It’s 8:00 p.m. We three are slowly inching our way forward on a city bus. We took a bus from Little Italy to Lower Manhattan and are now taking another bus back to Harlem. Bus travel is bus travel, no matter where you are. It’s an excellent means of sightseeing, but of course the subway is faster.

Earlier, we went to check out the Metropolitan Museum, but because the line to get in was so long, we instead checked out the Guggenheim, which was just a short way down Fifth Avenue. Once inside, the three of us split up. The Guggenheim isn’t all that large. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the building, which at the center spirals up the side. An exhibit was being installed, so we could not go into the spiral, per say.

There were a lot of people looking at the modernist and futuristic installations. It was an interesting juxtaposition of old and new. I enjoyed seeing the Picasso and Degas paintings. I found the futuristic shit to be off putting. I wasn’t up for looking at differing perspectives in relation to globalization. Maybe another time.

Earlier, we found the Gertrude Stein statue at Bryant Park. So seeing this after seeing the Picasso paintings was a real treat because I was reminded that both were modernists who were respectively attempting in writing and painting to abandon metaphor.

Even the abstracts were emotive.

I was glad the glass covering the paintings was non-reflective. This made the paintings easier to see.

I wondered if there might be an interactive display that patrons might be a part of the exhibit. Maybe an artist could install cameras in various parts of the museum – patrons could then be the subject of the exhibits.

I would have been happy to just return to Harlem and doing another exploratory hike in the hood, but El and Judy are the trip free range chickens. So here I am on a bus, moving along at a turtle’s pace. I could outwalk it. A child to the rear of me is wailing loudly. And another passenger is having a coughing fit. The bus has now come to a stop – the driver is assisting a wheelchair passenger. These drivers impress me as being very patient. They have to make sure the chair’s wheels are secured, and this takes considerable time.

Oh my word. The woman sitting next to Eleanor got up and left. My generally unflappable sister then told Judy and me that the woman was incontinent. For once, I was speechless. I used to get around by bus as a child and as a teenager, and then thought I saw it all. But I’d forgotten what bus travel was like. I am glad that I don’t live in a place where I have to commute by bus because this would get very old, very fast.

Mass transit is better for the environment. So I guess today we three, in taking the city bus, are making the world a better place. Har har.

Next: 280. 10/7/18: More Wings and More Prayers