I'm sorry, it's been quite a while.
I'm on a bus on my way back to to New York from D.C., where I went one final time to say goodbye to Tom and Sina. It's overcast, rainy in a spitty sort of way, the trees are starkly bare and the grass muddy brown. This second I'm driving past an airport, one of those small ones populated by stationary Cessnas. My all-knowing iTunes is playing the perfect combination of wanderlust songs, melancholy and beautiful like the grey, grey sky, and I'm content, albeit sad that I've visited D.C. for the last time. What a wonderful city.
Slowly, increasingly, I'm growing used to acting, being, doing on my own, and slowly, increasingly, I'm coming to love that feeling of utter self-sufficiency. I knew I could, and I can. That's pretty wonderful too. I love traveling alone. Being a stranger in a crowd of strangers, not speaking to anyone for days, besides asking for directions, maybe, or ordering a coffee and a sandwich. Solitude in transit is like being divorced from reality, a box within a box, a divorce is bookended by my real life. I will miss this.
So, New York. Firstly, I love it. It's big, and crowded, and it buzzes. Looking up at the skyscrapers hurts my neck and makes me dizzy. It's also cold. When my plane swooped in on Tuesday evening, I could see the snow from the weekend still on the ground. Luckily I have M's coat, which is long and toasty warm.
Unfortunately, the weather's been a bit rotten, overcast and rainy, so I decided to use the opportunity to visit art museums, and to save things like the High Line and the Empire State Building for the weekend. On Wednesday, I went to MoMA. Oh heavens. Why is all the art in the U.S.? Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Pollock, Rothko. Oh my soul and my eyes. Sometimes all you can do is sit in the middle of the room and stare for a very long time.
After MoMA, in spite of my aching feet and my overstuffed head, I walked up 5th Avenue, past Central Park, to the Guggenheim. What a wildly weird building. It has 5 floors, and you move between them on a spiral walkway that goes up and up. Walking on it is a surreal experience; in your peripheral vision you can see other people walking up ahead of you or behind you at the same time and it feels as though you're not moving, just the building is, rotating very slowly. (I wasn't terribly impressed by the exhibition, but there were a few good modern pieces, some more Van Gogh and Picasso and Cezanne and Seurat and Renoir.)
More updates to follow. Much love.
xx