The Admiral Goes Home

Manhattan, NYC - 12 kilometres walked

It was always going to come to an end for Ana before me.

I had arranged for a work gap of 10 months, but Ana just 7 as she wanted to be back at work in advance of Glenhyrst's huge annual fundraiser. So yesterday after traveling together for more than 4000 miles at sea, I said goodbye to my Admiral, my lover, my wife, and my best friend as we kissed on the platform of the Norstrand Avenue station then she stepped onto the train and didn't look back, eyes directed towards Canada. For the next month we would be on separate journeys; hers aclimatizing to regular life and mine returning SeaLight to her home in Newport Yacht Club. I am going to miss her. Yet I belive in the adage that absence makes the heart grow (even) fonder.

Dad and I left the station and began walking to a different station to catch a train into Manhattan. We were a bit sluggish and still full from our huge farewell breakfast of bacon, herbed hash browns, eggs, fruit, and toast, but the walking felt good. The ride here had been ridiculous as we hadn't entirely settled on the best route for Ana to take to the airport and as we rode the bus, the Google advice on when to get off and which bus or subway to take kept changing every time we looked at it, so we sat paralyzed as we moved northward, reviewing the persistently changing options, getting more and more frustrated. We finally got close to the station Dad had arrived at from the airport so took that option, which ended up being the most expensive and certainly not the fastest.

We arrived to the platform just as the subway we needed was about to leave so we jumped on, then didn't realize until we'd whizzed well past our intended stop that we were on the wrong train. No matter, we're walkers, so we got off and walked. Being in Manhattan was a shock - so many more people and tourists, the towering buildings, shading out the landscape, the enhanced noise, the closeness of everything.

We walked around Columbus Circle and the edge of Central Park then down Broadway until we found the cross street which lead us to New York's Museum of Modern Art - MOMA. Before going in we snagged a hot dog from one of the hundreds of sausage carts on the street as this one proclaimed "New York's BEST hot dog!" It was pretty good, but not sure if it lived up to that bold claim.

The MOMA was extraordinary. I was glad Dad had wanted to come as this had been on my list of things to see for our first stop in Manattan last fall but we hadn't found the time to visit. The four floors of exhibits had works from recognizable artists such as Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and Henri Matisse, but most were from artists I'd never heard of. I enjoy modern art but never pretend to understand any of it, and I don't think it is meant to be understood; it's how it makes you feel. The stuffed animals sewn together, faces inward, arranged into large balls, suspended from the ceiling made me feel whimsical and a little disturbed that I couldn't see their furry faces. The 17 CRT televisions with identical images of a swaying palm tree made me feel Videodrome. The painting of a black man in a dark corner with jarring white specs of eyes made me feel like I was being watched. The chocolate brown image of a young girl holding a doll which struggled to pull itself out of artwork left me creeped. The spread open legs of a delimbed and mostly detorso'd woman, perched suggestively on a box of ammunition made me feel simultaneously eroticised and revolted.

But the most impactful experience were the thirty minutes between 1:30 and 2:00 where we watched The Clock, a film pieced together with snippets of other movies, all of which contain images of clocks and or mentions of time. For example, there is a scene from a black and white movie that zooms in on a clock showing 1:43, then a man calls to his wife. Paul Newman appears, looking at his watch, which reads 1:51. As a clock shows 1:53, Peter Parker shows up late for his shift at the pizzeria and is told to have an order delivered miles uptown by 2pm otherwise he will be fired.

We didn't know anything about this movie and I sat in the comfy couch seat, leaned way back, intrigued at the strange fluidity of storyline as it cut from movie scene to movie scene, with actors doing different things, but all focused on time. The soaring background music, which flowed through the abrupt scene changes somehow held the film together, creating a strange sort of narrative where none existed. When the movie reached 2pm then kept going onto 2:01, I checked the time on my phone, wondering how long this movie ran for and if we should leave. It was 2:01. I started to wonder. Dad and I left as we still had much of the MOMA yet to explore, and at the exit of the small screening room was a description of the work. It was indeed a 24-hour long film, synchronized to local time, made with 8,000 patched together snippets of one hundred years of television and cinema. It was an extraodinary artpiece and like nothing I've ever seen before. I hope to watch it in its entirety some day.

Dad and I left the MOMA, happy with our investment of time there and with perhaps a new perspective on time itself.

We walked southward, looking around and up, recognizing buildings, enjoying the spectacles, pathing through the crowds, until Dad was derailed by a sign for an Authentic German Beer House and an arrow pointed that way. We immediately turned left and found it a block down.

The beer hall was nearly empty but that didn't stop Oompas like us, despite paying twelve bucks per half litre of Germany's finest.

After our pints we walked down into a station and the B train that would take us all the way to Sheepshead Bay had just arrived, perfect timing, so we jumped on just as the doors were closing. It wasn't until about 30 minutes later that I noticed the giant "D" on the subway car's interior and looked at my Google maps to see we were well on our way to Coney Island. My navigation game has been so unbelievably off.

Alas, after an extended sightseeing tour of residential and gritty Brooklyn we arrived at Coney Island station, transferred to the Q line, which whisked us to Sheepshead in 8 minutes, passing the larger-than-expected Coney Island Amusement Park along the way.

I felt compelled to tour Dad through the two food markets we'd discovered the other day and he was suitably impressed. Our final, final stop was the giant Liquor Warehouse to pick up a box of cardBordeaux then we walked back to the Sheepshead Bay Yacht Club, returned to the boat, had a call with Ana and heard about her successful journey home, then made an amazing dinner of fresh garden salad (sprinkled with trail mix, Dad's innovation), fresh bread, rice, and ginger soy tuna steaks, then hung out chatting until we were tired.