A Month at the Met

Updates

2011-05-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

A Month at the Met is long over. I have returned to the museum often, but not to write. However the experiment has had a lasting effect on my writing in other ways, for example I now often write poems in a notebook instead of on my laptop.

Seven of the poems originally written as part of the project, were revised and have been published since September. I have removed them from the blog, as part of that process. However links to many of my published poems can be found on my website, www.caitlinthomson.com. Also as the summer approaches, I am gearing up for a new project called a Month at MoMA. More details are available on the website and it will be continued to be updated over the next few months, so keep an eye out.

September 30th

2010-09-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is the last day. I am not ready for this to be over, and yet I am. Tonight I will attend a Gaslight Anthem concert, wake up leisurely in the morning, write in the afternoon at Four and Twenty Blackbirds (they have the most excellent pie) with Jacob and attend a New Yorker Festival panel involving Dave Eggers. Nowhere in that equation will I have to attend the Met, I will in no way be obligated to post anything on the internet. Although on Saturday I will be back at the Met with my friend Fawaz, who is visiting from California. I am going to be missing the Met already by then, I suspect.

Today was uneventful. I arrived early just as things were opening up. The Museum had very few visitors but there was a fair amount of staff moving and dusting pieces. I walked around a bit, spending most of my time in Arms and Armor (where there is no seating, unfortunately) before writing in the medieval section.

Sakura (Prunus serrulata)

You laugh uptown. The man
we only know about now,
by your side with his American smile.
The white of teeth from a mid-teen bleach.

In photographs you are altered,

no longer my twin by sight,

in that bed, hair shaved.

eyes narrowed from lack of sleep.

Factors
Day of the Week: Thursday
Occupancy of the Museum: Empty
Arrived at: 9:30
Departed at: 10:45
Read on Commute: Finished Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath which I recommend.

Statistics

2010-09-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Not to reduce a poetry project to numbers but here are some numbers that are relevant to this project. I had many readers from 12 different countries, 17 states, and 3 provinces.

Notebooks: 3
Average number of poems written per day: 4
Percentage of time the first poem I wrote was the one I posted: 50%
Average time spent on commute each day: 2 hours
Guest Writers: 16
Number of Met ticket/pins collected: 27
Amount of time spent on writing the blog entry each day: 30 Minutes
Average amount of time spent on this project each day: 5 hours

September 29th

2010-09-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my last day at the Met. I will return there and write, I may even post those poems but I will never again visit the Met on a daily basis. As thrilled as I am to have some more free time and less of a commute I must say this saddens me. This experiment has been successful and far more enjoyable then I expected, due in part to creative blessings, the Met itself, and the many lovely guest writers.

Today I went to the Japanese portion of the Asian wing. It was quiet, peaceful, and empty.

Five Miles to the Nearest Town

It was not a devastation
for us. No hammock vanishing husband,
or mid lake misplacement of our sons.
The house, bricks interconnected
and standing, three stories tall.

Of course we lost the stars,
but we had this luxury of space,
of still surrounding ourselves with my grandmothers
books and his fathers hunting riffles.

At first the boys left only for a day
up river, some camping trips,
normal for their age, this wild country.

Then it was weeks and they'd come
home uncomfortable in clothes,
barefoot, dark, pleased by grime.

Now, I sometimes hear footsteps
on the floor above me, wish it to be them,
but I see only the clothes, the book's,
a quilt they left behind, a year ago now.

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of the Museum: Moderately busy
Arrived at: 12:30
Departed at: 1:45
Read on Commute: Rouges Gallery by Michael Gross, which is an unauthorized, controversial book on the history of the Met. So far I am not impressed.

September 28th

2010-09-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

On Friday Hossannah and I drifted into the Robert Lehman collection, a hodge podge of European decorative arts, Goya, El Greco, Botticelli Impressionism, post impressionism, enamels, and bronze. I had been there before, when part of the Atrium had been taken over for a special exhibit, however I had never ventured further in. I was a little surprised by the tone of the section, it is much less polished then the rest of the museum, and there really is no centralizing theme. After doing a little digging I discovered that the Lehman foundation donated close to 3,000 works of art to the museum and that his wing is supposed to feel like a museum within a museum. It is supposed to evoke the interior of Lehmans townhouse, and reflects his personal taste preferences. When it first opened the Lehman wing received mix reviews.

I wrote on a sofa that would have seemed more at home in Starbucks and I must say it was a lot more comfortable then the standard issue Met bench. I could not help but notice that the vast majority of the visitors to this section were Eastern European tourists.

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)

Next to the stone,
        a paper crane, gifted
        folds, indented finger prints,

a signature felt by the palm of my hand,
ledge of window, light
    touches objects, grants them
      a momentary gold.



Factors
Day of the Week: Tuesday
Occupancy of the Museum: Not very Busy
Arrived at: 9:30
Departed at: 11:00
Read on Commute: Cider House Rules (better) by John Irving, and Made to Stick (good) by Chip and Dan Heath

September 27th

2010-09-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

Since I came up with this project in July, a certain friend has been saying that one of the Monday's at the Met better be rainy so that I would have to write outside underneath an umbrella. I teased back that if that happened he would have to come with me and hold the umbrella while I wrote. Today it rained. All day. However I did not carry through with my threat and I wrote outside on a wet bench all on my own. I checked an hourly forecast before I left and so had scheduled my writing period to coincide with what was supposed to be the least rain filled part of the day. It really wasn't that bad at first just a little drizzle, although by the time I left it had worsened.

Kingdom Without a Monarch

The Midtown fog
has developed feelings
for the Plaza,

affection for the Central
Park Zoo. Pigeons pass
the Met, dip beaks into puddles.

Ladies do not come out
in the rain. Watch it
through binocular's,
order a cab.

Factors
Day of the Week: Monday
Weather: Rainy
Arrived at: 3:00
Departed at: 4:00
Read on Commute: Cider House Rules by John Irving (improving, maybe?)

September 26: Lane Falcon

2010-09-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Lane Falcon is in her final year at Sarah Lawrence in poetry although she's managed to cover a fair amount of fiction as well. Her poem and observations follow.

Jackson Pollack’s “Autumn Rhythm”
To him, to live
was to be entwined— to stand outside
that nest of rusted wire
was to die.

Observations

As usual, lovely to see Caitlin, with whom I can talk in tongues about art and poems and people. Going to The Met made me want to get fired from my job and collect unemployment for a few months, like my sister. If only we were allowed to drink coffee in there, it would be the perfect place to hibernate. I almost ran over a couple of little old ladies but that’s nothing new and luckily no one cursed me. Caitlin seems very at home among the sculptures and canvases and, at the same time, tentative, respectful. I’ve never been so close to a Pollack painting, I don’t think. Just prior to us sitting down, I’d been telling Caitlin how I never really thought of Pollack paintings as visceral, despite something I read recently that compared his painting to the poems of Sharon Olds. His stuff always seemed so abstract to me in comparison to Sharon Olds’ version of urgency. Sitting there, though, I kept thinking how art is a metaphor for the artist’s perception of the world (duh!) and how immediate and seething his painting is. Not every emotion has a perfectly carved image to represent it. I think, in poetry, this sort of effect can be likened to the use of diction, music as opposed to image. Music is as immediate as image, right, as far as plucking at the soul strings (pun intended, but only after realizing it was there)?

September 24: Hossannah Asuncion

2010-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

Hossannah Asuncion, brought a recorder with her when she went the Met. Hossannah interviewed various people about their relationship to specific pieces of art and she had some interesting perspective overlap, and developing trends. Not on the specific work of art but on people's interaction with art in general. She combined these interviews with photo's and the creative process to create the following images. Click on the images to make them larger. Her observations are included bellow.

Observations:

Going on Day 24 of this project made me feel the pressure of all the great work produced on the days before mine. What made me especially wary was the fact that I don't feel like I know how to write poetry right now--I'm reading and creating things with my hands, but not writing, per se.

I decided to interview people at the MET. I thought I could ask what piece of art inspired someone to become an art lover...but consistently people could not identify a specific piece of art that started her love affair with art. Instead, a pattern arose (from a very small sample) of people engaging with art in very real ways, people spoke of the 'character' of a tapestry, or the 'personality' in the portrait. Art isn't just material or object; they are living things that make us feel real emotions.

Hossannah Asuncion invites you to witness her tumbling.

September 26

2010-09-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

I met Lane Falcon a dear friend and Sarah Lawrence poet at the steps today. Tom Lux once said that Lane Falcon is the perfect name for a poet, and who am I to disagree?

We had a lovely time wandering. Lane touched a sarcophagus and the guard was nice about it. We ended up in the Modern Art section, which was not too busy today, but I still somehow found it hard to write.

We Lift

all these words to you

and still are left

wanting more seeds,

more rosemary, more cadmium.

The garden grows zucchini
into a jungle for squirrels,
and I keep finding dirt clad children

digging for potatoes.

We need squash for soup,

for a winter of prayer,

of waiting. For others.

For order? The return of you?

