Spring in The City may have a few confines ... but the signs are all there. I saw them while walking up the street/avenue with my mom (Grandma Betty??) and Darling Daughter yesterday, on our way to the ICP (International Center of Photography), where we saw a very cool exhibit of the Czech photographer Tichy whose life's work has been to take blurry, skewed, random, imperfect shots with homemade cameras, because that's how life is (imperfect and homemade??) and also as an artistic jab at the confines of Communism. We saw them again — the signs of spring, including a few fiddleheads popping up their bizarre little heads — on our way to/from MoMA, where we saw the fascinatingly bizarre Tim Burton exhibit and the bizarrely fascinating performance art of Marina Abramovic, who was sitting there, in the middle of MoMA, engaging in a staring contest (essentially) with whoever wanted to sit across a table from her and stare, as the centerpiece of her own exhibit entitled "The Artist is Present." Then Tracey Ullman sat next to us at the MoMA café; I had no idea who she was, but Grandma Betty recognized her. Really. Perhaps she was there for the Tim Burton exhibit, as she (Ullman, not Grandma Betty) starred in his movie Corpse Bride. And, in the case of Ullman, we tried not to stare. In short (or long), it was a good day, an interesting day, with much walking and richness of sights, capped off by another trip to that rooftop bar — how could we resist?? — if at a slightly later hour than our prior visit, i.e., lights were switching on despite the sky's still being blue, which reminded me of a scene I'd seen while walking in Newport just days before ...
