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GONE BUT NOT....



(my current desktop photo; click to enlarge)

I’ll admit. Friday was hard, very hard. Memories of glorious days, overwhelmed by selfish mourning. Ah well. All are safe in Zagreb, the temperature there is in the 50’s and sunny, the giant Christmas tree is still standing tall in the main square, the carousel still exists for Sam to ride (according to Mom, it was one of his first stops), and the city is as beautiful as he remembers it.

The Brits gave them a warm welcome, and wined and dined Sam as though he was royalty (look forward to seeing some pics). And with only a few further disasters (Paul breaks tooth, Paul misses train, luggage madness…) they completed their journey.

Now that they have safely arrived, we can start to see the humor in the whole losing-passports episode. My favorite was our mad attempt to track down the container carrying the desk carrying the passports. Paul called up the shipping company and asked if we could ride down to the port, open up the container, and get the missing passports. The shipping company guy, probably smiling a bit at our naiveté, said to give it a try. So what the hell. We figure there’d be a couple of old guards sitting at the entrance smoking cigarettes and we’d slip them 50 bucks and get our stuff. And anyway, it was practically on the way to the airport. So we’d stop by the Port of New York, pick up the passports, and get to the airport in time for the 11:00 flight.

Well, uh, the Port was big as a city. The ships and the containers about to be loaded onto them were about a mile away from the guardhouses. The guards were polite, but implacable. And not smoking. There was no way in hell they were gonna let folks climb around on the house-sized containers (of which there were probably a thousand) looking for a particular one. No way. We tearfully begged, pleaded, showed all our official papers, looked as non-terrorist as we could.

Looking back, you gotta laugh.

And looking back is just about all I got right now. I’m gonna be doing extra work on Fridays to try and raise Croatia-trip money. We’re hoping to go over in March.

And then of course there’s the big wedding that we have to buckle down and start planning for!

Yesterday Mary and I visited the new MOMA. Sam was fortunate to see it before he left for Croatia. When he fell asleep during that expedition I followed my regular procedures and paid a visit to the video exhibitions: dark rooms for Sam’s sleeping comfort and great art for me to spend time with. MOMA bought the Eve Sussman video, '89 Seconds at Alcazar', that Sam and I liked at the Whitney Biennial last year, and I watched the 12 minute looped-video about 6 times (with pleasure) before Sam woke. I swear he remembered it from last April:

From the April 16th post: …[the video piece] takes on nothing less than Velazquez's Las Meninas. With actors in full costume on a set that reproduces the room in the painting, Sussman imagines the activity…that might have preceded and followed the split-second arrangement of Velazquez's virtual photograph. Well, Sam goes in, walks right up to the screen and, looking at the princess (whose back is to the camera) says, very loudly: "Mama", then a pause, and "BIGGGGGGG." And when the dog came on the screen he announced "Dog" to all the assembled viewers.

At this most recent visit, Sam wakes, climbs out of the carriage, walks right over to the dog and starts petting the screen. And again turns to the assembled viewers and reminds them quite loudly that it is, in fact, a dog on the screen.

So as I introduced Mary to the video yesterday, the room was full of Sam.

But I digress. The plan today was to reminisce, to catch up on some of our adventures that I didn’t have the time to put up on the blog. The photo above is from a visit Sam and I made to the Metropolitan Museum to see a special Andy Goldsworthy exhibit on their roof garden. It was a beautiful September day, and Sam was in a great mood. The Goldsworthy pieces were, as expected, very nice. In this photo you can get a sense of their size and shape; essentially a vertical stack of large stones inside a dome made of pieces of lumber.

They also served ice cream on the roof garden. Lucky Sam.

But what most interested Sam was this rooftop view of a giant crane. To Sam it was Cranky the crane, featured in Thomas the Tank Engine, a favorite of his. To grandpa it was a reminder that good art has you looking at the world with greater care and appreciation, such that the crane, building another high-rise apartment building, nicely reflected the habitation for a pile of stones that Goldsworthy had built. Both happening in the greatest city in the world. Thanks, Sam, for showing me that.