Moon Mullings

On the suggestion of a friend last night, I watched the PBS documentary Chasing the Moon, released in 2019, already a time-warp away. Nothing more metaphorically and physically integrated into the successive generations of my lifetime than our lunar companion-- sister, confidante,  constant ineluctable celestial shadow. From crib gyms and baby mobiles to nursery rhymes and Good Night Moon, essential to our visual and oral origin-architecture. 

Archival footage from the documentary shows the nostalgic, mostly black-and-white world of my childhood... the deceptively innocent 1950's and the ensuing politicization of the solar system.  I well recall getting herded in elementary school into the concrete basement cafeteria where a mounted old TV set showed us the first manned American space launch-- part of a desperate and sometimes rushed massively costly program in response to the prior Russian 'one-up' success.

The seven initial astronauts were heroes.  As much as I obsessed over my Yankees baseball cards, I knew each of the Mercury men like uncles. I knew their wives' faces, envied their children's proximity... admired their casual humor and calm demeanor in the face of dangerous missions.  Celebrities.  I had just turned nine when I witnessed John Glenn's parade in the city.  As opposed to the Knicks' recent event, real paper tape rained down on a massive crowd twice the size of the security-limited NBA celebration. American flags were omnipresent; it was historic and iconic and yes-- media black-and-white. 

Space exploration was a kind of fantasy fulfillment. Every sighted child on this earth grew up looking at the sky and dreaming about the planets and stars. Our parents bought us primitive telescopes. Actual interaction-- to escape our mortal environment here, seemed impossibly imaginable.  And here we see the original witnesses... with their instamatic cameras and binoculars, watching history in real time with palpable excitement. We, the 21st century TV streamers, we witness the cameos and footage of JFK addressing the nation with young enthusiasm and courage, with ideas and ambition.  And the old acclaimed journalists-- Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, bringing their personal brand of poetry into the language of broadcasting.  We remember their words like secular sermons. Oratory. 

In 1969 I spent a few high-school months in rural Mexico, sponsored by the Experiment in International Living. On July 20 my little village congregated outside a local store which somehow had harnessed antenna technology and a TV set.  I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on a blurry screen walking on what the local Veracruz population called el conejo en la luna.  It seemed, like many things that summer, unreal. I was embarrassed to see the flag planted as though the universal ineluctable was being staked as American.  

It always baffled me that exploration of landscapes and monuments which pre-existed man by millennia were 'staked'.  Why was discovery processed as possession?  All of these real estate sales and transfers... whose land is this anyway? Air rights?  Everything parceled out for profit.  It seems wrong.  The moon-- a competitive destination in the space race... what will happen next?  A Trump-site? A lunar Mar-a-Lago?  Does naming the Gulf of Mexico make it so? Is it not just a reference?  $10 from every American pocket, they estimated, back in the 1960's... and somehow it belonged to us.

There it was... my lovely moon-- the small hole in the sky or the goddess and magical orb that followed me from the city to our Cape Cod summer rental, who never left me except for a monthly curtain call, who patiently watched outside my bedroom window while I slept, cried, read books, did homework, painted pictures... who listened in utter silence as we sang or complained or paddled canoes up New England rivers... featured in maybe half of my songs and poems... mentioned or not.  Now a symbol of political dominance, cold-war competition, currency.  The American dream transferred to outer space... 

Deep cut... to reality... to the billion-pixeled technicolored digital version of contemporary television... the omnipresent phone capture, the cheap over-representation and constant barrage of imagery and news... the mistakes and fakeries, the altered and filtered and air-brushed, auto-tuned interruptions and blasts, the biased and unreliable reporting, the world so overly accessible... and a huge catastrophic mess of information that has separated the haves and the have-nots further than ever before. Our deeply ingrained heart-stocked memories now stored primarily in trillion-triplicate on an iPhone cloud.

As a girl, my father would turn on 'the news'.  Yes, it was a thing-- it was reliable and authoritative.  We trusted journalism.  Other countries were not quite as fortunate as we Americans, my father explained.   The truth was not always shared.  And there were secrets-- scandals,  political manipulations.  But gradually as I age we have become America-the-reality-show. Certain days it's the shit-show for sure.  And not only is it the politicized moon, it is the privatized profit-taking industry which bloats the Musks and Trumps of this era.

