Sleepyhead

It's so hard to go to sleep on Sunday night, because when you wake up you have the worry and fret of Monday morning to face. To forestall bedtime, here are some notes on New York this weekend:

Today I took the m4 bus down to 5th Avenue to go to El Museo del Barrio to see their Retratos Exhibit of Latin American portraiture from Pre-Columbian times to modern interactive art. Its nice, if somewhat disporienting because you run through 3 millenia in six or seven galleries. Am I counting correctly here? There were Peruvian masks going back to the year 600 AD, colonial, post-colonial, and modern paintings, so that would be the second millenium, and finally some very contemporary pieces that were post 2000, so yes that makes 3. It's hard to feel like you understand the artistic traditions that hold these artists together. Still, its a nice show because there are some very striking paintings, with one of the famous Sor Juana in Mexico, and with two by Diego Rivera, one by Frida Kahlo and some of their contemporaries.

Then I went to Fairway on 12th Avenue, which was definitely survival of the fittest, kill or be killed. People get very violent when they are trying to squeeze a cart through tight spaces.

Today was cold, but I've noticed the last few days that New York has a sort of late winter beauty. The days are longer so there is late afternoon light when we leave work, broad expanses of white where there is snow on the ground, and the bare trees against the sky make New York pretty in a melancholy sort of way.