Factors
Day of the Week: Sunday
Occupancy of the Museum: Busy
Arrived at: 2:30
Departed at: 4:00
Read on Commute: Cider House Rules by John Irving, and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

September 25: Jessica Ankeny

2010-09-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

Jessica Ankeny is a gifted poet in her second year at Sarah Lawrence. Her poem and observations from her writing time in the Musical Instruments section of the Met are below.

The Reason Sound-Makers Go Behind Glass and We Look at Them, No, We Just Walk Past

It comes in bright

bright color sound, like curly, like desire for your body,

like my body, anybody

to play play play, smells like red, no, sounds like turquoise, don’t

know sound of horns on gourd, should thank

spiral, thank animal, thank reaching, horn? look ma! pulled

pipes from ‘neath the kitchen sink

please blow on it, I blow goat heads, I speak swollen, I envy

horny toad heart, I have

horny toad heart, I sing ragweed, I sound dragon,

I strung so tight my strings disintegrate, need to play need need

to sound like sound barrier, drum like whiskey, close your sing, no, close

your sing, no, sing metal, sing dust

removal, sing strung voice disintegration, smell no tune, no

tuning, how right note with no right tuning? push sound

with elbows, no, push the pep

pep mushing, no, open the carpet, pinch glass ‘till it screams—

there’s music inside, it’s there.

Observations

It was a great pleasure to see Caitlin for the first time since she graduated. There is something about the MET, about looking at things meticulously maintained under glass, which encourages a formality and a referential nature in conversation. I like that. I also liked how our conversation changed while we were in the subway.

We went first to the textiles hall or basement or dungeon or whatever, but even the doorbell won’t get you in on Saturdays. I ended in the hall of Old World international instruments. Caitlin was in the room of near-modern western instruments. For a reason I can’t place there was one wicker chair in the middle of each hall. We respectively took the chairs. Caitlin’s room (I blame Ringo’s drum) was busier then mine. As I wrote I became more upset that these beautiful instruments, many of which were used in sacred rituals, were just sitting behind glass. What good is an instrument not played? Does a sacred object loose its sanctity if it’s not in use? If an object is not fulfilling the purpose of its creation is it really worth looking at? I don’t know. I am undecided if the information gleaned from viewing objects outside their context is even true. Sure, seeing a gourd with antelope horns coming out of it and strings wound tight between the horns is pretty cool. But saying something is cool without knowing what it sounds like, or what it was used for exactly, distorts any meaning it might have had. It lessens the sanctity of the object. Doesn’t it? I don’t know. Does it even matter? I think so, but even as I write this I make plans to go back and see those textiles.

September 25th

2010-09-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

Today I met the Jessica Ankeny on the steps of the Met. She is a charming poet and a Sarah Lawrence student.

She is also a frequent Met visitor and so we discussed various locations as we wandered. She initially wanted to write in the Medieval Weapons section but unfortunately it lacked benches. However we found our way to the rather peaceful Musical Instruments section which is currently home to a gold drum owned by Ringo Starr. The range of international instruments found in this section is extraordinary.

The Mistress of Vanishing

I've always kept a key
beneath my tongue,
a lock pick
spit glued to foot.
My hair contains faint
traces of cyanide.

I traveled north
after the flood,
no Cathedral spires
remained, just lonely
office buildings.

I left for the memory of cities,
Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver.
Surely there would be no
blue uniformed guards sitting
in booths at the border?
Though now I find even
the thought reassuring.

Factors
Day of the Week: Saturday
Occupancy of the Museum: Very Busy
Arrived at: 5:00
Departed at: 7:20
Read on Commute: Cider House Rules by John Irving (slow going today).

September 24

2010-09-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

For the first time since this project began I actually have taken advantage of the 24 hour rule. I didn't leave the Met till 7:15 last night and chose, instead of rushing home and posting, that a nice quiet evening could be had.

I met the well dressed Hossannah Asuncion on the steps near a food cart named Cake&Shake.

We wandered around European Sculpture Court, paintings, the Kahn special exhibit, ending with Big Bambu. Hossannah was interviewing people, which was one of the reasons we traveled so much. It was such a great idea, she brought a recorder and asked questions about art, and connection to it.

Edited to Remove Poem: A revised version of this poem has since been published elsewhere. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Factors
Day of the Week: Friday
Occupancy of the Museum: Packed
Arrived at: 4:40
Departed at: 7:10
Read on Commute: I finished The Structure of Magic (which was an excellent examining of language and therapy) by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and A Week at the Airport by Alain De Botton (very disappointing). I just started Cider House Rules by John Irving (a favorite author of mine), it is pretty good so far.

September 21st: Aldina Vazao Kennedy

2010-09-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

Aldina Vazao Kennedy, is a fellow Sarah Lawrence graduate, a non fiction writer who devoloped an interest in and talent for poetry. Her poem follows.

Afterlife Accounting at the Met

My people are North Atlantic but my magnet
spins South. I taste oranges, almonds, pungent
olive oils, and cheese squeezed from goats.
Egypt is Mediterranean too. Before Romans cut
roads through my home, pharaohs stored pots,
faceted rocks, and godly symbols. They traveled heavy.
At the Met, all I see means death
and how to survive. Afghani lapis lazuli chains
enclose necks, fingers, and arms--fit for Kings’ men.
When guards look away, I touch something sacred.
Who carves himself
into temples? Dendur, Tikal. Theocharis 1899. Kheper 1936.
“Dung beetles push the sun into being.”
Afraid I’ll forget, I take pictures.
In Antigua, I heard campesinos and señoras
thank the Virgin and pay

promises, and hoard prayers and humiliations suffered.
Faith alone won’t save us.

Languages are invented for accounting. Linear scripts.
Grandmother notes 66 bible pages read.
Mother contracts salvation with tear-dropped coins.
They hang scapulars from their necks.
Forty years of hard spousal service earns
how many coupon-books for Heaven?

Father doesn’t talk sense.
Plaques tangle neural pathways.

He doesn’t remember tomorrows
and stores rocks to cobble our driveway.
He records with marble and white stone.
Ellis 56. The rest he lays with asphalt and tar.

Sepember 23

2010-09-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

Today I visited the special exhibit, The World of Khubilai Khan, currently open only for a members preview. Khubilai was the grandson of Chinggis (better known in the west as Ghenghis) Kahn.

The Met does not usually allow photographs in Special exhibits but I did not see any signs up when I went in so I took one photo, and no one complained. While I was taking the second photo one guard (apparently a senior one) asked if photos were allowed, very loudly and apparently rhetorically. Another replied that during the members preview it should be fine.

I immediately put away my cell phone, nod in their direction to acknowledge that I had heard them. One of the guards nodded back. As I walked into the next room, the senior guard said to me across the room "no photos in the special exhibit." In response, I said "I'm sorry."

I started writing in the next room on a bench. The light was poor but I was right in front of a beautiful wooden Arhats (a guardian). The senior guard entered the room and loudly informed the female guard that photos were not allowed, and then shot a scowl in my direction.

The guard in the room had a wonderful smile and read all the descriptions of the artifacts.

(Apologies: Poem removed due to publication elsewhere)

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of the Museum: Empty
Arrived at: 9:30
Departed at: 10:40
Read on Commute: The Structure of Magic by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and A Week at the Airport (about being the writer in residence at the Heathrow Airport) by Alain De Botton.

September 22: Mellisa McCarter

2010-09-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

Mellisa a fellow Sarah Lawrence poetry graduate, was a pleasure to write with and I very much enjoyed her ideas about various pieces throughout the museum. Her poem and observations are below.

Photo Credit due to the John Singer Sargent Gallery

The Wyndham Sisters, 1899
(A Portrait by John Singer Sargent)

We always have flowers at hand
to make company more pleasant,
removed before they die
at the first sign of browning.
So why is Mother in the background
if not to remind us of our own mortality?
The painter saw only what he meant to see,
blanched the peonies and compared us to gardenias
by applying his salve to our complexions.
Pamela didn’t trust him to overlook her maternal waist,
not with the evidence behind us on the wall.
Madeleine, impatient and a little bored,
the shadows were left on her face.
I saw opportunity right away,
gave the canvas all of my youth
with a look that said beneath this skirt
are legs that could strangle a man.
Though, looking back I’m not so sure
if we weren’t a portrait of death to be

rising from a chiffon vapor.

Observations:

Trying to explain to a friend a quote by E. L. Doctorow, “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia,” I found it difficult to explain the voices that creep into the writer’s head without sounding like a lunatic myself. But, anyone who has written while viewing art will understand exactly what this means.

I find that one of the best tricks to jumpstart these voices is to go to an art museum and write. There’s something about seeking out a narrative that’s not your own or an image that breaks you out of a daily pattern and puts you into the realm of the unordinary. It frees the voice within—or gives you a borrowed voice with which to stir the pen. Even an empty room at The Met teems with voices and characters from the imagination. Just as yoga releases energy from stretching the body, art releases the dormant mind.

The Met was a wonderful place to start writing as it houses more than paintings. I found that it was easy to write once I sat down. Moving about, my eyes preferred to sponge up everything for later. I chose to write an ekphrasis rather than just free-writing, eager at the moment to explore the mysteries of detail in “The Wyndham Sisters” by John Singer Sargent. I found a lot going on in the portrait just by their expressions alone.