And yet, my moon-- the very same one that engendered a massive political and industrial movement, she is there for me, over the Harlem Meer with the soundtrack of the geese and ducks and the clouds moving across her face... she is there in her monthly costume changes... her constant and scheduled disappearances and entrances.  

Heavens forbid they should discover a trove of rare-earth metals beneath her face.  The Sea of Tranquility could become another Strait of Hormuz and the world will be warring for ownership. SpaceX and Blue Origin will certainly have an advantage alongside the new American oligarchs and their investors could bloat into trillionaires and beyond. The coming decade will determine the next installment of this documentary and whether we will witness an astronomical space odyssey or political lunacy.  Either way, I will look out of my city window tonight, between the tenement walls and courtyards, and whisper, with hope and love, Goodnight, Moon. 

Winter Options

On the frigid Friday when we're boycotting everything... striking, protesting... I went out, and New York City somehow always seems to be business-as-usual.  While I remember distinctly the sense of empowerment I felt demonstrating as a teenager in the 60's-- like part of an army of compassionate humanity, today I feel snubbed and overlooked.  Even the weather is daunting. Victims of the cold here receiving little sympathy; they are anonymous and powerless. The wounded martyrs of ICE demonstrations are filling news platforms, and yet the bodies here-- mostly homeless, some nameless... have suffered from another kind of ice... and their narratives maybe quietly heroic. Two men I discovered Tuesday in a doorway-- one a migrant terrified to check into a shelter or warming center. Hours later, shivering in my apartment, I fretted about these men; they were not young. Reluctantly I called 311 and they promised no names would be asked.  But promises in this country in 2026 seem to be threadbare things.

Most of my friends are staying inside in this polar vortex; for those with draughty old apartments and insufficient heat, sometimes a reality check outside in the form of a brisk walk kickstarts our internal thermostat. But I find many of the shut-ins more nostalgic than ever-- binging on the 'Manhattan before 1990' sites and vintage city photos.  For the second time last night I watched I Am Twenty-- an extraordinarily poignant Russian film from 1964 with a story behind it.  But the art museum scene-- the poetry, the conversations-- brought me into the usual nostalgia and longing for a time when these deep discussions among friends were daily occurrences.  Also-- the old version of Moscow is on display and fantastically interesting.  

I am no longer sure who anyone is, in this time when even my friends have enhanced their face, have altered their lives to depend on mobile phone platforms and award-show culture.  I also watched-- again,  the Louis Malle 'Place de la République' in which he interviews regular blue-collar type people on the streets of Paris.  This is the version I recall from my first trip there in the early 1970's... and somehow each person he questions seems to have a very candid answer.  The fact that they are 'who they are' seems now a treasured state of being.  A certain intimacy radiates from just the stark honesty with which they face a microphone and camera.  It is disturbing that I don't feel this connection in casual conversation today-- in interviews and televised dialogues.  The obvious make-up and hair aside, everything seems scripted and manipulated-- calculated, prepared, and 'filtered'. 

Several of my neighbors have gone on small holidays and returned tanned and unprepared for this unusual cold spell.  They have also avoided disturbing politics and daily discouraging takeaways on the diminished value of democracy in America.  But these people have money-- they have options.  There is no option for the two men trying to sleep in the Lexington Avenue door-niche Tuesday night. 

When I was a teenager, my Aunt Rita had a little shop.  They sold John Meyer of Norwich clothing-- sort of preppy but decent quality wear for suburban men and women.  Casual clothing-- practical things.  Of course all these brands have been reinvented in the digital age, but back then I was something of a hippie, and... well, the clothes were not for me.  I did make wool curtains for the store fitting rooms and then made myself a warm winter skirt from the extra.  I sat on a vintage stool at a counter after school and folded things, hand-wrote tickets and promotional postcards.  I loved it there. In January, they had a shipment of what they called Cruise-wear-- suddenly summer clothing-- bathing suits and cover-ups, T-shirts and khaki shorts.. golf-wear.  My aunt had to explain this to me... it was a thing.. and I suppose even the concurrent shop window display gave people a break, a sense of hope in midwinter 1960's when snow was plentiful and the cold was consistent and predictable.

