the balloons being blowing up with my flask of Irish whiskey and I've gone to the parade and enjoyed the whole gigantic cartoon character floating down the Avenue thing. But none the less, I'd rather live on the Upper East Side on this my favorite of holidays because of the sense of calm that goes along with it. Instead of dodging crowd control nightmares and out-of-towners that seem to think they are entitled, instead on the Upper East Side, you can go for a jog along the East River or a walk down any Avenue or you can go to one of the great markets and enjoy the aromas of the feast that is about to take place whether it be Agatha Valentina, Dean & Deluca, Butterfield Market, Grace's Market Place, Citarella, The Vinegar Factory to name a few. It's a miraculous thing, no angst, no high emotions, they're both watered down by that chemical in turkeys that I can't remember the name of but I know it sedates you into a mind numbing sleep or nap that transcends all other sleep. My mouth is watering thinking about the alchemical mixture of turkey, mash potatoes and gravy, yams, stuffing, gravy, cranberries galore, pies, pies and more pies with the ala-mode attached. Not to forget the egg nog, wine, beer and any other libations that tickles your fancy. Oh, what a beautiful thing it is, oh, how I sit in anxious anticipation, oh I'm already full of what the feast will present. Enjoy Thanksgiving, it's a gobble-gobble moment that we are given every year. Thanksgiving...

O'Keeffe's Abstract Relief...

I have a love\ hate relationship with Georgia O'Keeffe, I love her feminist realization, I love that she was married to one of the greatest photographers of the modern age, I love that she went to the Southwest and owned it with her imagery. My hate problem with her is that some of her paintings can be loosely described as having as much interest to me as a chick-flick, in fact, they may be the still version of a chick-flick with their vaginal and labiatic verve. But when I read that The Whitney Museum was having a show of O'Keeffe's abstract work, well I asked myself, O'Keeffe did abstraction? So I went to the show, wondering if it further my love or my hate relationship with Ms. O'Keeffe. When I got to the show it was quite obvious Georgia did abstract, in fact she did it before every one else did it. In 1914 at the grand old age of 17, she created extraordinary abstract imagery with charcoal and paper. It was so far out there I'm sure some of the art crowd at the time must have thought Georgia had come from anther planet. There are over 100 paintings, drawings, sculptures that each delight with their self sufficient individualism. After her early abstractions she discovered her imagery that included flowers, landscapes, object and still life's but in the 1940's she returned to abstract and that's when the sexually suggestive abstractions were first assigned in her tableau. The show is like a slow wave that covers you in warm ablutions. And to put a cherry on the cake there are photographs by Alfred Stieglitz of Georgia throughout her life. She lived to the grand old age of 99. I left the museum feeling grateful for what Georgia had given us all in the last century. She was a great relief even in the abstract...

All Is Gold...

The goblins of the world wide web or the bogey man of blogger played a trick on me by making my last week's blog disappear into the ether of 'where did it go?'. I thought I had posted a little ditty about Halloween but when I tuned in this week it wasn't there, lost in the deep dark hole of cyberspace. I kind of think of it as a kind of Hades with the River Styx flowing through it and the river is a flowing garble and babble of words floating into a fiery lake. Oh well enough of my cyber-mythology, fall is here on the Upper East Side, gold, orange, yellow, brown all in autumnal bliss with smells that hearken deep seeded memories from past lives. One of my own is of playing high school football, the smells bring me back to the gridiron where aches and pains still vibrate in my body from all sorts of violent collisions, hamstring pulls, sprained ankles and concussions. Ah those were the days. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, fall on the Upper East Side and what a fall this has been, lingering on with a mellow inspiration and visual deciduous fireworks and with the Yankees winning the World Series it makes things glow even brighter. Walking down Fifth Avenue the psychedelic Central Park streams in my periphery. I sip on my green tea and take in the rapid fire international voices that flow from the lips of the tourists that are visiting all the cultural heavy weights that hold down the Avenue. A waft of sunny wind blows golden leaves down the sidewalk, making it look like a golden byway, gleaming and seeming to levitate all the pedestrians in its way. It is fall on the Upper East Side and all is gold...

Kandinsky Inspires The Guggenheim...

As part of it's 50th Anniversary the Guggenheim has a retrospective of Vasily Kandinsky the painter who inspired the building and has been a favorite of the Guggenheim family since the beginning, Solomon was inspired by Hilla Rebay to purchase large swaths of the painters aesthetic creations that he made famous by writing the creative treatise, On The Spiritual In Art, a must read for those that never understood, will never understand and don't want to understand abstract art. The show is voluminous, so voluminous that I'm surprised the building hasn't floated away. One hundred paintings and sixty drawings line the spiral of the museum in an overpowering transfusion of mind addling images that left me sucking air from my dizziness after looking at them all. But I digress. First thing is the always questionable way of setting up a retrospective at the Guggenheim, it starts at the bottom and you climb up the spiral to the last days of the master but I don't roll like that, I roll down hill so I headed up the elevator to watch Kandinsky devolve from his airy images of spiraling and musical motifs to his youthful landscapes that fill the canvases to the brim. I actually feel that Kandinsky got better as he got younger. This is not to denigrate any of Kandinsky's work, I like it, I really like it, it's just that I feel that looking at one Kandinsky gives me as much inspiration as looking one hundred sixty, in fact, looking at one hundred sixty Kandinsky's was like eating two or three meals in one sitting, it made my head light and my body heavy and my spirit, the real thing that Kandinsky was trying to reach, well I guess it was nourished...