[Feb 2025] En Plein Air

On leaving the house after three months, misunderstanding the Guggenheim calendar, walking too far in the wrong shoes, encountering a suspiciously low-budget Trump, and ending the day exactly where I started: at work.

There are Sundays that arrive as rest, and Sundays that arrive as evidence that one has not completely surrendered to routine.

This one was the second kind.

For weeks, I had been moving through life in a state best described as functional but not especially aerodynamic. Work happened. Meals happened. Sleep happened. Occasionally something irritating happened just often enough to prevent the whole arrangement from becoming peaceful.

Harmony and dissonance, except without the orchestra.

Then, finally, a Sunday appeared with no immediate claim on me.

I decided to go to Manhattan.

This was notable mostly because I had not been in roughly three months.

There had been a time when I could finish work on a weekday and still have enough remaining life force to go into the city afterward. I now regarded this former version of myself as one might regard an Olympic gymnast: technically related to me, but difficult to believe.

Once you stop going out, leaving the house becomes strangely ceremonial.

You begin negotiating.

Do I really need to go?

Could I go next week?

Is the weather ideal?

Do I possess the correct shoes?

Would it not be more efficient to remain horizontal?

Eventually, I ignored the committee and went.

The weather was bright enough to make Manhattan briefly look less like infrastructure and more like an intentional aesthetic decision.

I bought whatever new Starbucks drink was being promoted, although Pink Drink remains the superior product, and walked toward Central Park.

There were runners everywhere.

New York is very good at making other people’s discipline visible.

I watched them pass and immediately concluded that I should start running again.

This naturally led to several more urgent conclusions:

I would need new running shoes.

Possibly running clothes.

A knee brace could be prudent.

One should never begin a healthy habit without first purchasing adequate equipment.

This is how exercise becomes shopping.

Still, simply walking outside felt excellent.

I had forgotten how much a sunny day could do with almost no effort from me.

The only problem was that my shoes hurt.

Which, if anything, strengthened the case for new running shoes.

My destination was the Guggenheim.

I had gone there under the impression that there was a Mondrian exhibition.

There was not.

The Mondrian show, it turned out, did not begin until late March.

I had arrived about a month early.

Some people consult museum calendars before travelling across Manhattan.

Others prefer surprise.

I entered anyway.

This is one advantage of being wrong at a museum: there is usually still art inside.

The Guggenheim is also particularly forgiving because the building itself makes wandering feel purposeful. You begin at one point, follow the curve, and eventually discover that you have participated in architecture.

A few works immediately became more interesting to me because the wall text insisted that they were.

This is one of art’s more impressive powers.

A pile of discarded material can remain a pile of discarded material almost everywhere on Earth. Place each component deliberately, give the work a title involving something like self-construction, put it inside the Guggenheim, and suddenly I am standing six feet away with my hands behind my back.

Ah.

Construction.

Identity.

Materiality.

Yes.

Of course.

I looked at Gauguin.

I read a description using language considerably more articulate than what I felt the brushwork appeared to be doing.

The wall text called things expressive.

My internal response was closer to: He kind of smudged that.

Art criticism and I continue to develop our relationship.

There was also a work involving purple and happiness, which initially struck me as questionable.

Then I remembered that I am happiest while lying down with my head on a pillow and decided I was in no position to police other people’s emotional symbolism.

Another display taught me something about the Eiffel Tower and transmission.

Another contained handwriting that I privately judged inferior to my own.

This is what museums are for: encountering the great achievements of civilization and identifying several areas where one could personally have contributed.

At some point, after seeing a work about communication, my brain returned to logistics.

Naturally.

Let’s check today’s unshipped orders by warehouse.

Even inside the Guggenheim, the supply chain finds you.

There was also a performance involving ASL and acting—something along the lines of a first impression of the museum.

I sat down to watch.

It was much more entertaining than expected.

Better than a substantial percentage of short-form video on the internet, and with considerably less shouting.

After enough time moving up the spiral, I looked down and realized how far I had walked.

Guggenheim complete.

Guggen-bye.

Since I was already in Manhattan, I decided to visit Rough Trade.

