Daily Office
Red or What?
¶ Matins: Tomorrow’s dates: 11:15: Rue des Médecins. Six to eight in the evening: the Poussin preview at the Museum. (Details below the jump.)
¶ Tierce. Kathleen rejects proposal to move to the Boat Basin.
¶ Nones. It’s getting colder out there — at least for shrinks.
¶ Compline. Et in Arcadia ego [!]
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OremusÂ
¶ Matins: It used to be the case that all but one of the doctors in my life had their offices somewhere on East 70th Street — and most still do. At Fifth Avenue, 70th is where you’ll find the Frick, but at the business end of the street, by the river, you’ve got New York Hospital to the south and Ruptured and Crippled to the north.* My doctors all have one thing in common: they admit to one or the other of these associated hospitals.
For the purposes of these entries, therefore, I’m going to note a doctor’s appointment as Rue des Médecins. That way, you’ll know why I’m getting out of the house without wondering why I’m seeing the rheumatologist or the dermatologist or the ophthalmologist or the gastro-enterologist — or the shrinkologist. Just to play fair, I will be forthright about the internologist, Dr Scofield. His offices are on 72nd. As for the dentologist, who’s right next door — to me, here, I mean — there are limits.
Then, in the evening, the Poussin “preview.” As the show has already opened to the public, the “preview” part means only that the crowd will be dressed up. But it will still be a crowd, and it won’t be any better-behaved than the everyday folk. On the contrary! These people think they own the place!
* The Hospital for Special Surgery’s original name.  I love it because I would be both ruptured and crippled without the good people there.
¶ Tierce. Nothing to report, really, except that I’ve got the new-blog itch. That urge to check out your own new blog, as if something new might appear without your having put it there.
Seriously, though, somebody ought to make a movie about the swinging bachelor days at the Boat Basin in the early Seventies. I still remember the rubbernecking every morning, along the West Side Highway, that summer of 1966, when Frank and Mia were moored in the Hudson. Surely no harm would be done by working that into the screenplay.
¶ Nones. As usual, there were no milling crowdlets or armed photographers outside today, but last week I passed the funeral home where Dr Kathryn Faughey’s wake was held. I pass it every day, on my walk. When I overheard one of the photographers ask an approaching gentlemen if he knew “the doctor,” I figured out what was confirmed in the next morning’s Times. (No, I was not the approaching gentleman.)
State Senator Eric Adams’s claim that psychiatrists’ offices make residential buildings unsafe is almost as loony as David Tarloff (Dr Faughey’s killer). Quite aside from the “who’s a psychiatrist?” question (one of Gordian complexity), the change that Senator Adams envisions would end psychiatry as we know it. Forced to pay higher rents in non-residential neighborhoods, shrinks might soon be charging $1000 an hour! And who else would rent all those dark little first-floor studio apartments? (Thanks, Gothamist.)
Although I walked down to 70th Street and back (and got there in plenty of time), I took another walk after lunch. Typical winter weather: sunny and cold. Brisk and bright. Round about this time of year, I begin to prefer clouds and precipitation — they suggest the possibility of growth and renewal. Falling on tired and naked ground, trees and shrubs, bright sunlight is almost obscene.
¶ Compline. Members’ Preview of “Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions” at the Met this evening. A real do, with free wine and snacks — of which I did not partake. Kathleen decided against going, and I couldn’t find anyone to take her place (not that I looked all that hard). I was not about to hang around the mezzanine sipping wine and staring off into space as though I were (a) lost in thoughts too profound to utter and/or (b) waiting for my incredibly interesting companion to return from the rest room.
The show is super. Whether or not you like Poussin’s oil paintings, his drawings have the same knockout appeal that van Gogh’s exhibited a few years ago. The paintings — well, I’ll get to know more about them. It was a huge thrill to see The Arcadian Shepherds, which belongs at Chatsworth, for the first time in the flesh. The paint is far more raw — that’s the only word I can think of — than it is on the other Poussins that I’ve seen. In contemporary New York terms, the canvas radiates hotness.
I did not buy the catalogue at this time. For one thing, I didn’t want to carry it to dinner. More important, I knew that I’d come back sooner if I didn’t have the book to moon over.
Despite the cold, I walked from the museum to Kathleen’s office, making a third mile for the day (the total actually exceeded four). At the Brasserie, we were bracketed by Brits and Aussies.