Find Your Oasis

The past few weeks have been a rough go for a number of reasons. Issues at work. Issues at home. My issues have issues. Someone a lot smarter than me said that the universe was biting at my ankles. Boy, that’s the truth! The last thing I needed was the Friday night crush at Penn Station, so after work I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find some peace of mind.

If I’m in the right mood (a state of extreme agitation or vulnerability) a trip to an art museum can really knock me on my ass. Edward Hopper is the undisputed master of sunlight and human isolation. And that goddamn van Gogh still, after all these years of overexposure, gets to me every time. It was a pretty evening so I went up to the roof to look at the fun Jeff Koons balloon sculptures. I bought an ice cold bottle of Corona for dinner ($7) and looked over Central Park and 5th Avenue. It was also the first time I saw Damien Hirst’s 10 foot great white shark floating in a tank of blue formaldehyde. I wonder what they paid for it?

The Impressionist galleries are always crowded, as are the modern galleries, but The Met is like a bee hive and you can always find some little nook if you need to be alone to think. I walked into a small, dark, quiet room and was surrounded by these beautiful back lit medieval stained glass windows that are on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was a nice moment and then some stupid woman with her ape boyfriend in tow walked in, looked around and loudly announced, “There’s nothing in this room!” They turned around and walked out. How could she not see? It could have been worse. She could have stayed.

My beer dinner wore off so I had a gyro at Gyro II across from Penn Station. Always a culinary delight. Smell me.