Thirty days is about what you need to really appreciate everything that the Met has to offer. I tried to take in as many rooms as I could just before I left mid afternoon. I could imagine how odd I looked bouncing from room to room, pausing here and there and scribbling a note or two for future poems, but otherwise scanning as much as I could take in before my departure. Brilliant idea, Caitlin. Thanks for the great time.

September 22

2010-09-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

The first day of fall was rather warm and sunny, but the trees are starting to hint at the season. I met Mellisa McCarter on the steps. She and I have been friends since sharing a class together in our first year at Sarah Lawrence, she is both a gifted poet and a kind person.

We entered and wandered until we found a comfy looking circular couch in the Henry J. Heinzil Galleries. We were surrounded by lovely paintings. It got distractingly crowded around 11:30. I could not help but notice everyone's shoes. One woman was wearing a pair of high heel sneakers. An Asian couple photographed themselves having a fake nap on the couch one room over.

Today I wrote a number of poems but the only one I am pleased with is a monstich (a one line poem)

Still Life with Octopus

If only it would stop juggling the plums.

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of the Museum: Not too bad when we entered but crowded by the time I left.
Arrived at: 10:00
Departed at: 12:15
Read on Commute: I finished I am the Messenger by Markus Zusack (OK) and Thunderstruck by Larson (also mediocre).

September 21st

2010-09-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Today I had two guest writers, Aldina Vazao Kennedy who holds her MFA in non-fiction but dabbles well in poetry, and Melanie Olson a fiction writer working on a novel about Mormons.

Melanie and I both brought laptops which caused my second run-in with MET security. This time we both needed passes (a yellow ticket with words scribbled on it) for our laptops. I did not know that this was necessary since this is the first time I brought my laptop. You also cannot coat check bags with laptops.

The Temple of Dendur was our destination. Yesterday through the windows Jacob and I had seen them setting up something. We had presumed that this was for some sort of celebration that night. Today the temple was off limits. You could only view it from a distance and it was clear that they were setting something up for tonight.

We ventured upstairs to the Chinese Garden to write in some natural light. Melanie was the first project participant to write on her laptop.

Waiting

Unknowing twins
in purple, a flash
of crow above us,

shadow through glass
on the living
room floor.

Factors
Day of the Week: Tuesday
Occupancy of the Museum: Moderately busy.
Arrived at: 12:30
Departed at: 2:40
Read on Commute: I am the Messenger by Markus Zusack

September 19th: Stephen Pause: Essay

2010-09-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Stephen Pause, a non fiction SLC graduate student and friend wrote the following essay and observations, and I am so glad he did. He also posted this on his excellent blog Teratology, he has more photo's included in his version. I had a few formatting issues. The essay is titled Never My Madam

Photo courtesy: metmuseum.org (all others by S. Pause)

First she was just a figure moving toward me in the distance, among a great many others doing the same thing. A second later she was a girl. Then she became a pretty girl, exquisitely dressed. Next a responsive girl, whose eyes said “Are you lonely?,” whose shade of a smile said, “Then speak.” And by that time we had reached and were almost passing one another…
-- Cornell Woolrich, Manhattan Love Song

I went to see war. I went for the ugliness of the world; I had no use of for the beautiful things. I wanted death as my muse. I wanted to see George Washington Crossing the Delaware River, on his way into glorious battle. I wanted to contemplate history made through bloodshed, to ponder world changing loss of life. I had a satchel full of history books, war tactics and personal accounts of ensuing skirmishes, and I planned to write about how much the artist got wrong, how disparate his art was from reality. And I would have been content with this day-long meditation on how art just could not compare to the actuality of the harsh world. But unbeknownst to me, fate had conspired otherwise.

Washington’s river crossing was mysteriously absent, nowhere to be seen. It had been hidden away in some darkened vault beneath my feet, stowed in an ark to be shown to someone else at some later time. It wasn’t meant for my eyes. But what else was there to see in such a place if not the pinnacle of military strategy, a defining battle in a nation’s history?

The question was left to foment while I began to wander aimlessly in search of some new, insufficient substitute for inspiration. I didn’t even have the motivation to move to another wing, so I meandered through America, slowly contenting myself with the notion that I would accomplish nothing, the idea of failure festering into a desire to abandon that forlorn place forever.

But then, lost amidst the forgotten faces on a quiet floor reserved only for storage, an epiphany.

She appeared to me in all her radiance.

The inward curve of her waist, the sweep of her hips, those petite lips rouged to life against a snow white complexion and a dress so starkly black. And that delicate neckline.

That seducingly long and delicate neckline.

What was she doing there, mingling with former presidents amongst the Tiffany glass and antique furniture? Had she retreated to the storage room to seek refuge from prying eyes? If so, she had largely succeeded. As I stood there in awe, an entire group of people, more than twenty strong, committed the crime of simply passing her by, only one or two stopping for even a cursory glance.

An “Oh my,” from a woman who didn’t even break stride, prompting a question from her bespeckled and graying husband, who himself continued a slow amble past.

“Somebody you know?”

A moment later I could hear the echo of their guide from a distant corner of the hall.

…And that neckline – her hair pulled as high as it will go, revealing every possibly inch of that majestically contoured nape. The subtlety of the pose – her right hand reaching to the back of the Empire table to keep her steady – naturally accentuating her most feminine attributes, extending effortlessly the line of succession from irresistible neck to slightly dipping and wholly exposed shoulder to smoothly bent arm to slender thumb pressed against dark wood, and all with a skin so pure a complexion that she barely seems alive. Pure as the driven snow, indeed.

Truly a modern woman by any standards: deeply sophisticated in expression yet simply elegant in dress. That dress, the bodice tapering her inconceivably lithe waist, her hips boldly flaring out, all at once showing her as petite and imposing. The abysmal blackness of it, swallowing the features of her lower half, her legs lost amid the velvety softness of the elegant garment whose own features appear only faintly. They don’t matter. Neither do her shoes, or whatever is in her hand. Is that a fan that blends in so perfectly, or do her delicate fingers simply cling to her dress below the waist? She is either pulling it up alluringly, or perhaps practically, to keep her feet from becoming entangled in the flowing fabric.

And what to make of that expression? Is she turning her cheek away from a lover, spurning his desperate advance? Is it a devilishly scornful disaffection of a kiss not wanted, or a melancholy sadness that there is no one there to kiss? Perhaps she is gazing at the three-paneled Tiffany dressing curtain in the adjacent display case, an oddity to her as it won’t be produced until thirty years into her future.

Perhaps her look is disguised – a glance away – a bashfulness to prevent blushing caused by the stoic timepieces staring at her from across the aisle. The six grandfather clocks are fragile old men; by the time she comes into the world they are already eighty years old. Yet each one knows beauty when they see it. Each has stopped at the exact same moment, their faces – the hands of time – frozen in her presence, acknowledging her beauty the only way they know how. Their lunar cycles too are not simply frozen, but shaken out of their synchronicity; the old face from Reading, Pennsylvania, has thrust its moon into mid-sky while the smirking orb from Norwich, Connecticut, is just beginning to rise from its corner of the clockface. Her pull is strong enough to shift the tides.

Another group of people stops briefly a few feet away and breaks the silence. The guide mentions a name – Eakins – as the greatest painter to come out of America. Suddenly the Madame appears to look away with distaste – she banishes such a thought. She knows John Singer Sargent is the greatest. The look on her face is more than enough to convince me.

As the group passes, again ignorant to the beauty they are dismissing, one of them stops, only to thrust a barb tinged with malice at the nameless Madame.

The old woman’s mumbling trails off from beneath her hunched back as she passes. She stresses the final two words, slowly.

“This is very famous. Terrible scandal…”

The Madame barely acknowledges the comment, looking away as if to mockingly ignore the old woman. The ill-mannered quip falls on a deaf ear – a perfectly sketched lobe on a woman too dignified to pay the comment any mind.

All of this and yet she stands naked – no frame to give her comfort – the scene incomplete. Perhaps that is why her expression is one that borders on fretting. The woman next to her, the Lady with the Rose, displays a beautifully ornamented frame, a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, gilded gold in a subconscious display of fertility. The Lady with the Rose is also fetching to the eye, but with a youthful nonchalance, a childish air. She daintily holds her rose like a cup of tea, with thumb and index fingers, while her other hand lazily rests on the back of her hip. She is aloof, uncaring, and ultimately alluring standing next to the Madame.

My Madame needs no rose to add beauty to her perfection. She is so enchanting that she needs no accessories. There is only the slightest hint of a jewel in her hair, a small dash of light that could just as soon be the sprouting of a halo as it might be a jeweled pin keeping her hair aloft. She us unadorned except for one thing.

One very tiny piece of jewelry.

Ever so faintly – the wedding band on her left ring finger. Not even an imposing diamond encrusted treasure, but a simple gold band. With only a quick stroke of a small brush dabbed with the saddest speck of white did Sargent include what he had to. How painful must that dab of paint have been for him? How long did he wait to include that one, ever-so-necessary, ever-so-heartbreaking touch to his masterpiece? How long did it consume him?

