"That's just like, so abstract..."

I’m trying to experience Manhattan on a budget since money is currently considerably tight. So yesterday I ran outside (free), made coffee at home (free) and went to the MET (again, free).

The couple standing next to me in front of Cezanne's “Still Life with Cherries and Peaches,” are talking as they gaze intently at the painting: “...and it’s just like him too, I mean that’s how he was, Cezanne, just like totally into the whole abstraction thing, like as a way of creation, like with multiple meanings and like you never knew what he meant, it’s just so, wow, like so abstract.”

I look to them and then back at the painting and make a face of "what?" Abstract? I might not know much about art but I know it’s a painting with fruit. Isn’t that all it’s supposed to be? According to this couple it isn’t about fruit at all, it’s about the male and female, the female cherry and the male peach living together in harmony on a table, I mean in a relationship, which I guess is what the table signifies, the base on which their relationship sits on. Right.

I think I shake my head and move on because they’re cramping my style, which was trying to be very cultured by spending three hours walking through the MET with no one to say profound things to like, “yeah I mean it’s so textured, the depth here, the meaning is just, I can feel what he was feeling when he painted this” (girl speaking of Monet’s Haystacks). That’s the one thing I hate about museums, it’s all of the people who, upon entering, think they’re art experts.

For a while I followed around a High School Art History class visiting from Ohio or Illinois or something, I didn't really catch it, and melded into their walking tour because their teacher had a lot of great things to say. At one point one of the boys who didn’t seem to care about art at all and was hanging in the back of the pack (as I was) looked at me and asked me as we stared up at Washington Crossing the Delaware, “are you even in this class?”

I promptly left the American Wing and went to Frank Lloyd Wright’s living room to hide.

When the exhaustion and pangs of hunger hit it was time to leave. I didn’t seen half of what I wanted to and will have to return at some point to see the rest. I walked outside into the warm night and bought a hotdog from the street vendor on 81st and walked down 5th Ave alongside the park while I ate.

That’s the great thing about New York, you can have a great day, and all it will cost you is 75 cents.