Thursday-Friday, I took a mini-vacation to the Jersey shore with Rachel. Result: feeling much more relaxed and my entire front side is bright red - ouch! Yes, I took a nap on the beach, at noon, in chilly, overcast weather, and surprise, surprise, got burnt. Not one of my smartest moments :) In any case, it was a nice getaway, not being in the city for a couple of nights is nice, so are lots of seafood, sand, the ocean. Living so close to the ocean now, I should really take more advantage of it.

Yesterday, back in the city, visited the MOMA - this is the last weekend of the Marina Abramovic exhibit, which features lots of real, naked people as pieces of art, among other really strange things.



I went through the narrow hallway, in which a naked man and a woman were standing, facing each other, very close to each other, leaving just barely enough room for a normal sized person to squeeze by. The idea is that people can become "part of the art" by "interacting" with the exhibits - people. In the downstairs lobby, the artist herself was sitting in a chair all day, and tons of people were lining up to sit across from her and stare at her for as long as they wanted to. Again, they were invited to be part of the art through this. It turns out that this woman has done way stranger things in her younger years: she has been fascinated by the limits of humans - physical and emotional. In one exhibit, she lined up a bunch of objects on a table - including knives and a gun with a bullet - and invited the audience to do whatever they wished to her, as she was the exhibit herself. Reportedly, one person loaded the gun and handed it to her, then turned her hand so that the gun pointed at her head. She didn't want to die, but wanted to test her and the audience's limits, she wanted to be pushed to the edge. In another piece - a video - her and her then partner were standing facing each other, holding a stretched bow pointing at her. Ultimate test of trust. All in all, interesting ideas, somewhat disturbing presentation. Art? I suppose, it made me wonder, it makes people feel a certain way and isn't that the point?



The rest of the afternoon, I chose a shady spot under an attractive tree in Central Park and was lounging in the grass. Perfect weather, with the perfect person, the only thing to worry about were a few ants trying to climb on our legs. As I was looking up at the perfect blue sky through the crown of the tree, stroking the grass with one hand and his hair with the other, I thought, this moment should be remembered, no matter what comes next :)