The saleswomen were all friends of my aunt-- one especially remains in my heart-- a tall, elegant Jackie Kennedy type with a lovely speaking voice and innate elegance.  We became sort of intimate. Her husband, I remember, was this tall photographer.  He was so handsome-- and a little rough.  He both adored her and had that macho edge one puts on because in his heart he knew he'd married 'up'.  I saw him with other women in the city.  This was common then; no one spoke of it.  Later she suffered from breast cancer... and he left her.  When the shop closed, we lost touch and I went away to college. In the end I heard she'd remarried to a man who spoiled her-- took her on exotic voyages before her premature death.  I am surely older than she would have been. Today I miss her-- her patient explanation of 'cruisewear' to a girl whose small world did not encompass weather-driven vacation choices. She touched my life in such a gentle way and I hope she is warm.

I miss these people who knew exactly who they were; the people of the Place de la République are here among us somewhere in the city-- delivering things, slicing meat in a bodega... making pizza maybe... but they are rare.  My aging friends are a little fearful and insecure... they begin to walk with hesitancy and they mistrust, with good reason, the institutions which were designed to protect us. Everything is inappropriately invasive and these people who seem to live in old photos and memoirs-- well, they call me, narrating their disappointments-- maybe looking for sympathy, not always aware of this.  

Perhaps I am guilty, too. In this culture where one does not 'see' oneself, I am surely afflicted.  To protect from the diagnosis, I avoid mirrors, avoid too much effort to change my appearance.  Inside I am pretty much the same, although I miss the alacrity and candor with which I once greeted people and embraced their intimacy.  I'm a little guarded and not sure these 'others' know themselves.  They think they do, but not in the way these French working people on the street knew exactly where they were going and why. 

We do change.  My son has changed me profoundly.  I am now a football fan-- a sports fan.  One osmotically absorbs the passions of one's loved ones.  And he will not know that I switch off the pro-bowl game to catch a rare cameo of Tarkovsky who has sadly left this world... or Yevtushenko, reading his poetry in 1962 Moscow... to screen-- one more time-- the world as it was when I was barely ten years old,  when I Am Twenty would have been beyond my understanding and certainly not something my parents would have taken me to see.  Fortunately, like most things of the heart, one does not have to exchange one thing to allow for another. Unlike the two men on Lexington, we have options-- maybe not economic but emotional and intellectual ones.  May we put them to better use.  

.. Like a (- -) Cigarette Should...

My father, either from some residual emigré paranoia or fear of commitment, kept a packed suitcase in the  downstairs closet. So when he warned my mother sometime in the mid-60's at the family dinner table, 'Either quit smoking or I'm leaving,' she took it seriously. With wet eyes we ceremoniously flushed the last pack-- one by one. 

Nearly every childhood memory of my mother involves her graceful hands, her perfectly manicured long fingers, and a lit cigarette with old-world elegance between the first and second.  It was so much a part of her silhouette-- of her attitude and her fashion gestalt.  In photographs she is a bit like a 50's film star.  And while her health and life-stamina undoubtedly profited from giving up the habit, I never again found her image quite as seductive and appealing.  It was as though she gave up a shadow-persona or stopped dreaming and became simply a mother.

At the age of ten I used to steal a few cigarettes from the lovely silver and porcelain boxes that were laid out on nearly every end-table and surface in the den and living room.  These were a part of interior design culture-- accessorizing, the way flowers or bowls of things are casually strewn around contemporary rooms-- books and magazines.  Most of one's guests were smokers.  Ashtrays were everywhere... clean-up chores included dumping these before bed.  

But I'd steal one at night while I walked the dogs to the end of our dead-end street... I'd stand in the shadow of the streetlamp and pretend to inhale... watching my silhouette turn into a more womanly version of myself.  I felt grown-up-- and imagined myself in all kinds of mysterious scenarios. My older sister was often scolded for hiding packs of Winstons in her purse... I thought perhaps she and my mother were conspiring in secret. Neither of us really acquired the habit, although most of my boyfriends were heavy smokers. It was part of being cool and nonchalant; it made everyone seem older.

In high school kids smoked on the pavement outside... it was a sort of sign. Everyone had their personal style. As a musician, guitar players had their little tricks-- a cigarette somehow balanced in their guitar headstock, drummers with one hanging from their mouth while they played... and the whole front row a smoky backlit second stage of audience, providing atmosphere. Jazz bands with the spotlight suffused with tone looked magical.