How could Sargent not look on her and simply weep? He was charged not only with passing this beauty on through the centuries, but along with it the essential idea of the heartbreak that he must have felt. The idea that such a treasure could never be possessed. He shows this beauty, at the cost of hope, at the cost of inner peace. How much did this weigh on him as he plied his trade, day in and day out, knowing that with the beauty he was giving, he was taking away the hope that something so perfect that could ever be his.

That was the heartbreak that he had poisoned me with. How swiftly she had gone from My Madame to once again Madame X. Sargent had brought me ever so close to perfection, only to remind me with the most miniscule detail that she is not mine. She was never mine, and she will never be mine.

This realization came quickly to me, and once the poison was in the wound it was impossible to stop. But how long did Sargent deny himself this undeniable fact? Was this why he spent so long struggling to find the right pose, wasting through countless sketches and rough drafts? Not a striving for perfection but an attempt to delay the inevitable goodbye that had to accompany the completion of such a masterpiece. Perhaps it explains the signature in the bottom right-hand corner, which begins with a deeply bold stroke but quickly fades from life, becoming barely visible at the conclusion, as if his courage to complete the work vanished the closer he got to finishing.

I knew what Sargent was feeling, because I too found myself simply unable to walk away from her. How could I turn my back on her? Wherever I had come from, I couldn’t ever go back. I just couldn’t make myself step back onto those towering stone steps and into the cold world outside, not without feeling the emptiness of the world enveloping me, the grotesque buildings of the metropolitan world weighing me down, crushing whatever she had left behind of my shattered heart.

She was inside that vault; she would forever be inside. And she belongs in a museum with the treasures of a thousand kingdoms. She belongs with the relics that defined nations, if for nothing else than to show that while the stones of power crumble into dust, she endures.

As for me, I will keep her locked inside my own vault, the delicate memory of an impossible perfection. I eventually ventured outside, only to make that slow sojourn back to my cold home, alone, to think about her. I rode the subway out to the final stop, the whole car abandoning me before then, reinforcing the loneliness that dominated the day.

I went there to write of war, of bitter fighting, of blood and battles and death – the ugly things of the world – and instead I witnessed a beauty that I never would have known existed in this too cold world.

I went to write of war and I left thinking only of her.

Madame X.

Forever my Madame.

Never my Madame.

Observations:

I always have trouble being creative in heavily trafficked areas. For every insightful thing I overhear that I include in an essay, I hear at least one inane or outright mentally retarded comment that grates me. The storage area of the Met is no different. I just happened to be lucky enough to stumble upon a work so engaging that I was able to mostly tune out noise, like the young boy in the orange polo shirt who every few minutes would fly by me and yell at his parents in Spanish from sixty feet away.

It was an exercise in patience and self-control, and I really appreciated the opportunity. I have only written about a painting once before, and that was a poor attempt six years ago. I hadn’t tried since. In the same way that Caitlin enjoys going there with people who have never been, I enjoyed having an experienced patron show me her favorite spots. I have a tendency to get intimidated in the face of daunting tasks, and emerging from the caverns of 84th street to be confronted with a quarter-mile long museum was most definitely an anxious moment for me. Having a guide like Caitlin really made it easy though, and I can’t thank her enough for that. It’s just too bad that I’m going to have to keep going back there until they pull from storage the painting I went to see in the first place. And to see the one that I fell in love with.

September 19th: Stephen Pause

2010-09-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

Stephen Pause took great pictures at the Met, some of them I have uploaded here but the majority of them are at his excellent blog Teratology. He also has captions/details there.

September 17th: Guest Writer Jean Hartig

2010-09-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

Jean Hartig is a gifted poet who graduated a few years before I did from Sarah Lawrence. Her poem and bio are below.

The American Wing

Primitive economy of these trees
resembling the knees of a man dropped
blushing beneath a girl--oh
but the light then shifted.

An insect shudders inside a wall.

The next decision would be migration.
Elevated tracks and the arch of the aqueduct
passing technologies. Our automobile
cleaved to a rail beside a river.

The story of the land's unsealing from its mothers
turns to mineral, our teeth caving, turns to stone.

He did not want to resemble the monument's
perforations, a steed crawling
flush before him. He did not want
to see his hand beginning another's name
in the water combing over the alloy.

The lie of that field more quick,
more keen. The roof is letting
something in that isn't light.

Unfaced.

A signal appeared on vees of glass, noting the number to call.

The man caught in it, panicked, and some of his fingers
uncorked their leaves.

We do not believe the other
in the scene. Only no mother conceiving
from her conjoined seas of concern,
the green-flied animal not falling from her skirts.

A fog-eyed train drew above us a catalog
of possible apogees. On its back, the reduced queen, her limestone eye
proving the canyon unmanning a purchase of steam.

Bio: Jean Hartig lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her chapbook is Ave, Materia (Poetry Society of America, 2009).

September 20th

2010-09-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

Ten more days! Two thirds of the way through and a beautiful Monday to spend outdoors. Jacob and I brought delicious sandwiches and ate before I wrote. Today he was accompanying to enjoy the park, not to write. We went for a walk afterwords and saw turtles and lots of nannies and private school kids.

I wrote on the grass outside the Sackler wing also known as the home of the Temple of Dendur. They were setting up for an event inside. All sorts of white table cloths and sound equipment.

The World Burns a Brighter Blue

I meant to share the smoked salmon,
but I could not sacrifice
the quiet porch. Others busy
with trays on steps, salting tomatoes.
That night the ocean tossed up
florescent jellyfish.
Grandmother, a day before eighty,
cupped one in her hands. A greenish
glow visible between fingers.
In the light of a fire and twenty candles
we sang Happy Birthday. My brother
smelling of charcoal, of beef,
arm around my waist.

Factors
Day of the Week: Monday
Weather: Sunny, cool in shade, breezy.
Arrived at: 12:40
Departed at: 2:15
Read on Commute: Thunderstruck by Eric Larson (still disappointing me).

September 19th

2010-09-19T17:53:00.000-07:00

I was running late today due to the subway's weekend slowdown/scheduled repairs. I met Stephen Pause, the guest writer, on the steps of the museum. Stephen and I both went to Sarah Lawrence, where he was known by some "as the dead presidents guy." He has his MFA in creative nonfiction. Stephen had never been to the Met before. I love going to the Met with someone who has yet to experience it.

Since the Met is actually composed of 26 different 'structures' (most not visible from the outside) to get to different areas you sometimes have to go through the main entrance hall which connects to all three sections. You exit through guards and then after crossing the hall and passing ticket booths, you enter a new section past different guards. We visited the Egyptian wing first and were halted by a guard because Stephen had a tripod. He was informed that he could not wear it on his back and must carry it. He complied, and managed to take some good photos at the Temple of Dendur. Proceeding to the American wing we passed another set of guards. He was stopped again and informed that Stephen needed to get a free pass from the security desk to bring the tripod in. We went to the desk only to be informed that he must put his tripod in coat check because one was only allowed to have a tripod on Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday. Confusing.

We went to the American Wing in search of Washington Crossing the Delaware. However the room was under repair but we were informed that several pictures of Washington resided on floor 2A. Floor 2A ended up being Visible Storage, which I have not visited before. Visible Storage is composed of items that are not currently on display elsewhere, including; candlestick elephants, chairs, baseball cards, empty frames, A work desk from Tiffany and Jonathan Singer Sargent paintings. Everything is displayed in glass display cases, hung on these rippled metal white dividers. Because of the light and glass my photo's didn't turn out well but hopefully they will give you a bit of an idea. I really enjoyed Visible Storage, partially because it felt more honest and behind the scenes than other parts of the museum and also because some of the things they decided to display where wonderful while others could be found in your neighbors trash. I wrote while wandering between cases.

Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera)

So clear this evening,
a new dusk. My body foreign

in a mirror. Cautious field
of skin, aware of Marie

one room over, my father listening
to the radio announcer describe

Mantle hitting a foul.
The door unlocked.

Anytime they could enter,
interrupt my changed form.

Factors
Day of the Week: Sunday
Occupancy of Museum: Crowded
Arrived at: 12:15
Departed at: 2:00
Read on Commute: I finished Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, and I am nearing the end of Thunderstruck by Eric Larson (slow going at the moment).

September 18th

2010-09-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote in the rather peculiar dining room of the Louis Downe house which was constructed in London in the mid 1970's. This room is part of the extensive Anne Laurie Aitken Galleries. There is nowhere in the galleries to sit (that isn't roped off) so I wrote standing today. The whole time I was there only one other person entered the room.

The Dinner Party

To be surrounded by statuary,
the false armor of men,
pedestal heightened,

and at the dinner table,
green beans and steak
are on your plate,

the smallest sherry glass
in your hand. The nude
statues have fig leaves.

The shadow they cast less noticeable
underneath the chandelier,
false candles refracted.

Factors
Day of the Week: Saturday
Occupancy of Museum: Crowded at the entrances, empty elsewhere.
Arrived at: 9:30
Departed at: 10:30
Read on Commute: Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, which is a little uneven at the moment.

