5 Nov,
NEW YORK AND THE RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART

A couple weeks ago I came upon the name and description of this museum and a coupon from the internet for a free pass to accompany a person paying full price. I thought this would be something worthwhile to prime a trip to Nepal and Bhutan. Dick Freeman and I spent an informative afternoon in this tasteful, new museum. One of the organization's goals is to inform and educate people about the art one finds in the Himalayan areas, concentrating on a Tibetan Buddhism. This it does very well.

At the suggestion of the ticket seller, we joined a small tour group run by a white-haired gentleman who by picking a few exhibits gave the half dozen in the group the barest beginnings of an education. He was wonderfully knowledgeable and able to answer questions without losing us on detail. He made the many arms of the gods less threatening, despite the weapons wielded in each.

He started with the art of Gandhara--the melding of Indian-Buddhism symbols and forms with Greco-Macedonian classical conventions starting in the 3rd C. BCE. Greek facial features, classical Greek hair in ringlets topped with a Buddhist topknot of wisdom; classical draping and arrangement of clothes into a toga; Greek sandals; and a short body of un-classical eastern proportions but shielded with a muscled classical chest, standing on a pediment with a frieze of figures such that one would see on a sarcophagus . The example in the museum is quite instructive of the melding of the familiar with the unfamiliar in a specific setting. (There must be other examples of such cultural fusion come to life in the art of the period, but I can't think of any). A fusion that I'm sure made all the sense in the world to the artists of the day, little aware of what came before and after or what they were "suppose to do" or how they were "suppose to do it".

Our guide, George, explained the Buddhist goddess Tara. She comes in various colors, represented by the colors of the rainbow. I don't quite understand what all she does, or how she functions, but she is a helpful deity, one people turn to and she is known to deliver, ready to jump, coming to one's assistance. This pose of readiness is portrayed by the right leg having slid from its folded, seated position so that it hangs dependent over her seat in readiness to come to assistance. The right hand, open-palmed and dependent resting over the knee gives added motion and intent to her willingness. The way George explained this posture, a bit of ignorance was washed away.

HALLOWEEN

Everyone in NYC was in Halloween mood--much in the way of lawn (if there are lawns in Brooklyn) and fence decorations with cotton strew to look like thick cobwebs, pipe cleaner spiders, parts of human skeletons sticking up from the ground and of course pumpkins. Kids out all Saturday morning and afternoon in costume and adults and teens in the evening/night. Ninjas, Chinese princesses, supermen and Ghostbusters filled the subways. All quite glorious to see, everyone having fun, testing new personas. I haven't experienced Halloween with such intensity since I last trick or treated, probably 45 years ago. And that was before many people took the occasion as seriously as they now do.

NYC MARATHON

Sunday, the 1st was the NYC marathon. We saw the start with the elite women going first over the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island into Brooklyn on TV then walked to the corner of 8th St. and 4th Avenue where we saw the runners run past--all 40,000! The energy was palpable, each runner a part of a larger organism. People around me were calling out, "Go Kate, go Fiona, Go Italy," urging the named runners, their country or the charities they were running for. Energy traveled both ways from runners to bystanders and back, people on the curb held out their hands, slapping palms with the runners. Despite the cold, the wind, the damp, I enjoyed it very much.

The wheelchair participants, the blind, the ones whom you know were out to prove a point were very heroic, including a white haired woman in a wheelchair. Some of the people looked as if they hadn't trained at all and doing grave injustice to their bodies should not have been in the field, their fat jiggling, but still, you have to hand it to them--just to try takes something.

AIRLINE REGULATIONS

Tues 3 Nov--JFK in the early afternoon is almost bare, not the time for flights to Europe or Asia. When I left Billings on Fri I had to remove some SIGN nails from my checked in bag because it was too heavy. So, Dick Freeman and I removed some to a separate box with some clothes to distribute the weight since the allowed check in baggage is 2 bags of 50 lbs each. The box was small, taped up and tied with rope--appropriate with all the roped suitcases on board for the sub continent. The check in people didn't like the box. I think it was too small and their reasoning of it getting wet and ruined didn't make sense. So I was asked to put the box into my red roll-on. After all that work or trying to figure out what is right! Preparing for the next leg to Kathmandu, I've discarded the box since its individual contents are easier to stuff in the red bag. I hope I don't get called again on this.

For the one airport that is the primary eastern gateway to the US, JFK is very tawdry; the people who should be nice are rude, barking orders. In a restroom, I couldn't get hand soap from a whole series of dispensers. The cleaner yelled from her duties, "no soap". I gestured disgust with a shrug and she came out and flicked her hand along the line of soapless sinks, "no soap," she said, as if I was totally clueless and gestured for me to use the other line of sinks. Does the airport have the funds to fill only one line of hand soap dispensers?

DELHI

A night in India, for the 14 hour layover before the flight to Kathmandu.
I'm back in the land of ledger books whose white, colored and carbon papers are of flimsy stuff, so that the ink feathers and is unreadable. How incongruent for a country with a huge computer and informational business. This is also the land of lackeys and gofers--a surfeit of official low level workers who in their attempts to be helpful get in the way.