When smoking was banned in clubs and restaurants the whole culture changed... photography changed, attitude.  We were less hidden and in clear, naked resolution.  Of course drugs were invisible... alcohol. But things were different.  I had a boyfriend who would smoke one single cigarette after dinner; this took discipline, but it was kind of a remarkable habit and I envied him his eight or ten minutes of escape into some other world. 

There was a bouncer at one club who against rules would light up after hours.  He was built like a tank and wore a solid gold pitbull around his neck. Who's gonna tell me to put this out he would ask me if I raised my eyebrow?  Ain't nobody.  And he would puff away with his whiskey.  I loved it. 

I've been reading Per Petterson the Norwegian writer.  One after another-- like pack after pack-- it became a two-week addiction. His economical sentences, the clear sense of presence and observation and his brutal self-chastising. Cigarettes are ubiquitous-- not an accessory but a device.  It occurs that what I love most about his writing is an ability to dissect a moment.  One wavers with him-- his human fallibility and hesitance... as he drives or walks-- barhops, weathers relationship failure and loneliness, as he processes grief.  

Somehow I feel I am inside his head-- through the translation, despite the unfamiliar landscape... he recruits the reader somehow. At least I found myself weeping with his disappointments and failures and sadness. And I remember the sense of smoking-- the way it is in a 60's film... the way it accompanies pauses and silences.  A cigarette allows one distance-- breath, ironically... to dissect a moment.  

I can remember putting coins into a machine for my Mom and pulling out Winstons or Kent... it felt like an important task and I knew it was like opening a book for her-- more than a habit, more than a need... more like a change of costume, or a privileged moment.  She escaped, she coped; she dreamed.  More than anything I miss this version of her.  

Often I wonder whether my own son will remember me on a stage, playing bass--- in another kind of state--slightly removed, in a smoky room... not just a mother but a person.  Music, too-- the experience, and even the memory-- allows one permission to dissect a moment... transforms one... of course there is no souvenir here-- no pack to discard or keep... no co-conspiratorial vibe, no grace of inhale... no breath.  Nothing replaces the simple ritual; it's become unhealthy, part of the now visually nostalgic normalcy of 60's movies... 

We've come so far... our 21st century wisdom so easily accelerates action, trades one vice for another, deletes romance, miscalculates the slow revelation of a simple action that was available to nearly all of us. The next generation will doubtless recall their parents differently... will doubtless not feel enchanted and moved by footage of Willy DeVille on a stool, swathed in the smoke of his stage cigarette and the spotlight, while he sings to us how heaven stood still.

What's in a Name

Pathmark 125th Street has long joined the ranks of  discarded NYC institutions now--the site under transformation into an enormous residential and retail development.  For me, embracing designated economic poverty as an older adult, it was a reality-experience.  The simple enormity of the space at this location, unlike the crowded Manhattan supermarkets with narrow aisles and limited wares, was spectacular for someone like me who,  excepting road-trip stops,  was under-exposed to mall-shopping.  I visited Pathmark for the sales, the availability, the simple 'gift' of space... the late-night hours, proximity to subway.  Where else could I score a decent fresh turkey for 69 cents a pound?  The scams, the schemes of visiting regulars-- the simple neighborhood habits of those who brought folding chairs and sat basking in the generous 'lobby' air conditioning in summer-- the recycling, the socializing and innocent panhandling...  all part of the past 'innocence' of New York.

Finding bargains these days and living on food stamps is a challenge.  Last week I was in one of my current preferred grocery destinations in Harlem, and I heard a woman yelling... 'Princeton!' with more and more conviction.  So I turned-- yes, there those old days when some random boyfriend or bandmate would refer to me sarcastically by my alma-mater and like 'Mom' which never fails to prick my ears anywhere, I respond.   A small toddler had been leaning against my cart with that dreamy fearless curiosity 2-year-olds can display even in a crowd... eventually the woman came over, grabbed him, gave him a little smack... 'don't you wander, Princeton!'  I couldn't resist... yes, this was his given birth name.  Princeton. In the 'hood.  I had a little conversation with them both, assured the child he was going to be smart and important... and then a little inner monologue with myself on the way home about names.

I have a simple, basic three-letter name.  Actually my mother gave me the French 5-letter version, so the meaning of it would be understood as 'beloved' and not mistaken for the other derivative spelling-- 'friend'.  But the ratio of four-to-one/ vowels-to-consonants is a hard-spell for a child not to mention pretentious in the milieu of the 60's.  Compared to today's 'Beyonce' and Destiny-- the tag-names of the 21st century-- it is minimal.