September 17th

2010-09-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

My guest writer today was the lovely Jean Hartig, who had been for a run around the storm stricken Prospect Park before meeting me on the way to the subway. It was nice to have someone to share the commute with, due to the storm the commute was considerably longer today then it normally is. All the trains were running late.

Jean chose the American Wing and it was very nice to be back there. Even though there is something cold and formal about the room I enjoy writing there because of the light.

Edited to Remove Poem: An edited version of this poem has since been published.

Factors
Day of the Week: Friday
Occupancy of Museum: Empty
Arrived at: 9:45
Departed at: 11:00
Read on Commute: On the way there I talked and on the return trip I read a little more of Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo.

September 14th: Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick (Photo's)

2010-09-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

Shannon's wonderful photographs from outside and inside the met are shown below.

September 16th

2010-09-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today I arrived at 4:15. At 5:00 the guards started yelling that it was 15 minutes to close even though the museum officially closes its doors at 5:30.

I wrote today in Oceania, which is one of my father's favorite rooms in the museum. There I sat underneath the Kwama ceiling (pictured below) which was made in the 1970s.

A Little Spring Cleaning

I have shed skin to find this skirt,
these shoes, the same hair clip,
mirror me, a clone. I can only claim

rebirth. The tip of my tongue
still knowing the joy in strawberries.
Yet that child with the numbered boxes,

happiness attached to timelines,
bereaves me. It is her scar I bear
on my lower back, a round inverse island,
adjacent to spine.

Factors
Day of the Week: Thursday
Occupancy of Museum: Uncrowded
Arrived at: 4:15
Departed at: 5:15
Read on Commute: I am reading Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, which is a book about art forgery that I purchased in the Met store.

September 14th: Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

2010-09-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick is a friend, fellow writer and recent graduate. She writes long compelling poems. She also has a lovely blog called Ways We Are Lost where she wrote a little bit more about the impact this experience had on her http://wayswearelost.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/lost-in-the-met/. It is really a blog worth reading regularly. Her poems and thoughts are below.

In The Museum, A Schizophrenic Among Angel, Voice, Nail

Spiral, saints, painting of someone’s
Torturer—children ask, What does that
Mean? As though the way to heaven
Is through a flagged red heart of a burning goat.

*

Pull your hair out, said the widow of Seville.

All of it?

Yes. I need straw—
Gates from which to enter the world.

I want to eat your lamb,
I said, then your hands.

*

Pull it out.
Pull it out.
body, hair.

*

Noticed swans, their necks gripped
by women, thought of Seville, how one jumps
In fountains fully clothed, folds exposed—
This reminded me of the tortured man’s stomach,
so I stopped looking at the goat.

*

After leaving the museum, the widow of Seville followed me
Down the street, into shadow of leaves. Satellite woman—
She said, have a sandwich. I said, No, I must keep trim.

*

I came, come for the burning goat, his bones.
I came, come for the living-speak.
I come, came, pulling a strand from my head.
I came, come, hungry—side-split ache of dead for the living.

*

You can have my hair—
The world outside contains me.
The people walking by? My food.

Observations

It's interesting, a definite change of pace for me, to write from the museum. I felt bombarded by many different voices. The notebook I wrote it allowed me, or gave me permission, to write without thinking too much about line breaks or worry about erasing what I immediately thought was cliche, or bad writing--usually on a computer word document, I will quickly delete whole lines in seconds, but from my notebook in the museum, I just had to keep writing.

When I got home and transferred what I wrote in my notebook onto a word document, it was like I was coming at the writing on a whole new level, an extra step in the writing process that I don't usually have. I was recalling the place and sensations, paintings and images, again in my mind whole trying to take the first draft to a second and third on the computer. In my mind, I was back in the place where the inspiration happened. I was back in the museum. However, the words I wrote in the museum, once transferred onto the computer, seemed like new words and images. Something long divorced from my experience and yet remembered, but from a different perspective.

September 15th

2010-09-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Today is the official halfway point of the project. I have a better knowledge of the museum, a developing sense of time in terms of language, and an appreciation of and disdain for the commute. Hopefully everything but my disdain for the commute will continue to evolve nicely over the next fifteen days. I am keeping notes about the whole process and will start to organize and publish them after the project is over.

I had technical difficulties today, which is to say that I left my notebook at home. I only had a half covered sheet of paper in my purse, but I made do. When I showed the wrinkled page to Jacob afterwords he said "It goes to show you don't need to have a lot to be a writer, as bathroom stalls around the country have proven."

The weather was wonderful today, a perfect New York Fall day, so I wanted a room with a lot of light. The Met, unlike most museums, actually has a lot of rooms that fit that description. It was still early in the morning so I headed to the American Wing. It was wonderfully empty and nice. The problem that I often have with the American Wing is that the cafeteria running along the left hand side is a little incongruous with the rest of the room, and often the source of a lot of noise. However in the mornings it is entirely empty, which makes it the ideal time to visit the American Wing.

The Metropolitan Museum Alone

Central Park invaded,
glass walls such a temptation.
In a windstorm, the first tree
crashed into the European Sculpture
Court, a large Elm.

The floor already cracked, earth
visible. All those tremors running
on the New York fault line.

Elm seedlings with roots in
time split marble on their own.

Trees and statues cohabiting,
branches invading the photo
gallery above, piercing works,
dusty in the Special Exhibition rooms.

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of Museum: Presently empty
Arrived at: 9:45
Departed at: 10:45
Read on Commute: I read and finished Field Notes from A Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book based on a series of articles first printed in The New Yorker. It is an interesting study of climate change, but I had hoped it would give me some apocalyptic inspiration much like The World Without Us had. Unfortunately it did not.

September 14th

2010-09-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Steps of the Met are really a confusing place to meet anyone, but thanks to cell phones I managed to find Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick there. Shannon is a fellow Sarah Lawrence Grad, a poet, photographer and fellow member of a writing group.

We started off with a long photo taking wander in the European painting gallery. We started to write in the same room that Lauren Hilger and I wrote in on the second of September, we then moved to Gallery 20: Tiepolo, and finally drifted to the European Sculpture Court.

I actually wrote the poem I am posting today in the first room, Gallery 30, after a painting by Pietro Testa entitled Alexander the Great Rescued from the River Cydnus. It is my first legitimate Ekprahstic poem although it is more about the story of Alexander then about the painting itself. Shortly after completing the painting Testa drowned in the Tiber, apparently a suicide.

Cydnus

It was just a river
in Tarsus, a place
to spend the night
on a long campaign.

The retreating Persians,
reduced to distant tents,
the scurry of soldiers.
Alexander's men resting
before victory.

Alexander went to Cydnus
to wash the blood
from his body.

Water was nothing new to him.
He had yet to cross the Ganges,
may never have, but Aristotle
taught him to swim
a boyhood ago, time
a Gordian knot.

His body, familiar with waves,
froze in the water,
abruptly did not belong
to his mind.

Sinking body rescued
by an attendant. Crown,
shards of pottery, saved.

Factors
Day of the Week: Tuesday
Occupancy of Museum: Moderately busy
Arrived at: 12:00
Departed at: 2:15
Read on Commute: I finished The Black Dahlia (I was unsatisfied with the ending but otherwise very much enjoyed it).

September 12th: Patrick Brawley

2010-09-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

Patrick Brawley is a gifted poet, recent graduate from Sarah Lawrence, and current publishing intern. I really appreciated how his poem integrated what surrounded us in the museum without being overwhelmed by it. His poem and thoughts are below.

Buddha of Medicine Bhaishajyaguru

Darlin’ caught a murder rap
in dry desert heat, running
round dunes slowly shifting

in the wind. Vehicular evil sliding
down her throat navigating glass component
fragile valley clearing. Can’t grow

no corn in sand boy your soil is to dry.
It goes much deeper
than what she said,
her humid voice dusting off them old tools;

hadn’t used them in ages. Forgot how
to turn up earth, irrigate the limited
moments of each secret trickling under

her feet filed in tributaries of disappointment. Tool
spoon handle with no basin, I walk the ridge
hoping for the valley that if I stay there long enough

I’ll become antiquities, an ashtray that old pot, buried
heavy enough to avoid the shattered
parapet swept into dustpan of the horizon’s

deviated septum. Each gravitational leak
pulling her deeper into the oasis
a grain of sand looking for love;

a astrolabe guiding light to the shaman driving
blind toward another sunrise stacked
on the sarcophagus painted around his head.

In the dry heave’ staring at the girl I wanted,
did you play hard to get? Do you love me
God? I’ll eat this rotten harvest; afraid of famine

worms burrowed their way to pavement. That dry
spell ate the sun hollering fire in public space. Drawbridge
dumped its cargo of pills into my industrial mouth

enlightening my bankruptcy, a river boat man
took me across swallowing lotus lilies to float away,
balloon strung to a message for the lord.

