Monday, March 6, 2017
Keep Talking: #98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.
Keep Talking: #98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.: Today, I had lunch with a good friend who has been working at the Met Museum for almost 30 years. It may even be more than 30 years, but it ...
#98 A Cat Never Loses Anything.
Today, I had lunch with a good friend who has been working at the Met Museum for almost 30 years. It may even be more than 30 years, but it doesn't matter because she will be there forever and time doesn't matter in a place like the Met. Two or three times a year I meet her for lunch at the museum. This has been going on for as long as she has been there so I don't know what we looked like when we started but we have been through a lot over the years, which doesn't matter because when we are together we are sentimental. Sentimentality freezes time and it makes no difference if we are 26 or 65. We meet, where we always meet, in the Great Hall by the information desk. She flashes her badge and gets me a pin or what is now a sticker so I can enter the north wing. We sashay past the guards who all seem to know her as she waves her arms about and rolls her eyes as we walk through the renovated Egyptian wing. "Oh Elizabeth", she laughs and sighs like she owns it all, "this place is so, well.."
We head downstairs to the staff cafeteria. It isn't open to museum guests and there are hundreds of rushing people waiting on line for sandwiches to be made with a side of chips, or impatiently holding a cup under the soda dispenser. I know my way around the cafeteria and we wait on line while the cashier weighs my salad.
Today she told me about her group looking at Egon Schiele drawings. Unframed, naked and actually touched by him. I imagine her and a group of young colleagues passing the drawings around in a circle and smoking cigarettes.
"It's moment like that which makes this job so....well, worth it." She says this while waving her hand over her sandwich. "That man over there sipping his coffee curated the Hartley show. Hartley has always been one of the top three on my list." She shakes her head to get the curls out of her eyes and pierces her lettuce with a plastic fork.
" While we were looking at the Schiele drawings I said to them, 'okay now lets be quiet and think about what it is we are actually doing right now.'"
I imagine them blowing the last bit of smoke out of their mouths while their heads tilt up gazing sideways at her. They all admire her and appreciate the fact that she wants them to savor the moment of miraculousness of being able to touch this art.
She's right, of course.
She is always right when she talks about this.
I want to look at the drawings, too. I am looking at them in my mind. I am looking at her and her colleagues while the sun is streaming through the office window reflecting and penetrating the cigarette smoke which has just been exhaled and when it dissipates there is nothing else to look at but the Schiele nudes with crooked sexy dark lines and a bright red line between the bushy hair between a skeletal woman's legs.
Here we are year after year eating sandwiches and salads surrounded by employees of varying stature. Some are wearing guard uniforms. Others are wearing suits. Some are definitely young art history interns who won't be sticking around very long.
Through the years there are threads which stabilize our connection. Our families: her kids from birth to college. Her parents and brother. Her earrings and my necklace. We should eat dinner in Brooklyn soon.
She waves her arm over her empty tray and checks her watch.
"Is it time to go back to work?"
She tosses her head and smiles and I cannot believe she and I have known each other forever. She is sure of herself in a way nobody else I know is. She has nine or ten lives and her gaze is sturdy, kind and familiar. We hug and off she walks towards the 20th Century wing.
We head downstairs to the staff cafeteria. It isn't open to museum guests and there are hundreds of rushing people waiting on line for sandwiches to be made with a side of chips, or impatiently holding a cup under the soda dispenser. I know my way around the cafeteria and we wait on line while the cashier weighs my salad.
Today she told me about her group looking at Egon Schiele drawings. Unframed, naked and actually touched by him. I imagine her and a group of young colleagues passing the drawings around in a circle and smoking cigarettes.
"It's moment like that which makes this job so....well, worth it." She says this while waving her hand over her sandwich. "That man over there sipping his coffee curated the Hartley show. Hartley has always been one of the top three on my list." She shakes her head to get the curls out of her eyes and pierces her lettuce with a plastic fork.
" While we were looking at the Schiele drawings I said to them, 'okay now lets be quiet and think about what it is we are actually doing right now.'"
I imagine them blowing the last bit of smoke out of their mouths while their heads tilt up gazing sideways at her. They all admire her and appreciate the fact that she wants them to savor the moment of miraculousness of being able to touch this art.
She's right, of course.
She is always right when she talks about this.
I want to look at the drawings, too. I am looking at them in my mind. I am looking at her and her colleagues while the sun is streaming through the office window reflecting and penetrating the cigarette smoke which has just been exhaled and when it dissipates there is nothing else to look at but the Schiele nudes with crooked sexy dark lines and a bright red line between the bushy hair between a skeletal woman's legs.
Here we are year after year eating sandwiches and salads surrounded by employees of varying stature. Some are wearing guard uniforms. Others are wearing suits. Some are definitely young art history interns who won't be sticking around very long.
Through the years there are threads which stabilize our connection. Our families: her kids from birth to college. Her parents and brother. Her earrings and my necklace. We should eat dinner in Brooklyn soon.
She waves her arm over her empty tray and checks her watch.
"Is it time to go back to work?"
She tosses her head and smiles and I cannot believe she and I have known each other forever. She is sure of herself in a way nobody else I know is. She has nine or ten lives and her gaze is sturdy, kind and familiar. We hug and off she walks towards the 20th Century wing.
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