My elementary school was part of the 1960's bussing experience.  Besides the physical introduction of diversity, there were the names.  We were all basically Tom, Dick and Harrys-- Kathy, Robin and Susans, in those days-- but these kids-- they were named after kings and presidents.  Their names were hyphenated and ornate-- colorful.  The girls were Velma and Darcelle; this elevated and embellished our morning role-call.  I went home and asked my Mom for a better name.  She did not grace this with a reply--  she who had given me one only, insisting when I got married my surname would fall into middle-status.

Many of my fellow students, as the 60's wore on, re-appropriated their African names.  Some of the Jewish kids I met in the city became radicalized and used Hebrew.  Rockers re-christened often--became single-names or branded themselves somehow, while it was fairly common for actors and public performers to round the edges of their ethnicities and smooth out family names into generic and non-specific identities.  My own father's family, like many immigrants desperately seeking 'Americanization'  had done this.   Go figure.

Lately it is rare that, in my local Starbucks where I am currently interviewing kids for my alma-mater (yes, little Princeton, I mention your name often) I rarely see a staff name-tag that looks familiar to me.  The variety of these is like the constantly expanding nomenclature for coffees and drinks-- exotic, conversation-provoking, ethnically transparent or confusing-- non-gender-identifying.  There are kids with names of countries, of seas, of flowers... of foods, of liquor brands and corporations.  Rappers acquire 3-part sentence names or words.  Common-- that one always sticks to me.  My name, in this expanded overpopulated internet world of infinite repeats-- is-- well, common.  Like most everything else.

I have googled my own name to find a whole column's worth of 'me'... I have even received mail and messages for my namesakes.  Three of us know one another-- in this city.  One friended me on Facebook.  Yesterday I asked a girl in the supermarket about her name tag... her Mom couldn't spell, she told me, but now she likes it.  It's different.  Desnity.  Spellcheck did a double-take, too.

While our traditional old-school vocabulary seems to decrease in usage, new languages and acronyms have become part of our work-arsenal.  People actually speak less to one another these days-- they text, they have their bluetooth and earbuds in... they engage less eye-to-eye.  They do listen... and they wear names.  It is hard to find a single human on a subway without a label or-- more often, several.  Wearing someone else's name was always strange to me.

At the end of her life, for some time, my mother could barely speak.  Her caretaker called her 'Queenie' which seemed wrong to me.  Queenie did not protest much of anything at the end.  Inside she'd regressed beyond even recognizing herself as 'Mom'.  But somehow, even at the very end, when I called her name,  I could see a small light.  Gift of God, the meaning.  No matter how we change, alter, edit, revise... no matter what our intimates and lovers call us in the dark, there is something in our original naming that imprints.  I thought about this, reading the obituary of Kirk Douglas... his adopted name meaning 'church', but his original name, 'Issur' meaning 'he who wrestles with God'... surely defined him.   Anyway, I think somehow he might have agreed, in the end.

Collections- 2

On the very first day of school I was confused when the teacher announced she was coming around to 'collect' the papers on which we had drawn our self-portraits in crayon.   It baffled me that she wanted to take home our childish work and put it in a box.  My Mom had always given me old candy tins and cigar boxes for my 'collections'.  These I piled up and secured with a rubber band.  Children are natural collectors; my passions were rocks, shells, small rubber dinosaurs and tiny glass animals.  Some children on the block collected insects or worms-- the ambitious ones caught butterflies and pressed them sadly between plastic sheets where they miraculously, unlike other things, retained their beauty although dead.

By second grade, I began to save stamps-- they looked so amazing swimming around in their box, like fragile paper mosaics...  and they were labeled with exotic words and people I'd never seen-- landscapes and fairylands.  Some of them had traveled so far to live in my little room.   On rainy days I'd take the boxes out and look at their contents... I'd line them up and study them one by one-- I'd create little plays and vignettes and move them around, hold them up to the window or shine a flashlight on one and then another.