This was approximately an hour away on foot.

Apparently the day had become a walking marathon.

I love music and listen across genres, so a record shop should theoretically be an ideal environment for me.

But record stores require a certain kind of literacy.

You have to dig.

You need opinions about pressings.

You should probably recognize labels.

You should experience excitement when confronted with several thousand rectangles organized in bins.

I am not there yet.

I mostly like pressing play.

Still, before reaching the store, Manhattan provided an unscheduled attraction.

From a distance, I saw someone who looked remarkably like Donald Trump.

For a second I was genuinely startled.

He was tall, broad, surrounded by people, gesturing with the kind of oversized movements that remain visible across a street.

Then the situation deteriorated.

The man began scratching at his face.

Aggressively.

And then appeared to start removing it.

Not metaphorically.

The face.

This was just some random street actor’s successful disguise as Donald Trump!

Ode to modern makeup skills.

I had been briefly alarmed by a man wearing what seemed to be some form of mask or impersonator getup.

Manhattan will do this.

You leave the house looking for contemporary art and accidentally encounter budget political theatre.

The experience depleted me enough that I went into Trump Tower for dinner.

Not for ideological reasons.

For pasta.

I ordered iced tea and tomato spaghetti.

The price was ok & the food tasted good!

The interior was exactly the sort of interior one expects from a place where nobody has ever asked, “Should we perhaps make this less shiny?”

I ate.

Recovered.

Continued downtown.

Rough Trade was interesting, though perhaps more interesting in theory than in practice for me.

There were records everywhere, naturally.

People browsed with purpose.

I browsed with the vague hope that an album might announce itself.

It did not.

At the Guggenheim, I had noticed Bose speakers.

Here, Marshall.

I became briefly preoccupied with why.

Acoustics?

Brand identity?

Aesthetic compatibility?

Different institutional procurement departments?

This is what happens when you spend too much time working around operations: even leisure becomes a sourcing exercise.

Still, I liked being there.

There is pleasure in entering a place built entirely around enthusiasm, even when you have not yet learned the rituals.

Some people can spend hours digging through records.

I can spend hours listening to music.

We are related species.

By then, however, my feet had filed a formal complaint.

The shoes had won.

I headed home.

Or rather, toward the end of the day.

There was something almost embarrassingly satisfying about the whole outing.

Nothing extraordinary had happened.

I had not made a profound discovery.

I had not transformed physically, spiritually, or professionally.

I had gone outside.

Walked through Central Park.

Visited the wrong exhibition.

Looked at art I understood badly.

Walked another hour because apparently public transportation had become morally objectionable.

Mistook an impersonator for president Trump.

Ate spaghetti.

Looked at records.

Went home tired.

And it had been great.

That was the annoying part.

Sometimes I imagine that leisure needs to justify itself.

There should be a destination.

An event.

A reservation.

A sufficiently interesting reason to leave the house.

Otherwise, perhaps staying home would be more efficient.

But efficiency is an unusually dull way to measure a Sunday.

The entire point of going out had been that things could interrupt me.

A painting I did not understand.

A performance I had not expected.

A strange person on the street.

A record store I was not particularly good at enjoying.

Sunlight between buildings.

People running through Central Park making me feel guilty about my cardiovascular health.

None of it could have happened while I sat at home waiting to feel motivated.

This is perhaps the inconvenient truth about being a homebody:

The outside world rarely comes upstairs to retrieve you.

You have to put on shoes.

Preferably better ones.

The day ended at the office.

This was somehow appropriate.

After spending hours inside the Guggenheim, I returned to a workplace whose curved interior reminded me vaguely of it.

Culture in the afternoon.

Unshipped orders by evening.

Harmony.

Dissonance.

Corporate architecture.

I had spent the day en plein air, or as close as Manhattan allows: outdoors between large climate-controlled buildings.

Then I sat down in front of another screen.

At least this time I had earned the right to complain about it.On leaving the house after three months, misunderstanding the Guggenheim calendar, walking too far in the wrong shoes, encountering a suspiciously low-budget Trump, and ending the day exactly where I started: at work.