I don’t know what that title is about. I just needed a title, and the skies were magnificent during our little road trip (and are still). It’s a fine thing to get out of the city for a couple of days.
We built fires and cooked over them; we floated on a calm lake, surrounded by fall colors and long, impressionist reflections thereof beneath yet another of this fall’s perfect blue and cloud-studded skies; walked through the trees at midnight to the water’s edge and stared open-mouthed at the sheer infinity of glitter in the night sky away from the light pollution of the city.
We drove the winding roads and got lost— once abysmally in the pitch dark of a no-coverage area (how we rely on our smartphones!), and once pleasantly in the sunshine, a new, scenic route that took us where we were going after all. We followed our instincts and our noses (easier done in daylight).
Our cabin in the park (photo by Zac Gilbert)
A pleasant hour spent in Hudson, meandering, looking at old things, drinking coffee. Zac and I each acquired a small rack of deer antlers from a shop whose contents made me drool. There was a pair of vicious-looking hand-wrought iron tongs that more resembled hand-sized claws; the man said they were for baking a potato over a fire, which sounds innocuous enough, but man you should’ve seen them. I ought to’ve taken photo. ($250 was out of budget for such a whim of an object.)
Ever on mission for the Museum, I also obtained three new photographs for the collection (above, below), and one new book. The book is not particularly old, nor lovely, nor acid-free (it’s okay for 1919), but its subject matter was too tempting: The Erotic Motive in Literature. A sampling of some chapters therein:
Unconscious Consolatory Mechanisms in Authorship
Projection, Villain Portrayal and Cynicism as Work of the Unconscious
Literary Emotions and the Neuroses
The Infantile Love Life of the Author and its Sublimations
Cannibalism: the Atreus Legend
Unfortunately, while we were off having fun, the government shut down in our absence. (The Nation needed us more than we thought.)
e daggar art: THE MUSEUM 