Observations: Patrick Brawley

It was great to see Cait for the first time since our graduation. The Met is a great place to see friends one hasn’t seen in awhile. Its art spanning the timeline of the human journey tying knots to form a latter of universal consciousness that we all climb, get off, and rejoin through out our lives. It was fantastic to catch up and see exactly were Cait was in the adventure. Talking about everything from cell phones to personal identity we strolled through a city dug up and placed inside a museum, which seems appropriate, building monuments to the triumph of human spirit. We began writing in the Islamic section of the museum. I have somehow seemed to always walk right passed it, and thought this a great opportunity to immerse myself in something new since we all seem to be striving to make our own voice in a new season of our lives. We then switched to Asian sculpture and the immense Buddha of Medicine stared at me. We all search for our medicine through different paths, and we each find serenity in our heart. The struggle to find our path however personal is a universal passage that is what truly makes us all human. It was great to catch up with Cait, and I wish her well in all her future endeavors.

September 12th:Geneviève Bourgeois

2010-09-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

Genevieve Bourgeois is the first artist to draw at the Met with me, which was rather exciting. Below is her work and thoughts.

Genevieve's Observations

On Sunday September 12th, 2010. I joined Caitlin at the Met, we chatted while waltzing through exhibits. Although we were involved in deep conversation, I couldn’t help but notice minuet details. Whether we were discovering Egyptian tombs, admiring American furniture, noting height measurements of Frank Lloyd Writes’ chair legs, to holes in a hippopotamus’ tooth. When we finally decided to work we found ourselves surrounded by Islamic art. Had a hard time focusing the tip of my pencil. I ended up taking a five-minute adventure and stumbled upon a spacious room “Buddha of Medicine” and tall shapely figures. This room is where I rejected my pencil choose a pen and focused on the shapes that filled the room.
This was a wonderful experience and I would be more than willing to do it again. It is always a pleasure to be with great company surrounded by a cornucopia of masterpieces.

September 11th, Jacob Jans

2010-09-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

Jacob Jans wrote the following, hopefully the first step of a much larger project, in the Cloisters this past Saturday.

The Cloisters is a conjoining of the very old and the very new, quite literally, with pillars of old churches supporting newly constructed ceilings, ancient stained glass windows set in new walls, bright museum lighting perched above ancient altars, and beside a verdant gardened courtyard, a Pontaut House with crumbled walls, cracked pillars, a smooth ceiling and floor, and long wooden benches where Caitlin and I began our writing session by reading from The Rule of Benedict as was once a daily ritual at abbeys around the world.

I believe there is a certain joy to be had in setting aside a portion of each day to contemplate how we participate in the world. The chapter we read from The Rule of Benedict described the proper behavior of an Abbess.

This got me to thinking about the daily pressures our society throws our way in an attempt to define proper behavior for us, and how I often find myself struggling to have a solid sense of this, much less have the time to think about it intentionally.

Which gave me the idea of writing my own personal imitation of The Rule of Benedict. My initial attempt, composed at the Cloisters, is below.

The Rule of Doubt

Press shut your mouth, and hold, my friend
these thoughts, if you will,
in the silence of attention,
and notice the sounds which are not sounds,
and how your body moves
in accordance with their rising,
so that with this silence
you can again be aware of thought.

To you,
whoever you may be
who are renouncing noise
to create sound
under the reverence of doubt
these words are addressed.

And first of all,
as motion begins to flow toward your tongue,
the way water flows through the branches of a tree,
building tension to the very tip of a leaf,
allow awareness of your hidden motions to rise
so that you may choose them.

********

As I wrote this, I realized much of my life has been informed by the tradition of poetry. I am considering continuing this project using quotes from favorite poems and poets, the way The Rule of Benedict quotes Psalm and and verse from the Bible.

September 13th

2010-09-13T12:34:00.000-07:00

Today I started my second notebook of the project, having filled the first one yesterday. I was surprised by how many people were around. Most planning to go into the museum, and were surprised it was closed. There where also some maintenance workers on break and a tourist group looking for a photo opportunity.

I was surprised that the door on the right was left open for a guard to let employees in (I just assumed that those who worked Monday entered through the more discreet doors on the lower level). It also made it possible for tourists to at least glance into the grand entryway.

I started out trying to write on the steps but it was too sunny and a little uncomfortable so I moved to the shaded benches that run along the right side of the front of the museum. It was shady and quiet. Very pleasant.

Countdown Tango

We've got a dance
one card over,
and the dry ice
in the fridge,
Leonard Cohen
on the jukebox.
Plenty of time
to kill, I kid.

The buildings keep
collapsing, the sun don't
shine the same.
Rythm's all I remember,
isn't that a shame?

Drink one glass
then another.
Step left, right
and back. We will
play a happy ditty,
guns behind our backs.

Factors
Day of the Week: Monday
Occupancy of Museum: Empty (presumably).
Arrived at: !0:00
Departed at: 11:00
Read on Commute: The Black Dahlia by James Elroy
Weather: Crisp with a side of sunshine.

September 12th

2010-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

Today I had two guests. The multi-talented Geneviève Bourgeois, who made the most wonderful jacket for me last year, came and drew. Patrick Brawley a friend, and fellow Sarah Lawrence graduate, a talented poet, wrote.

We ventured inside, talking and generally dealing with the crowd which was rather intense. I am beginning to think that Sundays at the Met are the busiest days of the week. We made our way through Egypt and America, we started to write and draw in the Middle East, before relocating to Chinese Sculptures, 5th to 8th century.

When we where in the Chinese Sculpture gallery a small boy walked by. Tucked under his arm a large drawing pad. On the page that was exposed he had written in red marker 'Magic on the Balcony' with a stick figure drawing of two people dancing.

House

I am governed by an empty sky;
the gray of dust, texture of chalk.

Home, would I recognize you now,
wood, tile, siding, stucco, knee, back bone?

I have grown accustomed to words
for shelter. Punctuation

a variable foundation.
The elements are here,
and I welcome the winds.

Factors
Day of the Week: Sunday
Occupancy of Museum: Terribly busy, and crowded
Arrived at: !:00
Departed at: 2:45
Read on Commute: The Black Dahlia by James Elroy

September 11

2010-09-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

The Weather in New York today was lovely, New York's energy is always a little different on the 11th, but the sunshine and early fall crispness seemed to help.

For the first time during this project I went to the Cloisters branch of the Met in Fort Tyron Park. The Cloisters was reconstructed in the 1930s, using architectural elements from several Abbeys, and it houses part of the Met's Medieval collection. It is right in the heart of the park and it is a lovely walk from the Subway with nice trees, gardens, and Hudson River views. Jacob Jans, the guest writer today is a poet, and a dear friend. We took the A train up to 190th street, where an elevator lets you off right in front of the park.

We toured the museums, then had a picnic lunch in the park before returning to write. We wrote in the Cuxa Cloister which is a rather beautiful courtyard.

A Month Like This

The Rosemary grew unchaperoned
and the whole yard played a host
to memories.

I would sit in the back garden
sipping tea by the Mulberry bush
then. Nights spent dancing upstate,
the first dish of summer
coal smoked, salty, would slip
down my throat.

One afternoon I found a youth back there,
a stranger murmuring loudly
about Christmas ham and an uncles cigar habit.
I gave him chocolate, he said little
then used my phone to call a cab.

Others I saw through the kitchen window,
sniffing the air as if they had
just now arrived at the Seashore,
but always as if rabbits caught in the garden;
disappearing before I reached them.

Factors
Day of the Week: Saturday
Occupancy of Museum: It started off moderately populated but by mid afternoon it was busy and loud
Arrived at: !:30
Departed at: 4:15
Read on Commute: I finished The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

September 10th,

2010-09-10T20:38:00.000-07:00

The Met was very lively today. Fridays and Saturdays at the Met they have live classical music in the Balcony, starting at five, which adds nicely to the ambiance of the grand entrance hall, and almost gives the Met a festive air. I wrote in the Carrol and Milton Petris European Sculpture Court. There were lots of kids running around and a fair number of teenagers drawing the statues. It all made it a little hard to concentrate and I think that affected the work that I produced, which seemed to consist largely of doodles.

Pitch-Pine

We've tracked veins
back to fault

lines but blood
is unpredictable.

We share it
reluctantly, you and I.

This distant
sibling hood.

Factors
Day of the Week: Friday
Occupancy of Museum: Almost busy, very loud.
Arrived at: 4:50
Departed at: 6:00
Read on Commute: I finished Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, and read some more of Thunderstruck by Eric Larson,

September 7th and 9th: Marion and John Franklin

2010-09-10T12:04:00.001-07:00

Marion Franklin a retired schoolteacher and cook extraordinaire, and John Franklin my former theology professor and the head of Imago: a Christian Art Organization came with me for two wonderful writing sessions. Their work is below, as well as an Introduction By John. The photo credit goes to Marion.

John's Introduction
It was a great pleasure for Marion and me to spend some time with our friend Caitlin while in New York. We are enthusiastic about her writing project “A Month at the Met”. On the two days that we were together with Caitlin at the Met – our inclination was to look to the images there for inspiration. We offer here some thoughts written and remembered from those special moments at the Met.

However you look at it, the back has an extraordinary psychological power, a power that can be wonderful or disquieting or some combination of the two.

