To The Cloisters

The Cloisters– a branch of the Metropolitan Museum set upon a hill in the middle of Tryon park. 

Most people get there intentionally by taking the A train all the way up to 190th St. Others take a less conventional approach, for example- they drink too many pint margarias, fall asleep on the train headed for Brooklyn and wake up the next morning at the opposit end of the city, in Upper Manhattan.

You can decide how you want to get there really, (though for my own liability as the author of this article  I will caution you not to sleep on the train if at all possible). The point is you ought to GO.

The City, New York City is a wonder as far as cities go: Here the skyscrapers talk to the clouds and the homeless talk to themselves. Hipsters speak only of art and only to other hipsters Musical theater people refuse to converse within the normal decible ranges of the human ear, preferring instead to sing out Sondheim at every possible opportunity. It is a place where Jazz parties resound in musky West Village interiors at high noon, and tourists walk into oncoming traffic simultaneously taking photographs. Here, hundreds of people practice Yoga together on the Bryant Park lawn each Thursday, while hundreds of other people wander by to gawk…
 
There is so much happening all the time in this place that you might as well give up. Seriously stop trying to do it all. Drink some kool-aid and go get the hell out of the city.

That’s right, bugger off so that you:

-Squeak when a small garder snake riggles under your foot on the rocky path to the Cloisters, from the Subway. (Nature? I don’t recall seeing that in the city…)
-Strain your memory to recall the names of the herbs growing in the gardens flourishing in the midst of Tryon Park. These are not the limited flora you find along the Chelsea High-Line, these are re-created gardens whose meandering pathways have not changed since the middle ages. (Clearly New Yorkers don’t do the actual tending of the gardens…Everyone knows  a True New Yorker can only get plants to grow on a fire-escape. Unless they live in Park Slope, in which case, well they don’t count as True New Yorkers anyway.)

When heading through the gardens take some time to look out over the East River before it reaches the churning canals between NY and NJ.
Find a tree, sit under it’s shade and enjoy the fact that it is not-quite-a-Country-Tree, meaning it certainly is not a City Tree! (There is a vivid difference you see- City Trees are filthy in the way the popular fire-hydrant of the block is gross. City Trees get climbed-on, leaned-against, slept-by and hugged within an inch of their dead-hearts.  Country Trees are down right gritty with honest-to-Allah dirt, earth which decomposed naturally over time as it was crushed and covered by yearly precipitants.)

 In Tryon Park these closer-to-Country-Trees-than-Central-Park-trees will have you feeling soothed and fascinated within minutes as they provide lovely dappled shade and reveal how even their stolid bark is teeming with agitated insect life.

—————You have already stepped outside of the New York monotony of perception.—–

After you are properly shocked out of your city hang-over by the colors, “Yes that’s called green” around you it is time to throw back your cooler-than-thou sunglasses and step into the ancient granite hallways of the Cloisters themselves.

The sudden cool dampness will leave your skin tingling with excitement. You will wander through the courtyards of this cloister, turned safe-house, turned museum to view exquisite wooden tryptics bearing the Holy Virgin’s face. You will see a riot of color streaming into the dreary brown world of the weather blackened granite via the stained glass rose windows. These windows depict scenes of beauty, nature, religion and hunting. You will see tapestries bigger than your entire Brooklyn apartment, they will invite you to get lost in their epic tale of The Unicorn Hunt and of swooning maidens.
There are over 5,000 pieces of art within the Cloister walls including sculptures, illuminates manuscripts and of course the architecture both natural and imported….

 
This is what it is about, when you tire of the modernity, of the tension, of the pace and of the pressure. Simply head North (perhaps grabbing a Mr Softee, on your way), to the place where Jews court, chick-a-dees call and history inhabits the present…
To The Cloisters.