NYC Day 1: Pastrami

I feel about 75% better today after sleeping for about 10 hours.  Half of me is still in Japan (adjusting ad orientem is hard for me while going west isn’t that bad) and the other half is worn out from the roller coaster of the last horrid week.

We had a lovely Mass last night, Solemn with Deacon and ‘Subdeacon’, glorious music.  I talked about the Sacred Heart as a model for dealing with other people, especially fallen away Catholics, and asking help of your Guardian Angels when you have conflict or need help in finding the right path with them.

No hurricane today.  I think it’s heading in the other direction.

When one visits New York one goes for pastrami at Pastrami Queen.  Lunch was a warming matzoh ball soup and half a sandwich.

   
 

Off to the Met.  The place is jammed, but I wanted to see at least a few of my favorites in the John Singer Sargent exhibit, in its last days.

Coat check… which I almost never do.  The galleries are full and it is warm.

  

In the exhibit I could hear “There’s ‘Madame X’!” around me from a remarkable selection of people.

No Christological Goldfinches in sight.

  

In the connecting corridor there are frequently changing exhibits, usually of prints, sketches and the like.  Here is one by GB Castiglione (+1664) of The Discovery of the Bodies of Saints Peter and Paul.  An etching.

There some influence of Rembrandt and his shadowy style.  Note how the figures clutch at each other in awe.  Paul is headless while Peter still holds his keys.

  

Manet, the wild child of his day, gave us this Dead Christ with Angels from 1864.

He made the mistake of putting the wound in His side on the wrong side.  Baudelaire remarked that he gave the Salon critics yet another thing to scoff at.   Critics hated the  realism of the dead Body.  But they seem to have hated everything those days that didn’t idealize.  

  

   
   

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