Do you want to hear about my big trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston? You should. It was awesome.
Hey! I just got up to turn down the TV and realized there is a bagel on the cake plate right behind me! I'm very excited!! Let me grab some cream cheese and tomato and get right back to you.
Holy cow. OK. This is much better. I know. Gluten & dairy. That's not even the worst of it-- I'm also drinking coffee. I know! I'm going to pay for this later. But I feel strongly that we all have a civic duty to self medicate so here I am. You're welcome world.
The MFA. Kathy and I have been looking forward to this museum trip forever. The plan was to meet at a T station and ride the 9 o'clock train in together. Yeah, well. I promise you, I left my house at 7:30. That should have given me plenty of time, but then eighteen wheelers become engulfed in flames and traffic comes to a standstill and plans are laid to waste. I sure hope that fella is OK.
I could never be a commuter. Except for this Fall when I will be a commuter.
I pulled into the parking lot of the T station where Kathy and I would be formulating Plan B. Rest assured, when a Plan B is called for, there are no two sharper minds better suited for the task. We spotted each other across the train tracks. Somehow we had landed ourselves in different parking lots. I won't tell you how long we sat there on the phone looking at each other trying to figure out how to meet up. Here was the big problem. I couldn't figure out how to drive to her parking lot and she couldn't figure out how to drive to mine. To make matters worse, there was no way to get across the tracks because the geniuses who designed the place had erected a giant fence that was only interrupted by an ugly three story high metal train platform spanning the tracks. A giant three story high platform spanning the tracks. A giant platform. Spanning the tracks.
Right. OK, you all got it right away, but it took us some time to figure out all we had to do was walk down to the platform and take the stairs up and over the tracks. Seriously. We were in hysterics by the time we made contact. And that was just the beginning. It would be two hours before the next train, so we decided to leave Kathy's car at the station and I'd drive us into the city even though I only really know how to get to Fenway Park. But first we had to pay for parking which required us to fold up dollar bills with the skill of an origami master in order to shove them into the payment thingy. You know what I'm talking about. Those horrible teeny rusty metal slots. It's a ridiculous system. They even provide a metal poky thing hanging by a rope to help you poke your money through the slot. If you need to order up five hundred metal poky things to dangle by ropes from the rusty payment receptacles that line the commuter rail route, I'm thinking your system may be flawed. The whole process took us like an hour and a half. What must visitors from Europe think? Of course, I couldn't figure out how to use the stairs, so what the hell do I know?
Kathy grabbed her GPS thing and we set off. I've never been under the direction of a GPS, but quickly got used to the nice British lady's voice and drove and drove and drove. Then I did some more driving. Because the British lady didn't know what the fuck she was talking about and we ended up not at the Museum of Fine Arts, but, after taking the most convoluted route in the history of navigation, a little mint green ranch house with peeling white paint around its windows. I like to think of the whole experience as sort of an inadvertent homage to Columbus. Except without the Imperialism or delicious spices. So we set out again, this time committed to driving in the direction of the tall buildings regardless of the promptings of the stupid British chick. It worked.
FYI- the bright side was, once we found the museum, we stumbled upon the most delightful parking garage. It was spacious and above ground and freshly painted a nice bright white, tucked away on a quiet side street. I'll admit, getting up and down the stairs was like climbing K2, but, frankly, it was a pleasure just to be out of the car. Oh, and that's where Kathy presented me with the most delightful gift. She brought me back a sweet little notebook from Versailles! Isn't that the best gift ever? I immediately pulled the index cards I use for taking notes out of my clutch to make room for the note book. I'll tell you what I wrote in it later because, as you well know, there is simply no detail too small.
It took a minute to get into the museum because there was a lovely couple who had an urgent need to wander in front of us to ask a lengthy series of questions of the guy who takes the tickets. If only we had know what was waiting inside for us, we wouldn't have been in nearly as much of a rush.
