There is a saying that if you wake up in NY you have already spent $20. J also added that if you walk out your front door, it cost you another $100. Personally I think its both money and time, that are siphoned from you by this city. You go out for a dinner and before you know it its 4am. You hop on the subway, accidentally get an express to Queens instead of the Upper West side and it takes you a good hour to retrace your footsteps. You leave the loft to go to MOMA find out its snowing, MOMA closes and your still walking the streets in wonder at the transformative softness of snow. You go to Kmart to get contact, realise your near The Strand book store, 18 miles of books and there goes another 3 hours.
The pursuit of contact actually occupied an entire day. Having decided to start my work all over again due to the crappiness of the barely sticky contact, I thought that I could go out, pick up some more, spend another day or so transferring the drawing and I'd only be 2 days behind. It turned out that in all of Manhattan not a single Office or School supply store, Target, Kmart or any other Megamart or Art store had contact. Towards the end of the day as night was already near I located a stationary supply store at Columbia University. As with so many distractions in NY I didn't mind the detour. I like to walk around college campuses, they feel so full of possibility and wonder and brilliance. All those smart people in one place - its dangerously exciting.
Standing in the queue at the stationers I noted the tweedy professors and the mix of international students buying blank notebooks in which I imagined big ideas would soon emerge from there big brains. It reinvigorated thoughts about my own thesis, or at least my own desire and ability to complete my thesis. At the cash register I handed over my supplies and was rudely stripped of my idealistic musing about knowledge when I was told that if I 'Liked' the stores facebook page I could get 15% off. Great I want 15% off... but I don't know how to 'like' a page. I leaned across the counter, lowered my voice and confessed my deep ignorance to the cashier (careful not to pollute the atmosphere around the other highly intellectual beings). "Sorry Mama, I don't know, I just work here". I turn to a woman behind me, showed her my phone and ask for assistance. She didn''t know how to use the fb mobile app. The next person didn't speak English well. And pretty soon my romanticism about University campuses was clubbed to death by the reality that there is so much to learn and learning is an awkward and slightly embarrassing activity requiring you to first have to confess what you do not know. Sadly I had not absorbed any knowledge by strolling around the hallowed halls of neo-classical colleges or the large domed library. I had learned a lesson the Rumsfieldian way - clumsily and without a trace of elegance or eloquence.
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." D. Rumsfield
The pursuit of contact actually occupied an entire day. Having decided to start my work all over again due to the crappiness of the barely sticky contact, I thought that I could go out, pick up some more, spend another day or so transferring the drawing and I'd only be 2 days behind. It turned out that in all of Manhattan not a single Office or School supply store, Target, Kmart or any other Megamart or Art store had contact. Towards the end of the day as night was already near I located a stationary supply store at Columbia University. As with so many distractions in NY I didn't mind the detour. I like to walk around college campuses, they feel so full of possibility and wonder and brilliance. All those smart people in one place - its dangerously exciting.
Standing in the queue at the stationers I noted the tweedy professors and the mix of international students buying blank notebooks in which I imagined big ideas would soon emerge from there big brains. It reinvigorated thoughts about my own thesis, or at least my own desire and ability to complete my thesis. At the cash register I handed over my supplies and was rudely stripped of my idealistic musing about knowledge when I was told that if I 'Liked' the stores facebook page I could get 15% off. Great I want 15% off... but I don't know how to 'like' a page. I leaned across the counter, lowered my voice and confessed my deep ignorance to the cashier (careful not to pollute the atmosphere around the other highly intellectual beings). "Sorry Mama, I don't know, I just work here". I turn to a woman behind me, showed her my phone and ask for assistance. She didn''t know how to use the fb mobile app. The next person didn't speak English well. And pretty soon my romanticism about University campuses was clubbed to death by the reality that there is so much to learn and learning is an awkward and slightly embarrassing activity requiring you to first have to confess what you do not know. Sadly I had not absorbed any knowledge by strolling around the hallowed halls of neo-classical colleges or the large domed library. I had learned a lesson the Rumsfieldian way - clumsily and without a trace of elegance or eloquence.
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." D. Rumsfield