First thing first Saturday in December we were over to SFO for offsite parking, through the effortlessly empty check-in and security by six with a somewhat shaky “breakfast”

before a seven a.m. flight

which took us over the site of our sad dogs and out

across the brown and snowless land to land

on a grey JFK late afternoon, be conveyed into Long Island City,

our pleasant base of operations thanks to our generous friend Ivana and her friend Pip

who have agreed to put us up/put up with us for the week.

Soon after arrival we located the G Train to Bed Stuy for the first of several dinners and chaos with Luz, Christine and Izel,; the next day, after the Times at breakfast and raking winter light, it

was back to Putnam Avenue to prep for the fifteen three-year-olds expected for the latter’s

third birthday, which initially involved ranging around grey Brooklyn for cake and balloons

until in due course a fine rising disruption ensued, crested with cake and ice cream and

eventually subsided into stories as bedtime approached [and was exceeded].

My seldom-seen far-ranging son Bryan [not shown] stuck around for most of it and

Monday we met up with him

for lunch at MOMA then

[Louise Bourgeois; Stephen Shore]

late afternoon at the Met, where my impression of Michelangelo’s unrelentingly masterful drawings was even less sanguine than Peter Schjeldahl’s but the World War One drawings, prints and ephemera began to look promising, albeit unfortunately just at closing.

BLM took off, never to be seen again until the following morning, and we enjoyed excellent Indian food with friends on the Upper East Side before dispersing into the night…

Tuesday we met Luz and Bryan for an early lunch, the latter on his way to Texas via La Guardia

while L and I continued to the Met Breuer for the deliriously spotty “Delirious”

which has a big bountiful 1963 Dean Fleming right out of the elevators but otherwise quite a lot of my less [or least] favorite work from the sixties and seventies [not shown].

The late Edvard Munch downstairs was revelatory, at times hilarious, and a floor below that

endless photographs from India were by then too much to absorb…

plus we had an old school Italian dinner scheduled with old school friends at Manducati’s Rustica around the corner from us in Long Island City, one of many [every night in fact] lined up

and in place weeks before leaving from the coast, forever getting us in well after our early-rising hostess had taken to her bed, which given the lengthy catchings-up was the case that night

as  well and in rain at that, Tuesday.

…and only just begun, though awhile and many miles ago at this point…

More to come…