A Hint of Spring...

This afternoon I have my window cracked letting in fresh air over 50 F for the first time in months. It is delightful, refreshing and renewing. As you can see from the photos, it is still overcast and there is not much sun, but the rising temperatures and fresh circulating air give the slightest glimpse, the faintest hope, the tiniest notion that Spring is actually on the way.

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.

So, I will admit it, sometimes I listen to country music. I am generally somewhat ashamed of this fact since I can acknowledge often with mainstream country music the lyrics are rather trite and the music not particularly challenging. However, they remind me of Oklahoma and riding around in a car with my wife at a time when silence between us was caused more by being so close we did not need to say anything and less by being so far apart we have no idea what to say. Anyway, once in a while I get homesick and need a fix. It is a weakness in my general attempt to only champion things that are unquestionably good, however a weakness with which I have grown comfortable.

Once in a while though I come across a piece of country music that is without question interesting both lyrically and musically. Recently, I heard Kris Kristofferson perform his song, "Help Me Make It Through The Night," and was so mesmerized I had to download more songs on iTunes. As I ran errands around town today I was struck by the power of the lyrics in detailing the struggle, pain and joy of the human condition, the richness of his voice and the perfect simple but elegant acoustic guitar with blues harmonica in the background. Though I have had friends recommend Kristofferson to me before, I had never been ready to listen until recently. Anyway, I think my favorite song is "Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again." This like a song called "The Grass Is Blue" by Dolly Parton I would pit against some of the best lyrical songs out there and I hope to find more of these gems as I age and develop more refined and new tastes for forms of expression.

Anyway, as a side note, Kris Kristofferson has at times in life been a Rhodes Scholar, an army helicopter pilot, a janitor, an activist, an artist, an actor and a lover of many and varied fascinating women, including Janis Joplin until her death. Talk about someone with life experiences to draw on when he goes to write or sing. If anything, you must say he has truly lived. And while I like his voice in the downloads I have, the live performance I saw was even more powerful because of the extra crackle in that aging voice. It made me think of my grandfather and how the elegance in the aging of Kristofferson's voice reminds me of my Papa's hands. From the years of hard work and heavy lifting, those hands are leathery, cracked, scarred, hard and often dirty. However, they are also capable of nurturing all sorts of life to grow, handling tiny parts essential for the mechanical function of something, and telling a story with a simple handshake. As he ages they get harder to control, but there is still an elegance there only to be had after 82 years of using them to live life to the fullest.

I bought socks today.

This may seem like a rather mundane and specifically un-blog-worthy topic, however for me it is quite a big deal. See, as far as I can recollect, I have not bought myself a single article of clothing for over five years.

Generally, I notice very little about my appearance, so those around me usually notice when things get shabby and replace them for me. My mother-in-law has been particularly generous and helpful in this regard.

However, in Bonn I consistently run out of regular socks and am left wearing ankle socks with pants in the winter for a week or two before I have reached a critical mass of clothing sufficient for a laundry run. As you can imagine, this is neither warm, nor particularly fashionable.

In addition, at some point I was sitting next to a similarly shabby professor at a talk in Spain. Our legs were crossed in ways such that our feet were lifted up next to one another. He was wearing these great cream colored socks with blue corduroy pants I was rather envious of given the yellow toe tube socks and jeans I was sporting. It slowly donned on me that no one in Europe wears white socks. As a result, they have one more thing they can rely on subtly not matching anything else they are wearing. Since subtly not matching is basically the basis for my whole look, it seemed like a great idea. Any, after today, I have 14 new pairs of socks varying from black and gray stripes to blue plaid to solid light brown. I cannot wait to sport my new socks about town and have warm ankles between each laundry day!

Separated at birth?

What do you think?














The truth of the matter is that the similarities between me and Count von Count are quite striking. We both look great in a cape, sport thick eyebrows, have that mischievous grin and charming good looks, love mathematics, are interested in education, and perhaps most striking ... we share a love of performing.

Tonight after a long week talking about a lot of math with a visitor in Bonn, I watched The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and 30 Rock from last night. All three were just absolutely fantastic. When someone charismatic, clever and witty is really on their game, it is just amazing to watch. I love to make people laugh more than just about anything and wish at times I had the courage and ability to try to do it on a large scale.

I mean, in my line of work you fight through years of struggle, humiliation and disappointment in hopes of one day standing in front of a few people who want to hear you talk about something interesting you figured out and which you HOPE might have an application down the road.