Once inside, we headed straight upstairs to Bravo for a little lunch. I cannot describe to you how refreshed I felt in that cool, quiet banquette. We had salad and wine. Well, we had salad and wine after I sent back the thing with beets that had been brought to me in error. Which brings me to our waiter slash the entertainment. Let's just say he was an enigma. Oh, he was young and pretty and, don't get me wrong, I count him as a highlight of our trip, but we couldn't quite figure him out. He swung wildly from delightfully flirty to developmentally challenged in a way that we suspected just had to be chemically induced. If only you could have heard him marvel at the fact that Etruscans got married "way back then!!!" In fact, he recommended we skip the Van Gogh and head directly to the ancient arts. FYI- if they've got a single Van Gogh anywhere in that entire museum, I sure didn't see it. And there are no docents anywhere.
This is where I recommend the Museum of Fine Arts rename itself the Museum of Fine Asian Arts. Incidentally, Asian art isn't really my thing. I mean at all. Even where it bumps up against American art it don't like it. And there was tons of it, countless acres of it. I did enjoy the Temple Room which held four enormous Buddhas and would have been a great place for an impromptu yoga class. But that was about as excited as I could get about the Asian stuff. No offense to Asian art aficionados.
The best gallery in the whole place was the gallery that is called European/Old Master Paintings on the map, but has a lot of Renaissance, Maniera, etc. in it. We spent quite a lot of time in there. It was magnificent, a very emotional experience. Leave it to the Italians. They know passion. Oh, but there were two El Grecos. El Greco is so unsettling to me. I have to kind of stand sideways and just peek out of the corner of my eye.
Outside of that gallery, the two works that most moved me were (and this is where my little notebook comes in) a Gustave Dore called Maenads in a Wood which is a plaster relief that is the second version of a sculpture inspired by his Death of Orpheus and Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham by Louis-Jean-Francois Lagrenee. The Dore was like a sketch in relief, all creamy and lyrical and I couldn't take my eyes off it. The Lagrenee, on the other hand, was a polished little jewel, luminous, and possessing even greater depth than the relief. They both nearly killed me. Don't even get me started. I become so overwrought.
After all of that we had to leave. It was still pretty early, but I really didn't want to be stuck in rush hour traffic. Seriously, my neck still hurt from the drive in. So we got a Starbucks and headed home. But after we left the city and approached the train station where we left Kathy's car, we called an audible and detoured to the Natick Collection. We just had to. Our trip felt so unfinished and, anyway, Kathy needed white things for her new kitchen. Not to mention the fact that her hair looked amazing and it would have been a shame to take it home so early.
We hit the William Sonoma then went upstairs to Lululemon. What a treat Lululemon was. They're all so happy and who wouldn't be with their svelte yoga bodies and blissed out yoga brains. I wanted everything and may swing by the West Hart store if I can't get this one particular sweatshirty sweatery thing(Fireside Jacket in charcoal/oasis)off my mind. Then we went to Anthropologie. Kathy found some fantastic things for her kitchen and left with a bag full of white pitchers and cups as well as pretty plates decorated with Greyhounds. Trust me. They're just the most beautiful things. While all that consuming was going on, I was wandering around getting high on scented candles.
I promise you, there was something about the scented candles combined with the extra oxygen we speculated they were pumping into that place that had me all lightheaded and giddy and ravenous. I mean I was absolutely starving. We headed down to Something de la Something for a hilarious dinner. Our poor waitress. I can't remember what kind of wine we ordered except that it was French and hilarious. Kathy got the halibut and I ordered a green salad and duck terrine all of which was delicious and hilarious. They should have thrown us out. But, by the time dinner was over, we had come down to earth a little bit and took a final spin around the Nordstrom. We didn't buy anything there, but feel like we now have an excellent grasp of the latest styles in boots for Fall.
I got home so late, but not too late to watch what I'm afraid was the season finale of Friday Night Lights. Oh, what an episode. We'll have to cover that another time.
Is anyone still reading? Hello?
Sorry. I totally over did it, didn't I?
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