Mysteries and Memories

New York.  You never know what will happen.  Every street is at once a mystery and a memory.  You must hold the two equally without comparing.  Everything changes, everything is the same. The challenge and the thrill is keeping the senses alive.  They will dull, they will dull, but we have it in us. . . every thing changes, every thing's the same.

Q met me at the hotel.  It has been a year.  He is married now.  Everything. . . .  Croque Madames and beers at Delirium Tremens, a decent enough place.  Then MoMA for the much maligned Cartier-Bresson exhibit which is impossible to go through easily even on a Wednesday afternoon, every picture a crowd.  A man tells a woman in all seriousness, "This picture would not have existed a moment before or a moment after the click of this shutter. . . . "  She nods in profound agreement.  Why is he making such an obvious statement?  He read it in a book, perhaps, or an article on photography.  The couple is handsome and sophisticated.  I look at the photo again thinking they give Bresson credit for all the wrong things.  He started something else.  Some photos look like early Arbus, like Robert Frank.

Two floors below we see the Pictures by Women: The History of Modern Photography exhibit.  It seems an arbitrary collection better called The History of Photographic Printing and Technology.  It is not as crowded as the Bresson.  Both are good to see.

I love museum crowds.  They are the best for me, so visual.  Funny, huh?

Late, we head south to Cynthia Altoriso's studio.  She is gracious, pours Pernod all around.  We chat until we must leave for dinner.  It is the dressing hour, but Q and I are still in shorts and t-shirts, greasy from the day, meeting his wife and her friends at a chi-chi hotel near Union Square.  They are upstairs at a reception for Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.  We cannot go up, so they come down. . . way down.  We go to a local bar, the Black and White, further south.  I am tired then.  I am only a subway ride from "home."