In comedy, you fight through years of struggle, humiliation and disappointment to one day wind up standing in front of an audience of millions, wearing a Viking helmet, holding a battle axe, eating a roasted chicken off a sword and suggesting we battle through the economic crisis using the economic and political methods of the Scandinavians from the 790's as opposed to the 1990's. It seems to me like you get to make people think, make people laugh and help them forget about their problems for a moment. The Count would definitely approve.

Speaking of things the Count would approve of, the man with the most things to count in America right now, Tim Geithner, was interviewed this week on Planet Money's podcast. It was rather interesting, so I highly recommend you check it out.

It is not much, but I did it.

So, tonight I just want to briefly mention the conference that will be happening here next week. In the end, it is really not much, just 25-30 mathematicians gathering for a meeting about nonlinear structures in dispersive partial differential equations. However, I did most of the work putting this thing together, so I am pretty proud of it. Anyway, the web-site is

http://www.math.uni-bonn.de/people/marzuola/bonn_nonlinear_2009/

and I hope you will all check it out. Many of the people with whom I work will be attending and they will be speaking about some of the math I do.

Epilogue

So, it is done. I have finished War & Peace this evening. If I am to be completely fair, the argument that all actions and outcomes in the war were inevitable and independent of any one individual's decisions or intentions became a bit beleaguered towards the end. However, that was less because of the insights into political history and more because I was anxious to get back to the fates of the characters involved. This was an incredibly moving story that has really taken me on an amazing journey during the last month. I have spent so much time now with these individuals and their families through such intense events in their lives, it will be a bit strange to go on without them. As I said in an earlier post, this book really captures so many aspects of the human experience. Sometimes there would just be a tremendously apt observation about falling in love or grieving a loss, aging or coming of age, as well as simply the wild oscillations between the mundane and the rapturous we experience as humans. There will be more to come on this book later as I am able to process it all and really formulate something intelligent to say on the matter. However, tonight I simply wanted to say I am done, and it would be my great hope to have a home full of such rich love and complex history as that at the Rostov/Bolkonsky estate at Bald Hills.

Exhaustion and Insomnia

So, after a long week I found myself unable to keep my eyes open by 9:30 PM this evening. I reluctantly threw myself into bed and fell into an incredibly deep sleep. At some point, I began having a rather vivid dream of living in some mostly aqueous world where to prove myself to the elders I had to swim the full length of the treacherous ocean and back. However, swimming was something I could do amazingly well, so I made tremendous progress and dove to great depths. Through my swim I encountered mostly beautiful, powerful weather systems and amazing, swirling mixes of blues and greens. Surprisingly enough however, I remember very few creatures. Somehow through all this, I briefly gained the ability to fly, and while swooping through clouds and skimming the surface of the ocean was exhilarating, apparently it was against the rules and I was forced to swim the remainder of the way with the swimming abilities I have in reality. Sadly, this meant I struggled against the current long enough to feel miserable before I woke up and the world I had been in was gone forever.

I woke up feeling pretty rested, so I pulled myself out of bed, went to the restroom, then turned on my computer to learn it was 3:30 AM. One should be aware of two things I suppose. The first is that I have no clocks in my apartment save those attached to my computer, iPod or portable phone. Meaning, I have to get up and turn something on to figure out the time. Secondly, it has been rather hazy and overcast here, so even though the days are getting longer it can still be rather dark at 7 AM. Anyway, so here I am at 5 AM making a blog post, considering going back to bed for a bit after wasting time listening to podcasts, checking e-mail, reading news articles and watching some of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is in fact rather funny as I am not surprised given the person who recommended it to me. Anyway, I wish you all a better night's sleep than I have had, as well as more restful dreams. Well, at least dreams with more pleasant endings.

The Neanderthal Legacy.

So, lately I have been thinking a lot about the way one can leave a legacy on the world. Through reading various biological texts and articles, I am well familiar that we may in fact trace our mutual ancestry with any other organism on earth back to a single common relative, obviously many, many years back depending upon the amount of variation between you and the organism of choice. Meaning, there are a whole host of organisms from around that time whose genes completely died out.

More to the point, I read an article today where some scientists in my current home country of Germany have sequenced 60% of the Neanderthal genome from a piece of usable tissue found recently (on a slight tangent someone has also sequenced the Woolly Mammoth genome and hopes to one day clone one by modifying current elephant embryos and using a female elephant as a host womb, so...dibs on the first pet mammoth). The Neanderthals split off genetically from the ancestors of modern man about 300,000 years ago and thrived in Europe alongside our relatives up until about 30,000 years ago before dying out genetically.

