around the world in 90 minutes

One of our favorite places to enjoy is the Metropolitan Museum in New York. We always take an annual membership because we go, particularly in the winter, at least once per month, to see different new exhibits or walk familiar ones. We go on a Saturday in the late afternoon, 5 p.m. and walk for an hour or two, then go for dinner because on Saturdays the Museum is open until 8:00 p.m. It is wonderful to watch the people from all over the world, to enjoy the live music played in the gallery above the main entrance, and sometimes to stop for a drink (for me just a sparkling water) and enjoy the atmosphere. Our first date was spent at the Museum and it holds a special place for us, it is like traveling through five different countries and cultures in an hour (a typical American experience).

So today I was reading another articles in the New York Times about how the pace of life has gotten so busy that when going to a museum such as the Louvre, people no longer stop and really contemplate the art, they just move through it and past it.

here is link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/design/03abroad.html?hp

I recall when I was younger, working for the Associated Press in New York which had this rather quaint custom of holidays and personal days which included your birthday. Clearly, it would be a rarity that a friend would be able to share that day with me, so I would often spend it at the Frick Museum, an incredible Fifth Avenue mansion, which an indoor pond and fountains, walking through the museum and having the time to really enjoy it, to contemplate the art, the decor and design of the house, and to sit and think of nothing by the pond, or sit and write.

So here I am more than 20 years later trying to rediscover that, not working in an office every day for the first time, working for myself, and trying to unwrap my mind from logical, linear thought.