Sunday was PS1 and Astoria, Queens.
Before heading out, just before noon, I called a friend (this person will remain anonymous) to see if I could swing by for her MoMA member card. She answered the phone with a voice in pain and self-pity, "Hello?" she growled in greeting. It was a brief conversation with many giggles on my part and much whimpering on hers. Thankfully, she was able to make it to her door with the Van Gogh decored card in hand. She showed me the bruise on her forehead, I giggled some more and bid her well as she frowned at the hot and clear day she was missing.
I must admit, abashedly, I'd never been to PS1 and hadn't realized how just off the Pulaski Bridge it is, how just over Newton's Creek she lay. All I had to do was roll down Vanderbilt, make a right on Flushing, race up Kent, merge with Franklin, make a right on Eagle (which I missed and had to detour), fly over the bridge, merge right on Jackson, and bickety-bam! I'm there. Locked my Mercier to a pole with my brand new Kryptonite triple reinforced U-lock ... long story but couldn't go without mention. No one likes to drop 100 bucks on a lock because theirs suddenly malfunctions ... nuf said.
I saw her arriving before she stepped through the door, was unsure for a second, had imagined a different height, but yes, that tantalizing mouth, it was certainly the woman I came here to meet. Erica was wearing a dress of earth tone yellows greens and browns. Her smile mischievous. Her laugh not always appropriate but contagious.
We'd made it to the second floor, via some uninspiring installation, with a Mondrian grid she noted, before we discovered the most random of connections: Hagerstown, MD. Her hometown rang a bell I couldn't immediately identify. Ah, yes. Our processing center! The international humanitarian agency that I work for has its donations' processing center in Hagerstown, of all places. And, apparently, people are from there. And it's Amish country. And no, Erica is not Amish, I'm assuming. All this discovery against the backdrop of Rania Stephan's film posters of busty Lebanese women. Post an artso-political Lego people evoking Adam and Eve computer sex talk in English as a shaky second tongue, by Frances Stark.
We were most notably moved by Edgardo Aragon's Efectos de Familia. Part of the video sequence made me recall Le Tigre's Bang Bang and sent shivers through my body. Going upstairs we got some Better Energy from Esther Klas with an uplift in mood upon contemplating her curious concrete sculptures and comical plaster casts.
Leaving the museum whose staircases are decorated by silhouette nightmares and thought evoking images of exodus, heading up 23rd St. under the 7 tracks, we got to talking shop. What is Raw Fiction? What is the ballroom scene at the Hetrick-Martin Institute? What does it mean to work for a well-established and well-funded organization - the limitations and the freedoms? As we moved into Astoria our conversation moved toward the changing of neighborhoods, hipstuppies and yupsters, their trendy restaurants and the neighborhood nightclubs where the ethnic Europeans dance together.
A fellow writer, traveler, French speaker, youth advocate, over-tipper (yes, she's served tables, too), actress who can carry a tune, to be a reader at the launch. Wonderful, couldn't have asked for a better introduction to a like-mind. So nice meeting!
Oh yeah, and I saved a baby too. Sunday morning. Near the Grand Army Plaza fountain. Her dad just turned his back and walked a few steps away waiting for the dog to do his business in the ivy grass and the stroller started rolling down the incline toward the steps. The child, maybe two, maybe not quite two, made no sound but donned her hat to me when I planted my foot against the stroller wheel and stood patiently in front of her waiting, longer than you'd expect a dad to have his back turned to his baby in a stroller. His response when I stated my reason "It was rolling" bluntly to his surprised face: Oh thank God her mother didn't see! And we nodded a smirking goodbye as I sat to watch the fountain and get some sun medicine, wake up and inhale calm.
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