While I cannot say whether or not Neanderthals and our ancestors could interbreed, I do know that they had sophisticated societies and certainly competed with our ancestors for resources, which must have left a lasting legacy on those of us who have survived. Plus, the scientists have already tagged certain genes linked to advanced language capabilities and adult lactose intolerance today. Hence, I imagine a Neanderthal society full of both eloquence and flatulence, much like ours today, though of course a bit dirtier and more dangerous.

The long story short is that even though the Neanderthal lineage died out 30,000 years ago, it is certain through competition and interaction, our civilizations and successful ancestors must have been directly shaped over the course of time by their existence. Likely Neanderthals even figured a few things out they shared with our ancestors. Perhaps they even shaped the way we communicate, the tools we use, the things we find funny, the food we eat, etc. So, a legacy seems a difficult thing to quantify, and maybe any little thing you teach someone or do for someone will alter the course of human history.

The Mind As A Quantum Computer

So, I have read at least a couple science fiction books that focus on the existence of parallel universes in physics. Quite basically, this says that every time a choice is made at the quantum level, a universe exists where each choice possible occurs. Meaning that the universe is really a system of exponentially expanding branches from some vacuum fluctuation way back at the Big Bang. It is also suggested often in these works that the brain is somehow acting as a quantum computer because it processes certain things in a way that standard computers could not. Meaning, each time we make a decision, a universe exists where we made a different one. Tonight I am simply wondering what some of those universes look like.

In this vein, a friend once asked me if I could change any even in history, what would it be? Of course, there are many mistakes and regrets I could erase from my own past, but that seemed a rather selfish, small view. In the end, I chose to undo the burning of the library at Alexandria. Can you imagine what the world would be like with existing copies passed down through the millennia of all the old works of history, astronomy, mathematics, literature, philosophy, etc that were housed there? The loss of a place with such beauty in design and purpose makes me shudder with sadness. However, my only consolation is that perhaps the existence of the ideal in our minds is somehow more important than the actual version which would have inevitably disappointed in some way. According to records for the design, "The place of the cure for the soul," was engraved in the walls above the shelves. To imagine sitting there, smelling the mixture of papyrus and salty sea air, feeling the slight chill from the cold stone pillars, gazing at the scholars diligently studying and copying in rooms lit by the warm Mediterranean sunlight, resting your eyes with a glance to the gardens outside ... it makes you believe in the truth and beauty involved in the pure pursuit of knowledge.

Tonight...

I do not only want to curl up with a book but would instead like to crawl inside and become someone else for a while. I would like to know my actions were meant simply to reflect human behavior and have no real impact on those close to me. Whatever choices I made or things I said would only live on a page, in the abstract. They would not have the consequences all things do. I would in actuality feel nothing, say nothing, hear nothing, but merely be a shadow of countless things felt, said and heard by a reader.

War & Peace, Life & Death, Omega 3 Fatty Acids and other Musings.

Tonight I met my German friends for All-You-Can-Eat Sushi at one of the few Japanese restaurants in Bonn. The Sushi was OK, and it was plentiful. Plus, it felt good to consume some non-pork derived protein. In New York, once a month my much missed friends in the Village and I would attempt to find a decent place to order in Sushi to their apartment. We would spend at least an hour finding the place online, another half hour making the list of things we wanted and another half to full hour waiting for the food. Usually it was OK, but cost a fortune and came at times with the smallest portions you can imagine. Still, though tonight was enjoyable and I wound up quite full, it made me miss those evenings of Sushi mishaps as in the end they led to many laughs and always came with at least a little time spent playing with my friends' son before he went off to bed.

Most of the day was fairly uneventful. I spent my time doing a heap of laundry, organizing my apartment, running errands, working and reading. I am now past the 1,000 page mark on War & Peace. Though Napoleon has marched into Moscow, he is certainly weakened and overextended, meaning I expect his full retreat to come soon. In the meantime, Prince Andrei, my favorite character, is likely about to die. Well, I am not sure, but this book does feel too true to life to allow a man to receive two major injuries on two different battlefields in the 1800's and survive both of them. I mean, the odds would be astronomical. So, I assume he is not long for this world. The reason I love this character is that I in many ways identify with him. He struggles to find middle ground between terseness and effervescence, lives a life devoted to an appeal to reason, leaves behind his life and family to pursue his career yet displays fierce loyalty to his commitments, has trouble feeling connected to even those closest to him, falls in love with those who embody everything he lacks and copes with grief by throwing himself into his work. His loss will truly sadden me if my intuition is correct. On the other hand, I hope his sister and son will find happiness through it all.

