March 1, 2005

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  Sunday after church in Perth Amboy, i went to see Christo's Gates in NYC... met my cousin, barb, at penn station, and we went uptown to 72nd street.  at first it is hard to see what the big deal is, esp when you come to any of the large entrances to central park - the Gates there are generally larger, more of them, and v. crowded with all sorts of folk milling about.  there are 'souvenir' stands of sorts, selling pamphlets and postcards etc, but at least those proceeds go towards a new york charity, and are not crass comercialism... once you choose your pathway and walk into the park, you get a better sense of what is going on... not all pathways have the Gates, and the Gates are not completely along all pathways, rather, they are spread more organically throughout the 23 miles that they cover.  as we ambled through them, we decided to take a predominantly northerly course along central park west, mostly becz the buildings there are more interesting... and becz our pathway was chosen at random, we saw alot of v. cool things... all around us were the typically driven new yorkers, going wherever they were going, with the Gates being merely 'window dressing' along the way.  then there were the tourists, who felt they 'should' see the Gates while they were in the city. finally there were those, of whom we were two, whose sole purpose was to view the Gates.  viewing is the wrong approach, it soon became clear -- it is so much more than viewing -- and yes, that is what all performance artists say, but it was abundantly clear in this case. first, the park in winter is mostly brown mud, gray leafless trees, and white snow, all surrounded by gray/brown/brick buildings.  the orange of the Gates looks wonderful against this backdrop.  secondly, it is way cool to look at how the different ppl react to the Gates - what they say and do, and even which path they take through them. my cousin and i were ambling, most were city-walking, and some were even running.  some were taking pictures, some were looking around going "i don't get it"... it was the 'i don't get it' crowd that really had me pay attn to what was going on around me, to see what there was to 'get'...  this made me think about gates as a metaphor, for things that close you in or open to you...and how the billowing fabric of the Gates let everything through, without obstacles, ebbing and flowing, coming and going... and when you saw the wind moving through some of the gates while the rest stayed still, that was very awesome too... the wind moves where it wills, and so could/should we... as we walked up to 103rd street the park gets rockier and hilly-er...there are streams and stone bridges that become picturesque in the snow which i would normally not have seen... there is a miniature swedish chalet that houses a year-round marionette theatre we ran across that bears checking out on its own merits... standing on top of an escarpment, and looking back over the park, it was around 4:30 - the sun was down enough so that the park lay in a bowl of shadow, with patches of brown mud showing through the snow and trees, with the orange Gates swooping down the side of the bowl in front of us, running across the park, and up the bowl on the other side to the foot of a skyscraper - and at the v. top of this skyscraper the sun still shone on it, glinting off the windows as if they were ice.... that is what the Gates were about.

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