Late Summer

Today, it was nicer after a very humid weekend and I found myself strolling around the neighborhood very slowly in the late afternoon, enjoying the light and trying to notice things with the idea of putting them on my blog. It's amazing how hard it is to capture a whole mood with one photo. Although the wonders of digital editing do make it easier.

Yesterday we went to the Neue Galerie, finally, after years of planning to do so. It is lovely but strangely small, in a lavishly appointed town house on Fifth Avenue just up the street from the Metropolitan. We did not visit the renowned Viennese-style cafe attached, though I hope to do so one day. They rotate their collection, either because it is too small for the space or to keep you coming back. This time there was a lot of Schiele. His tormented-looking portraits seemed strangely out of place in these surroundings.

Rain!

I wanted to go outside and shoot pictures today; I thought this might cheer me up. It never stopped raining, however, so this is all I have. A gray, reflective and seemingly deserted world. Everyone is inside, awaiting better times. You can hardly see the Brooklyn Bridge.

Curiously though, as I look at this picture, I see a hint of blue sky. I certainly did not notice that as I stood on the Promenade, trying to keep the camera dry as rain fell. Maybe it is just a trick of the monitor. Maybe it is symbolic!

We are all sad at MHA today, but trying to be brave.

No Spoilers Here

I finished reading the last Harry Potter book on July 31, which by coincidence is Harry's birthday. He would be 27 this year in real time. I think.

Books 4,5, and 6 I read the day they came out, (I read 3,1 and 2 in that order in 1999, the year I discovered the series) but I put 7 off for a while. One of the chief attractions of these books is that you can't stop reading them -- you desperately want to find out how they end. "Harry Potter and the HBP" in particular ended on a note of great suspense, yet I found myself postponing the moment I would actually start the last book. Because then they would be over, you see. I thought I might feel sad. Or disappointed. I wasn't sure the author could really pull together all the various plot elements. In particular, how to resolve all the contradictions of Snape? And the mysterious correspondence between Harry and Voldemort? What was that all about?

Now that I am done, I can say I am not sad. Or disappointed. She made it work. She pulled it all together.

Now I think it is time to go back to the far more ambitiously historical series that I started reading earlier this year, the Patrick O'Brian books. I got to "The Fortune of War," in which Aubrey and Maturin spend most of their time landlocked in Boston, and then took a break. Not out of lack of interest but because I did not want it to be over too soon. Now I think I have spent too much time away from the early 19th century. It's time to go back.