Jed Pearl - Antoine's Alphabet - pg. 21

Marion Franklin -

Tuesday, September 7th

Visiting the Met is for me like a voyage through time –from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China of distant past to Medieval Europe, seventeenth century Holland and nineteenth century France. The artefacts provide a glimpse into life in these times past. Wealthy and poor, royalty and worker, aristocracy and bourgeoisie – we are able to discover a little and enter a time not our own. The works I see at the Met inspire within me admiration for the craftsmanship and artistry of the masons, potters, sculptors and painters through millennia. Choose any room and you can (if you will) be transported for a moment or an hour to another place and another time – each in its own way enriching you experience and understanding of the human condition.

Thursday, September 9th

After visiting the Met on Tuesday we were browsing in Barnes and Noble (in the art section) and happened on a book titled Antoine’s Alphabet. Had it been left to me I would never have seen it – but John who is somewhat taller than me saw it on a top shelf. It is a slim volume of short essays (26 + of them) all on the work of Watteau. Watteau has been a favourite artist since I saw a reproduction of his work in the first art history book I owned. When I go to the Met I always visit Mezzetin – it is like visiting an old friend. The surface beauty of the painting is in sharp contrast to the intense longing on the clown’s face. I have never been able to figure out why I am drawn to this painting. I am hoping to find some new insight from this book by Jed Pearl. Perhaps he will say what I can’t express myself. Here is an example:

“The mysterious young man, painted by Jean –Antoine Watteau, ...is a splendidly absurd mechanism dedicated to the idea of human feeling. The touch of Watteau’s brush, the power of his conception, here .... a mingling of velvetiness and steeliness that constitutes one of the miracles of art. I cannot get enough of the easy and yet persuasive power of this work... “ (Jed Pearl, Antoine’s Alphabet, p 4)

John Franklin

On our Tuesday visit to the Met I suggested some time be spent with the work of seventeenth century Dutch art. The works of this period were among the first to generate my interest in visual art. Though my interest is now very diverse – I never tire of returning to these gentle inspiring paintings. I didn’t know what to expect when participating with Caitlin on this creative project – and my responses I could not have predicted.

Tuesday September 7th

Entering another time, another place makes possible – a fresh look at the world around me. I am newly aware of this possibility through time spent before paintings, earnest in detail and deeply respectful of their subject matter. I have two Dutch friends from the 17th century whose creative gifts well exercised have brought me pleasure to the eye and food for the soul over many years – Rembrandt and Vermeer. On this visit to the Met I am once again able to enter their world and engage in silent dialogue with them.

Vermeer’s depiction of the tranquility of simple domestic figures alerts me to the cacophony of contemporary culture and generates a longing for the nurturing power of the silences. Rembrandt’s work seems laden with thoughtfulness – quiet reflection, perhaps too serious – and yet in a world where action seems to negate thought – or at least replace it, I am reminded of the noble gift of reflection, that ability to stand back and consider, the eagerness to know more deeply, a moment devoted to bringing a bit of order to one’s fragmented world.

I sit before a work by that most talented of painters – Rembrandt. It’s a painting of Aristotle contemplating a bust of Homer. While writing I am distracted as I look down at the floor with footwear and feet of a seemly infinite variety passing by – I look up and am settled by this engaging work with its two figures – linking philosophical thought (Aristotle) with poetic imagination (Homer) – one guided more by logic – the other more by story, both walking a path in the interest of truth.

What draws me to these painters is their respect for what is human and for ordinary life – no idealization, no pretence but a heartfelt engagement with the world as they knew it.

Thursday September 9th

Strange how a still, voiceless object can communicate with such power and eloquence. Does the ubiquitous din of our contemporary society drown out the voices of silence? Statue and canvass – brush and chisel - have served to bridge time – bring past to present and present to past – a conversation that seems too rare.

Some moments with Watteau’s Mezzetin and I ask – Is the harlequin – that comic figure – bearing the weight of a loss or at least an absence? His trance – like expression finds some resolve in the passionate intensity of his hands, instruments active in creating sound on his lute – perhaps music of lament, perhaps of hope, perhaps of love.

Strange too how an artisan’s hand – two centuries gone has crafted an images that breathes life at this later time, generates interest, creates conversation and opens the way for a moment of joy, of sadness, of compassion or curiosity and nurtures the human spirit two centuries on.

Our current penchant for the immediate and the cavalier assumption that ‘now’ out values ‘then’ and ‘then’ merits not our time or interest is a falsehood all too common. Cultural memory now easily lost is not easily regained. Such loss breeds isolation and a directionless fog, identity masked and uncertain, homelessness.

September 8th, Jeanne DeMuth Alnot

2010-09-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

Jeanne DeMuth Alnot, wrote a wonderful non fiction piece on two paintings in the gallery she chose. The work she did speaks for itself.

The Collection
in response to Giovanni Paolo Panini’s Modern Rome and Ancient Rome

by Jeanne DeMuth Alnot

I accumulate. Image and concept and connection. Together, they must, I’m sure of it, coalesce to form a coherent whole.

Panini corroborates and contradicts, defying me to generate meaning from the dispersed. In life. In art. Ancient Rome and Modern Rome mock the idea of convergence. Tableaus layered but not melded.

Ruins are times passed and overlapping. Cityscapes are places concurrent though discrete.

More than can be grasped together.

The limitation of perception and consciousness.

Time running backwards and forwards, forwards and back. The ancient gives way to the modern; the modern decays into the ancient.

And the deliberation of men, the urge to reconcile and apprehend, the need for information to condense into knowledge.

I accumulate. Like Panini, I hoard and layer, ideas stacking up in my brain. If I study the picture long enough, if I slave enough over the tablet and master plan, can I render my stash in massive, dusty tomes, complete records and narratives that describe everything at once? Panini’s tomes, my tomes, half the size of men, half the size of my body?

Panini’s men, in rapt deliberation. Amid the cluttered world.

Surrounded by statues. The transformation of flesh to stone.

The confirmation of isolation.

I accumulate. Yet what if the fragments will not all cooperate, will not distill, as Panini attests, into that hard-sought, unified whole? If I force fusion I must make reductive representation. It is only a handful here, a cluster there that consent to align.

My striving pen, my amassing trove.

The Experience: Museum writing is a habit of mine, so the milieu of the exercise was not new to me. The constraints, however, were entirely novel. As a nonfiction writer, I find the requirement to produce something essentially complete in a day or two unrealistic. It forced me to work off the cuff, creating a super-short that is essentially reactive in nature. By contrast, my proclivity is to write longer, deliberative essays. The Met project certainly pushed me outside my comfort zone.

Bio: Jeanne DeMuth Alnot earned her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. A native of Iowa, she has also lived in New Jersey, Paris, Thailand, and Brooklyn. She is a former staff member of the journal Lumina, and her work has appeared in Two Review.

September 9th

2010-09-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today John and Marion Franklin joined me again, much to my delight. I entered The Met to see them in the Balcony waving. It was a welcome sight. We started out in the Astor Court (The Chinese Garden) not to write but just to enjoy. Marion also photographed me there. She has been to the museum many times, and knows it well and yet had not been in that room.

Afterwords we headed to Gallery 18 - Boucher, Chardin, Fragonad, and Watteau in order to write by Watteau's painting Mezzetin (Circa 1718-1720).

John wrote with me today, later we all had a very interesting discussion of art and hospitality; the fact that art like hospitality operates ideally under a reciprocal relationship, the artist or hosts skill in exchange for the visitors consideration. I am paraphrasing poorly here, but hopefully the idea is conveyed.

I have noticed that one of the effects that writing at the Met appears to have on my poems is that they interact with time differently. Not that my poems fit particularly well into the contemporary stream of poetry, but they now seem to belong to a different non specified era entirely. Even the poems about the apocalypse have a different, older language that shapes them.

The poem I wrote today is to my favorite poet, who is rather well known for writing about/to some of his favorite poets (Yeats, Byron). I don't usually like to write about poets, or poetry as part of a poem, but there are exceptions to every rule I guess.

To Auden

After excavating little graves,
it was the words you lifted,
placed carefully beside one another.
Ring worm thick.

The Ancients summoned down, moved
with the grace of marionettes.
You played with meter
till you married it with quiet

generosity, kept out of newspapers.
You summoned a sky without stars. Who could say
that it would not miss you?

Factors
Day of the Week: Thursday
Occupancy of Museum: Fairly busy, pretty loud.
Arrived at: 1:00
Departed at: 3:00
Read on Commute: Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, which is a well crafted, thought provoking, quote filled book on the stewardship of words. It is a part English, part theology book on the importance of the language we use, and to what end we use it. So far my favorite quote in the book is by Thoreau "There are more secrets in my trade then any other".

September 8th

2010-09-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of week two, which in and of itself is rather exciting. I feel as if my approach to writing has already been altered, although perhaps only temporarily.

The lovely Jeanne Alnot, a dear friend and fellow SLC graduate from the Non Fiction program joined me. Jeanne's piece will be up later this week. She led the way in search of Titian, but we ended up writing in Gallery Ten: Batoni, Giaquinto, Panini.

While we were there some sort of construction began in the room next door, so they moved equipment through and I enjoyed the contrast of the refined quiet rooms and the loud bulky machinery.

