BRRRR...

A cold day in New York. I was out early in search of a Saturday New York Times--for the hard copy crossword, really; I could read the rest online, but I'm not fond of digital crosswords. Give me pen and paper... Lazed around a while before heading south on Lexington to Grand Central Station, where we had spotted a nice gift to take home with us on Sunday. Stopped there for a cup of coffee and a bite of breakfast before heading back uptown to see the Ernst Ludwig Kirchner show at the Neue Galerie. (No pictures, please...) A fine exhibition, spanning his entire career, from pre-World War I days through the time of his suicide on the even of the Second World War. A sad story of depression and addiction, one affecting too many of our creative people. I was reminded of the energy and vivacity of his paintings, particularly those depicting the louche society of Berlin in the 1930s--a time when Christopher Isherwood was there, escaping the strictures of conventional England. New to me, though, were the lush green landscape paintings from the later years of Kirchner's life, spent in a chalet in picturesque Davos, Switzerland.

We have eaten good German/Austrian food on past visits, but the line this time was too long and our time too short, so we headed out and stopped on Madison Avenue for an egg salad sandwich, which we munched hurriedly in the cold on the steps of the Met. No New York visit is complete without a walk through the park, however, so we braved the cold and strolled down the paths closest to Fifth Avenue, past the big pond where toy boat enthusiasts sail their yachts...

After a while, however, we gave in to fatigue and hailed a cab to take us back to our hotel, where we enjoyed a welcome hour of rest before venturing out again for dinner and theater.

We had arranged to meet Ellie's nephew--well, our nephew--Danny and his wife at Chez Josephine, a French restaurant named after the great African-American singer/dancer who was the toast of Paris in the 1920s. Our table was placed beneath an eye-popping giant portrait of the scantily-clad legend, and we enjoyed the excellent products of true French cuisine. Great to catch up with family and share the stories of our very different and yet deeply connected lives...

Which was the theme, really, of The Thin Place, the play we saw at Playwrights Horizons, the off-Broadway theater right next door to the restaurants. Staged on a stark set, completely unadorned save for two arm chairs, with a cast of four characters, it examines "the thin place" where the membrane between the individual mental spaces we inhabit seems stretched so thin as to become transparent, even penetrable. Whether through trickery or illusion, we imagine ourselves and we find ourselves "communicating"--with each other, with the dead--in unsettling ways that defy rational explanation. I happen to think that the aesthetic experience--the play, the picture on the wall by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner--can be precisely that "thin place" where we come to share mysteriously in the reality of a human being like ourselves in so many ways, and yet so different, so distant, so unreachable.

It was raining again after the theater let out, and Danny worked some magic to hail a cab for us. Our goodbyes were too hasty, but we were grateful for the comfort of a ride back to our hotel.