Speaking of loss, some people very dear to me recently lost someone very dear to them. Unfortunately, my interaction with the deceased was limited to what amounted to spending the most enjoyable 4th of July weekend of my life at their residence, but by that time this individual was already in poor health and our interactions were minimal. However, I am extremely familiar with his family.

His son is the kind of man I hope to become. He is smart, educated, talented, reliable, hard working, honest and kind. He is the kind of person who would come home early to make dinner for his family, go for a run while the kids ate, help his kids put together an interesting science project, put them to bed, stay up late to work pro bono designing a building for a school for the deaf, and do all this while talking about politics, science, architecture, literature or anything else with the many friends and stragglers passing through his house.

His daughter-in-law, who happens to be my cousin, is tough, smart and interesting, while in ways and at the most perfect times being the most loving person I know. She is the kind of person who would do martial arts with her kids, take the job pro bono designing a building for a school for the deaf, argue until sun-up about many and varied topics, say exactly the right thing to make you feel better in times of grief or even more elated in times of joy and do all this while talking about politics, science, architecture, literature or anything else with the many friends and stragglers passing through her house.

As a result of these two individuals, obviously this person the world just lost has some pretty amazing grandchildren, whose praises I could sing for a much longer time than anyone would care to read. The bottom line is that I love this person's family very much, meaning their departure from this world makes me feel sad for the loss those I love have experienced. In short I will say to them that this life produced them and the life they have, meaning it must have been well-lived and full of love. That is something to be mourned and celebrated, both of which I hope they do to the fullest extent possible in their own ways.

The Big 3-0.

So, I figured it would be apt to use my 30th post to ponder the impending 30th year of my life. Now, I am aware that my actual 30th birthday is not for a year and a half, but technically the day I turn 29 starts my 30th year of life. And once again, I acknowledge even that is not for another 5 and a half months. However, these time spans really mean nothing these days. I mean, a year and a half may as well be a blink of an eye. It is hard to believe a year and a half ago I left Berkeley. My time in New York seems to have been simply a blur. How does the time get past us and what do we have to show for it? Anyway, the bottom line is, putting aside any objections then from the reader, I will take it as an assumption that my 30th year is in fact impending.

Now, obviously many of my friends are 30, or at least closer than I am to being there, so I do not want anyone to think I consider it a bad thing. It is really I suppose no different from any other age, simply a marker for how long you have existed on the planet. Still, I cannot help but feel it is like crossing some threshold into actual adulthood. I have never really taken the time at any point in my life to consider where I would be at 30. The trajectory of my career started back when I was 18 in many ways, and as far as many things go, I have simply been riding the momentum of that wave for as long as I can remember. So, to look up and realize that most of my 20's has passed is a bit unnerving.

I suppose many people by 30 are settled into their communities, jobs, families, homes or all of the above. In all honesty, I am none of the above. Technically I am still an apprentice at my job, I will not be settling into any permanent residence or city for at least another 2 years and my family situation is of course rather complicated. On the other hand I have done some interesting work, eaten some great food, spent time in some amazing cities and learned at least a tiny bit of many languages. There is something comforting in the flux of it all really. Not that it is a bad thing, but if you live only one place and work at only one job even in your relative youth, it is easy to get into a rut, and hence to become rigid and sedimentary in your activities, ideas and emotions. I think without challenging yourself constantly, it is easy to become intellectually, socially and emotionally complacent.

True, there is comfort and value in the routine as well. I certainly grow weary of the constant moves, changes and disruptions. I miss old friends and lost comforts. The work, despite how much I like my job, never seems to happen fast enough to be worth all the effort. However, everywhere I go I find new friendships, new pieces of myself and the world, plus a good recipe or two. And through those experiences, despite the distances, time lapses and odds, the memory and appreciation of my old relationships somehow seem to mature and deepen, making them sustainable and more meaningful. Searching for friendship, family and common ground the world over makes you really appreciate those times you have experienced it.