(Poem removed due to publication elsewhere)

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of Museum: light traffic.
Arrived at: 10:00
Departed at: 11:30
Read on Commute: Thunderstuck, Eric Larson

September, 7th

2010-09-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the Met with Marion and John Franklin. Marion is a retired teacher, and John is the head of Imago, an charitable organization centered around faith and the arts. They live in Toronto, Ontario, and I was very pleased that they could join me in this endeavor. Since they are away from home and without laptops, their guest pieces will be posted a little later than usual.

The museum was pleasantly empty today and John led the way to the Dutch Masters. We spent quite some time with the Vermeers.

Eventually we ended up writing in front of a Rembrandt, and it was quite pleasant. It was nice to write to write with them and I couldn't help but notice how much neater their penmanship was than mine.

This Strange Journey

The breeze is not to share, sails
stretch out, seize the wind,
a small claiming for the journey north.
You packed the bag with rice,
dried meat. We hear rumors of tea
on board; but have yet to glimpse anything hot.
Our breath, at first the smoke of dragons on watch;
now curled ice. We scan the sea
for unusual creatures, coats bulk around us, transforming
frail widows into plump babushkas,
strong men into giants.

Factors
Day of the Week: Tuesday
Occupancy of Museum: Some light traffic.
Arrived at: 3:00
Departed at: 5:00
Read on Commute: I finished Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem. The ending was excellent. I also started a nonfiction book by Eric Larson called Thunderstruck.

September, 6th

2010-09-06T13:48:00.001-07:00

Today was Labor Day, and like most holiday Mondays the Met was open, instead of being closed like it normally is.

I headed in the direction of the Monets, feeling as if I needed some impressionism in my life. I wrote in several different rooms today but stayed within the Annenberg Collection.

The above painting by Monet, The Bodman Oak, Fotainebeau Forest, 1865 caught my eye, so I read the blurb which began ordinarily but ended with this "The slash in the upper right hand corner may have been made by Monet, who reputedly mutilated some canvases in order to discourage a landlord from seizing them in 1866". I looked long and hard for the slash which I couldn't see.

One young girl, carried by her grandfather, expressed loudly in front of Monet's Water Lillies that she would "Like that one at home".

In the gallery where I wrote the poem posted below, a young woman in a pretty dress and a hijab was with an older woman wearing Capri pants, who kept taking pictures of the younger woman. Later that day after leaving my friend's West Village apartment I ran into the younger woman who acknowledged me with a smile before I recognized her.

At Sailors Delight, take Warning

We bear these days of red skies, try to search for clues
realign bodies, the lack of rain stretching out weeks. Long sleeve
shirts, jeans, hats piled on; we strip at night,

reveal bodies brown as peach pits. Nothing keeps
the sun out, still the earth is no warmer than it was.
I chart it nightly. My father searches books
for explanations, combs footnotes for skeleton keys.

In the valley he strings oranges from trees, lights fires
underneath, shifts the oranges axis every day or two,
records the browning spots. My sons burnt
their clothes last week and spend hours blending
into trees, deer hunting. They smile more now,
teeth a shocking white.

Factors
Day of the Week: Holiday Monday
Occupancy of Museum: Bearably busy.
Arrived at: 11:00
Departed at: 12:15
Read on Commute: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (I'm almost finished, it keeps getting more and more interesting). I could use new reading recommendations.

September, 5th

2010-09-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

The Met was very busy today and I found myself wandering aimlessly into the Modern Art section, which was slightly more peaceful. As I passed a Roy Lichtenstein a preteen boy in a Pink Floyd T-shirt said to his father loudly "If we leave here right now, you don't even have to buy me a watch".

I sat in front of Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30). I wrote for a while when a toddler ran at the painting excitedly exclaiming "Glow Paint! Glow Paint!" only to be told otherwise by his mother.

I wrote a lot today but most of it didn't turn out well, but I do have one small offering. Below is a photo of the page I wrote with first edits added in at an Upper West Side Starbucks.

Secret Sharer

A five hour flight away,
to say nothing of airport security.

I can call from the front stoop
to the freeway, your artery, the gap

between work and La Brea
I fill, you mend

a heated walk.
We vault worries,

embed the other's
life within.

Factors
Day of the Week: Sunday
Occupancy of Museum: Busy, loud.
Arrived at: 12:00
Departed at: 1:25
Read on Commute: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

September, 4

2010-09-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

I arrived at the Met first thing in the morning today. The doors were not yet open. Most of the people where in a line for the Big Bamboo tour up on the roof, although many seemed to be in that line based on incorrect information. I was the first to enter, and the guard that checks in purses opened mine up and asked if I was with the tour. "No". He then informed me that I could not yet enter. I asked why not, after all, the tours start at the same time that the museum opens. He informed me that the museum was not yet open. I was surprised, and about to apologize, when he checked his watch and sheepishly let me in.

I am now convinced that the people who work at the member's desk on the lower floor truly enjoy their job. They are always chatting happily among themselves, yet are very courteous and eager to help.

I entered the museum, and walked through the Mary and Michael Jahavis Gallery otherwise known as the Classics/ Greek and Roman wing, and found that it was empty aside from three guards. Since this is rarely the case I decided to take advantage of the situation and stay. It was really lovely, and the wing remained fairly empty for the hour I was in it.

Telling Time by the Sun

Afloat, stomach down, goggles on,
a sliver fish darts past.
All those mangos diced

on the bread board,
slipped into lips, swallowed delicately.

Plentiful peaches, and the soil smells
of autumn.

Afternoon sleep
with filtered curtain light.

Flesh in this maze, pulled always
to the magnetic center; light takes a body,
reduces it to a day.

Factors
Day of the Week: Saturday
Occupancy of Museum: Empty
Arrived at: 9:30
Departed at: 10:40
Read on Commute: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem

September Third

2010-09-03T16:14:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to visit one of my favorite parts of the museum, the Sackler Wing, where the Temple of Dendur is.

I remember first seeing The Temple of Dendur at ten, when my parents took my brother and I to New York for the first time. It is the reason I fell in love with the Met. I can remember nothing else of that first visit.

It was interesting writing there, because it is one of the few places in the Museum where visitors spend long periods of time. People stop and sit and talk, watch their children, one man read a book for over an hour while I was there.

The writing came easier today, which was relief.

I apologize. The poem originally here was revised and accepted elsewhere.

Factors
Day of the Week: Friday. The Met is open till 9:00 on Friday's and Saturday's. There is also live classical music from 5:00 on, in the balcony which is nice.
Occupancy of Museum: Busy, but not overwhelmingly so.
Arrived at: 4:05
Departed at: 5:20
Read on Commute: Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (portions of it involve the Met)

September Second

2010-09-02T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today I had my first guest, Lauren Hilger, friend and former teaching partner. Her poem is forthcoming tomorrow. Lauren led the way on my request and we found ourselves in Gallery 36: Carracci, Reni and Geurcino.

The room was red and dominated by religious icons, with some greco-roman inspired art and a painting of a sorceress thrown in.

Writing was harder today for me. Although I had some interesting ideas I did not have anything that really qualifies as a fully formed poem.

Lauren wrote a lot while standing, and that is something I want to do more in the future.

I wrote my first Ekphrastic poem after seeing the following painting. The painting and my poem share a title.

Rest on the Flight to Egypt

Tip my head against the seat's
blue cotton. Sleep close.

The pilot's voice
comes on overhead, turbulence.

My seatmate crosses her body, determined thumb
and fat forefinger connecting
with each covered breast.

Factors
Day of the Week: Thursday
Occupancy of Museum: Fairly empty
Arrived at: 2:00
Departed at: 3:15
Read on Commute: The World Without Us, Allan Weisman
Tone of Writing produced: Self Aware

September 1st

2010-09-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

For my first day I wrote in the Florance and Herbert Irving Galleries of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia. To be specific I wrote the following poem, part of a series of tree titled poems, in the Astor Court (pictured above).

Jizimu

I want to place a storm calming voice in you,
the deep baritone of a grandfather clock,

each breath now a failed revelation.
Adam's apple bobbing uselessly. In closed door quiet
I can hear the click of teeth, the flesh
of your lips meeting.

To speak to you now feels boastful, excessive,
so I see you rarely, cross my knees
in the guest chair.

Factors
Day of the Week: Wednesday
Occupancy of Museum: Few lines, empty rooms, but the major galleries were fairly busy.
Arrived at: 1:25
Departed at: 2:55
Read on Commute: The Gardner Heist by Ulrick Boser
Tone of all writing produced(not just the posted poem): Melodramatic

The Project Outline

2010-08-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

This September I have decided to undergo a poetry experiment. The loose outline of the experiment is below.

The Objective: To examine an environment's effect on writing and the influence and interaction of art, history and routine.

Rules:

1. Visit the Met every day for a whole month. This includes Mondays when the museum is closed and I cannot enter.
2. Write a poem at the Met. If the Met is closed this includes the steps and the part of Central Park that surrounds the Museum.
3. Edit and post the poem within 24 hours. 48 at the latest.
4. Writing must be done at the museum but it does not necessarily have to be about the museum or the art it contains.

Additionally, I am looking for visitors: writers, artists, photographers, scientists, etc, to join me for one day at the museum. The work they produce will be posted on this blog. If you are interested in joining me, please email cthomson@gm.slc.edu.