Well, I’m back in New York now. Been pretty busy.
Let’s see, I flew out of LAX on the 10th. As I was making my way toward the metal detectors and X-ray machines, the hallway divided in a somewhat confusing fashion. As the crowd kept going straight, the young woman in front of me turned and asked, “Were we supposed to go that way?” I laughed and said, “I was just following you.” It turned out we were on the same flight to Chicago, so we hung out by the gate and chatted. After deplaning, we met up again and grabbed some food. My flight was delayed and delayed, so we hung out talking for hours and learned significant chunks of each other’s life stories, which made the time pass much more pleasantly. She was on her way home to upstate New York after having spent a semester abroad in Australia, and, amusingly, she had the same name as a bestselling fantasy author. (No, not “Lois McMaster Bujold.”)
Then my cousin Brian and his fiancee Kelly visited for a few days. We went to the Katonah Museum of Art, which had an amazing exhibit called Over + Over: Passion for Process, consisting of art executed with an almost obsessive-compulsive level of detail or repetition, such as using a scalpel to cut away every part of a map of Austria while leaving all of the hundreds of roads intact. The KMoA is pretty small and out-of-the-way, and when we showed up the docent seemed shocked and ecstatic to have five people on a tour. We also went and saw a special screening of Brokeback Mountain that included a Q&A with the director, Ang Lee. The movie was outstanding. Ang Lee got a long standing ovation when he walked out on stage. His comments were inspiring, and also fascinating, particularly his discussion of portraying the strongly verbal culture of Sense & Sensibility versus the largely non-verbal culture of Brokeback Mountain. The audience included many members of the LGBT community, including the president of the Gay Rodeo Cowboys Association, and they expressed heartfelt gratitude that the film told their story with honesty and respect.
Then this weekend I went to a couple lunches and parties in Mahattan, and said hi to some of my NY friends, which was fun. It’s good seeing everyone again.