At school, I began to understand there were other meanings to words.  After all, there was the collection plate on Sundays, the toll collector when we crossed bridges, the trash and bottle collector
who came for pick-ups, and later, the tax collector.  What I don't remember is ever exceeding the limit of my boxes.  I did glue the special shells onto a felt board so I could hang them on the wall... but mostly, my little collections remained happily within the boundaries of their containers.  My father had a stack of Roman coins in a tennis-ball can.  I was not allowed to open this myself, but I often sneaked into his closet and shook it around like a tambourine.

These days, when I visit an art fair or museum, they often ask me-- am I a visitor, a dealer or a collector--  the collector, here, being the preferred tag, because they continue to offer you categories and boxes to check so they can identify your 'area of interest'.  An adult collector is a buyer-- someone who acquires things not just because they are beautiful or interesting, but because they are assumed to have value.  You are not just an audience here, but a necessary participant.  The whole show is for your entertainment, your enticement to support the platform-- to buy, spend money, perpetrate the system.  The wares are a few dollars' worth of canvas and paint, or material-- but pulled from the tall hat of the art gallery, they are transformed into 'art'-- they are labelled not only with a signature and a title, but with a corresponding number of dollars which affects the way you perceive these, after a while.  Of course there is true talent out there, but it is less common among the unending unloading of product.  Imagine the numbers of students finishing art school every year, entering the vast pool of what already exists-- not to mention the posthumous forgotten in overpopulated storage bins.

Despite the galactic numbers of images available on anyone's internet allowing nearly anything to be viewable at any time in your home, the acquisition ambition has never been stronger.  It seems also, each successive generation has a certain nostalgia for objects of the previous generation-- vinyl, vintage leather, watches, jewelry, fashion.   Everyday things, removed from their 'era', are not just collectible but valuable.  Online auctions have grown from primitive eBay beginnings to thousands of high-end auctions which offer anything from old master paintings to cars to grand homes and purchasable islands.  For some items, the more they are traded, the higher the value.  Almost everything is searchable, and eventually find-able.

It's no wonder people become hoarders in this culture.  Things are so available and viewable in numbers-- so easy to 'have' at the click of a button, a PayPal 'confirm'... free shipping, the anticipation-- the arrival.. the joy or disappointment... the perpetual Christmas, the careless cheap collections-- for the ones who find happiness in sheer number, the ones who agonize and painfully decide, the ones who like fickle lovers detest within days the very item they have bought-- the research and storytelling, the 'marketing' of a period or a place-- celebrity provenance... There are people who pay many times the value of an item because it belonged once to Madonna, or Andy Warhol, despite the fact it had little relevance to their life...  it has gained the status of a relic, and is doubly collectible.

The amount of available 'art' on the market is overwhelming.  I grew up thinking I 'knew' every important painting and its location.  Now I can't keep track of the museums opening globally, everyday, in every city... in multiples.  As old collectors die, their holdings are acquired or donated to institutions so we find ready-made collections within collections.  Upcoming artists are promoted and marketed with a vengeance; the Warholian model has been extended-- where he put the soupcan ironically on the canvas, now the art is almost simultaneously produced as skateboards and T-shirts-- coffee mugs and umbrellas-- phone cases and sneakers, toys and souvenirs.  Art advisors and gallerists, like stockbrokers, navigate options for their clients and guarantee their full art wallets remain so.  Artists run their studios like a business, maximizing output, manipulating sales, jumping from gallery to installation to institution, merchandising their product and becoming overnight superstars.  It takes years for a tree to grow tall, but some  seven-figure art is produced in an hour.  It seems wrong.  But the art audience is massive, and buyers are impatient and greedy-- insatiable.  Facile art suits the competitive 'soft' market.  Collecting is epidemic.

The 'look' of contemporary art, to me, has a certain built-in clock.  I can smell obsolescence the way I never trusted those beanie babies children begged for in the 1990's.  It's all too easy-- too facile.  Part of the beauty of being--say, a record collector in the 1960's-- was the chase.  Ask Keith Richards-- how he came to America and went to record shops.  Things were rare-- things were treasured.  They were listened to and looked at and loved, the way I loved the tiny glass animals in my Eldorado box.

I am finished collecting, now.  It is a time in my life to take stock of what I have and look at things.  Besides the art, I'm not sure anyone will appreciate my home 'museum', but I have grown to understand the soul of objects and the words they elicit.  My friends tease me because I still don't have a mobile phone... but I spend many hours outside observing and listening to the city.  I come home and am embraced by modest things I find beautiful and compelling.  It is enough.