At the Met

We went to New York this week. JC had a map auction he wanted to attend on Thursday, and we decided to go up Wednesday, have dinner and see a play ("The Columnist" with John Lithgow) that night, then come home after the auction. Fate smiled. The weather was wonderful, the to-and-from train rides uneventful, and while the play was perhaps not as good as we'd expected, we had a great dinner and John Lithgow gave a Tony-award quality performance. I finally finished a book that I've been slogging through just to see the ending (the author cheated: EVERYONE did it, but not in a clever Agatha-Christie-Orient-Express style, but in a just-plain-stupid-why-doesn't-the heroine-SEE-this? way) and got halfway through another one I've had languishing on my Kindle for far too long. But I digress.

In the middle of Thursday, in the middle of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was wandering rather aimlessly from room to room--simply stopping whenever a piece spoke to me. I traveled through Greece and Rome and Egypt; I traversed the American Wing and saw everything from the Wild West to the modern East. I had lunch in the cafe in a  huge open space with a glass ceiling, with clouds billowing overhead. I stood by Tiffany windows, and peeked into a complete French dining room with finely carved paneling and ethereal painted panels, reconstructed with precision from its own place and time. I stopped by Ellsworth Kelly's plant drawings, just to see what that was all about--and specifically because Sallye Mahan-Coxe (an art teacher friend from Robinson) once said that, whenever you have an opportunity to see drawings, you should go, because they aren't often on exhibit. In any case, I came, I saw...and then I started to think.

Who is there to say that I am not one of the luckiest people on earth? I  have a world of opportunity that waits for me every day. I can take myself to museums--both in NY and at home in Washington-- that have the best the world has to offer. I have access to one of the two best libraries in the world, barely a 20-minute drive away. I live in a place that values history and the arts and quality of life. I have technology that will do my bidding (most of the time) and keep me in touch. I have friends. I have the freedom to be in New York, or Virginia, or California, or Europe, or any of the places in between. I have the best of food and shelter and transportation. My limits are pretty much of my own creation-- the normal aches and pains and memory lapses notwithstanding. I can travel, I can read, I can write, I can look. Not all of the throngs of people at the Met on Thursday--sitting on the steps, poring over maps, standing in lines, sitting (gratefully) on the benches--have those luxuries. Even fewer of the people that mob the streets can spare the time or energy--or even the cash--for them.

I can, in short, be inspired. I just have to remember that. I just have to follow the inspiration that taps me on the shoulder and says, each day, "Here. This way." I am so lucky.