City Views, Country Dreams

Good evening from New York.

I am determined not to write a blog with what will be tomorrow's date.

By the time many of you may see this posting, it will be tomorrow. A familiar day and month but a new year. Let's think of that ... a new year. Every day presents us with so many fresh possibilities.

So. Today was a glorious September day, clear of sky and ... for the city ... fresh of air.

And a day off for me. After finishing off the required laundry, food gathering and bill paying duties, I set off for various parts of this amazing city.

I returned a not-quite-finished book to the library and picked up another book that I still need to finish. It is called Netherland, and has cricket as a subtext, and features a man from the Netherlands who is living in NYC, in the legendary Chelsea Hotel, post ... that date that I am not going to write about.

Having taken care of that book swap, I hopped a Fifth Ave. bus and rode down the the eastern border of beautiful green Central Park to visit the Museum of Modern Art, indulging in the treat of taking on a membership card. I took the museum escalator up and down, seeing some old fave paintings, but also stopping for a good while to see a very good show of paintings, prints, drawings and sketchbooks by Ernst Kirchner ... The Berlin Street. He had such a way of showing the motion of folks on the streets, mostly at night.

MOMA is to have another big night-featuring show opening soon, Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night. I expect to use my membership card a bunch of times during that show's run.

Then, home for lunch. And then, back downtown to our wonderful local school The Fashion Institute of Technology, that has a gallery space that features fabulous exhibits. The current show is ... Gothic ... dark glamor. What a treat. Mostly black clothes, some very extravagant in their elegance, some very extreme in their intent. Some by major designers ... Galliano, McQueen, Rei Kawakubo, etc., but others by much more cult-y designers. Staged in a dark room with spectacular lighting, including a projected image of a moon that waxed and waned.

Lots of young design students were trying to outwit the security guards, in their attempts to click some photos of the designs on their phones. Not too many students trying to do any sketching today ... maybe that is yesterday's method.

Tomorrow, I will be back to work, starting early with a meeting to review the most recent collection of styles ... the September collection. Then it will be back to the shop for many hours.
Ah, but the long hours tomorrow will end, and then I will have some more days off. Maybe, I will be able to do some old fashioned sketching myself.

Pleasant dreams.