Sweat, sweat, and more sweat: the biggest mistake of the day was to get the hot broth to go, instead of the ice-cold Cocoa Joe, at Springbone. Yes, they sell broth to go in Manhattan! Think coffee runs a turmeric coconut milk latte. And the warm food at WF can liberally swim in olive oil. If you add enough of it. I recently finished reading North, Scott Jurek’s second book, about his successful attempt at FKT on the Appalachian Trail, back in 2015. Apparently, I eat like an ultrarunner. I’m not vegan, quite the opposite, but feeding Luca often has me crave avocado grilled sandwiches, smothered in coconut oil, Jenny Jurek style.
We spent almost 3 weeks in NYC, this time in Manhattan. We came here for work: I attended a week long workshop at NYU. Seven philosophers met 5 hours / day for a week to talk about Mary Shepherd’s writings. She is a reputable philosopher of the late modern era. She was active at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but her philosophical ideas place her in the same tradition as Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid. She isn’t well known today. In her day, one of her books was used as a textbook for teaching Philosophy to undergraduates at Cambridge! Her writings have been gaining a lot of friends. There are many interesting things in there, from synchronous causation to external objects being defined in relation to us and our actions.
While I was tucked away in one of NYU’s seminar rooms, Alex and Luca went to the MET. Several times. Luca enjoyed the Egyptian wing the most: that’s where she was falling asleep. She also loved the roasted carrots they were offering in the cafeteria at lunchtime. One day, after I rejoined them on their outings, she ate all the carrots on my plate, all the carrots on Alex’s plate, and then some! The MET was quite crowded: everyone was using it as a refuge from the sweltering heat outside. They also had a show on: Heavenly Bodies, haute-couture inspired by the Catholic imagination. I didn’t get what the fuss was about: it was a bizarre idea, to say the least. Mannequins wearing black dresses, which are supposed to look like nuns’ habits. The best thing about it was the music. And I have to give it to the curator: placing all the dresses among artifacts from the Middle Ages was a good thing. Still, the mannequins looked out of place, with their blank stares, and dubious whiteness.
The show at the MET Breuer, Like Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body, was a lot more interesting, not least because it made a point of showing how racist European “high” sculpture has been, with all its pretensions of purity and whiteness instilled in the marble used to carve the beauties. Surprises abound: one can see philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s mummy, which is usually on display in London, at UCL. Bentham left it in his will that his body should be used for the creation of this ”auto-icon”, as he called it. Alex and I certainly appreciated its soft, comfy shoes.
We went to Chelsea on a rainy day. Many galleries were closed, but we managed to see two of Nam Jun Paik’s sculptural creations, which I thought to be the best I’ve ever seen. The fondest memory I have from this visit to Chelsea is the lunch we had in an Italian cafe: awesome bread, good coffee, and a birthday doughnut for my partner, made from a panettone base!
All in all, this was a very different experience from the one we had in NYC two years ago! It made a huge difference that we lived in Manhattan, not in Queens, even though we missed all the Greek grilled fish this time around! Even the MET grew on me a little. I’m still an Angelenx at heart, but NY is gaining a place there, too!