MoMA

       The heavy rain clouds that hung low on the city buttoned up their bottoms sometime during the night.  The lights of Time Square flashed red, gold and blue: “Nuns Rock, The Book of Mormon, Best Musical of the Century. Samsung.  Corona Beer.  Disney.” All flashing, all calling to me. There is nothing in the world like Manhattan and there we were with only one full day to spend. 

      We woke late after a long night.  My husband, mother and I had gone to see Pricilla Queen of the Desert the night before.  It was playing in the old Palace Theater, I think, with its ornate gilded boxes and tiny flip up seats.  Pricilla is the story of three drag queens who buy a bus (Pricilla) and head to the Australian outback to play a gig at a casino run by the ex wife of one of the men and, unbeknownst to the others, to see his son.  I had expected fun…feather boas, platform shoes and Gloria Gaynor; but I had not expected the poignant moments, the sweet reality that the actors gave their characters.  I laughed and boogied, but I wiped more than one tear as well. 

      Before the show we went for dinner at The View restaurant atop the Marriot Marquis Times Square where we watched the sunset light the tall buildings as they slide softly past us, all full of stories. 

When we returned to our room after the show, I drank ginger ale from a Pricilla Queen of the Desert sippie cup and read the bios of every actor we had seen.  It was the final tags of those bios that touched me.  After the list of credits…the Broadway, the Off, the regional, the cruise ships…each actor had a word or two for someone.  Some thanked God.  Some thanked their mothers, their partners, their acting coaches.  Some sent kisses to their babies. One just said, “Oh Wow!”  My favorite. My sentiments exactly.  Just “Oh Wow!”

     Robbie and I decided that we wanted most to go to the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA.  Robbie grew up on Long Island in the 50’s and 60’s.  His father took the train into Manhattan each day to work as an auditor for the state of New York while Robbie rode the bus or thumbed a ride to St. Dominick’s High School in Oyster Bay.  When he could, Robbie would sneak into the city after school, take the subway to Chinatown and buy fireworks that he hid under his letter jacket and sold at jacked up prices to all his friends back in Bethpage.  Chinatown he knew and even a little of Harlem where he had worked summers for the Cohen brothers installing windows in the 6^th floor walk-ups and the well cared for brownstones, but he had never been to MoMA and always wanted to go.

      At first I resisted.  Not a fan of Picasso and Pollack, I wanted to go to the Met and pour for hours over the tiniest of antiquities, reliquaries and tiny ivory crosses, fading icons that still pulse with energy, Hittite household gods…bronze and nearly shapeless like the ones Rachel stole from her father and hid under her skirts as she and Jacob fled after robbing Laban blind.  But when we woke late and I realized that Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ and Monet’s ‘Water Lily” panels hung there, I was ready to go.

     We stopped for lunch at the Stage Deli.  It was recommended to us by a street vendor whose round, dark, dreadlock framed face was full of sparkle as she pointed us toward her favorite eatery.  Our waitress, maybe her name was Velma, was short and solid.  Her old SAS shoes, run over on one side, had clearly schlepped decades of matzo ball soup and pastrami sandwiches.  We gave her the opportunity again.  She talked about her love for New York, how she would never leave it. 

     When she learned we were from California, she asked us about the Michael Jackson doctor’s trial.  “I watched it for seven hours yesterday,” she said.  “Day off, you know.  I think he did something.  I just don’t know what.” 

     “Well,” I said.  “He either did something or should have, I guess.” 

     “Yeah,” she said, pointing a twisted finger at me.  “That’s it.  He should have.”

      After lunch we walked the few blocks to MoMA.  It is a sleek building with fencing covered with signs and drawings from people who visited the museum.  “I told you I’d come, Mom,” one of them read. Others had line drawings of dragons and daisies and short notes of awe and immortality.

I am always surprised, although I don’t know why, at how great works of art affect me.  They make me cry.  Every single time.  Especially Van Gogh. 

     The first time I really remember this was on sabbatical in Zurich. It was there that I saw one of his ‘Sunflowers.’ I just stood in front of that small canvass and cried.  That was when I first discovered that Van Gogh was my favorite, right then on a jet-lagged Thursday in a gray Swiss summer.  The energy nearly knocked me off my feet, like lightening bolts, like stand-your-hair-up-straight sheet lightening. I knew that there was something powerful and transcendent at the heart of the universe when I looked at that picture.  No, I always knew that.  I don’t remember a time before knowing that. When I saw “Sunflowers” I felt it, an internal goose bump of the soul. 

      It was the same with ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Olive Trees’ and Monet’s ‘Agapanthus.’ And so I cried.

     After we made our way through the exhibit, Robbie and I went to the café for tea and a cookie.  In line an older woman turned back to speak to us.  “Did you see the de Kooning exhibit?” she asked as if she could not believe what she had just seen. 

     “No,” I said.  “We’ve been up on the fourth floor.  I wanted to see Monet and van Gogh.”

     “Good,” she said with unexpected force.  “The one I just saw was awful.  I don’t get it.  What was the point?  I liked him in the beginning but boy, later, sheesh!  Don’t go. It was just awful.”

     By this time we were approaching the counter to order.  “Listen,” she said. “I’m a member here.  Stay with me and you’ll get a discount.”  So we sat with her for a bit. 

     “I’m 87 years old,” she said “and I still walk with no cane.”  She winked.  “And I’m spending all my money.  Who cares?  My kids don’t need anything and I’m having the time of my life.” For years she worked as a school psychologist on Long Island. One day she came home and told her husband she had just bought an apartment in Chelsea for $42,000. 

     “Get rid of it,” he said.  But she wouldn’t.  Now she lives there alone.  “It is a wonderful building,” she said.  “It is my family.  I can walk anywhere or take the bus.  I go to concerts at Julliard every week.  I come here and learn things every time. I just love my life.”

     Every part of her was alive, inquisitive, open, and ready.  When I looked at her it was like lightening, stand-your-hair-up sheet lightening. Like Sunflowers, like Starry Night, like tiny reliquaries and simple bronze gods; the woman at MoMA was a force.

     As we walked back to our hotel, I tried to memorize her face.  She was wiry and gray like a city pigeon.  Her skin was mapped and soft.  Her eyes were startling and full of fire.  Maybe they had once been the color of an iris in full bloom.

     “That is what I want,” I thought to myself.  “A well mapped face, full of life, waking each day thirsty for more.  That is what I want, to walk without a cane, to say de Kooning stinks, to eat a mushroom tart and tell strangers my stories.  That is what I want: to be just such a work of art.”