I guess the short answer is that though I see 30 looming quite close on the horizon, I am pretty happy with where these last 2.85 decades have brought me. True, sometimes I feel like I have a paltry body of work to show for my time here on this earth, but hopefully I will get a few papers out this year and finally feel like I am accomplishing things professionally. Plus, in many ways I have always felt the value of an individual can be ascertained by the company they keep. Well, even though I am particularly lonely right now, I have the pleasure of knowing and loving some pretty amazing people of all ages and from all over the world. Any small positive impact I could have had on their lives has made my time here well worth the effort. Honestly, I have no doubts the things I want from life will come to me eventually, and certainly easier and with more grace in the next decade than they would have in this one. Perhaps maturity really boils down to patience, tolerance and appreciation for the fact that though for the most part your life is as the man says "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," if you are lucky, once in a while you meet someone who thinks it sounds like poetry and music.

A busy week.

This week I have not gone home before 2 AM the last 2 days because I have been busy working on a couple projects. It is not that my job comes with really crucial time limits, but if you see a window into understanding, it probably will not be open long so it is best to make the most of it. Anyway, it seems like I actually got somewhere on the project I care most about right now anyway, which gives me great joy. Tonight, I am headed out at the relatively tolerable hour of 7:30 PM for some dinner with my German friends and some sort of game involving Robots (surely a game about robots will merit a post later on this week). However, rest assured I'll be back at it afterward later tonight. I love these times, when your head feels clear and you can plunge head first into your work. The walk home has been lonely so early in the morning and certainly I only get a few pages of War & Peace in before I crash, but this is when you really love this job. Things come together, intuition arises and ideas form clearly. Of course, now I just have to hope they are all correct! Ha.

Photos from Bilbao

So, now that I have once again some bandwidth to play with, here are the photos from my trip. I hope you enjoy.

Day 1: Walking to the Guggenheim


















































Day 3: Dinner in Downtown - Bilbao at Night










































































Day 6: The Beach and The Harbor

Snow in Spain

In case you are not all weather junkies and thus have been doing other things besides checking out weather patterns over Southern Europe lately, there is snow falling like mad in Pamplona, a new coating of snow on the hills surrounding Bilbao and sleet falling in Bilbao itself. It is pretty amazing to see.

Nine Stories

I just finished reading the collection of nine short stories published by J.D. Salinger. Quite a while ago I read and enjoyed Catcher in the Rye but an article in the New York Times or on NPR, I cannot remember which, about Salinger reminded me that he actually had many other works I had never experienced. Anyway, I figured these would be great to read along with War & Peace because when I was feeling the need to actually finish something I could pick up a story and read it. These little gems are incredible portraits of a post World War II America trying to deal with the ramifications of the war, find its identity, adjust to its prosperity and regain its humanity. There are some stories with surprisingly abrupt tragic endings, but also stories with real hope embedded in them. Anyway, if you happen to be looking for quick enjoyable read or especially if you commute using public transportation, each story would be perfect for a subway or bus ride, so I highly recommend picking up a copy.

A Day In Bilbao

Today I made it over to the Universidad del Pais Vasco in order to meet with Professor Luis Vega. He is a harmonic analysis/PDE expert who has done a great deal of important work in my field over the course of the last 25 years or so. I thought he was going to be at the University of Chicago during my time here, so it was a pleasant surprise that he was actually here this week and I was able to talk with him about some interesting problems. Finding the UPV was my first order of the day, which turned out to be a bit harder than I anticipated. Strangely enough, Bizkaiabus, the system of buses that travels the most locations, has the least information posted online and only has innocuous blue signs with no route information as bus stops. So, after taking the rather nice Metro to a location near the university, I asked around and eventually found the campus, then strolled until I finally found the math department. I wound up getting there 20 minutes early so I worked until we had the chance to talk, grab a nice full Spanish lunch at the University cafeteria and drink a coffee. Fortunately, I found a much more efficient route home, so I read and worked a bit more after I got back.

Upon a recommendation, I went to the cafe affiliated with a famous restaurant here in Bilbao called El Viejo Zortzi. It is a small restaurant and when I arrived all the tables were reserved. However, since I was only one person and got there when they opened, they let me sit down as long as I promised to be out before 10 PM. Since I did not feel I needed to eat for an hour and a half by myself, it sounded like a fine deal to me.

To eat, I had local cheese, duck and even an ice cream made from a local citrus fruit. There was a soft cheese that I literally would have bathed in if given the chance. It was such a delicious meal on the whole that I could not help having an after dinner espresso. I know I should not have caffeine after 4 PM, but if a meal is good enough I like a coffee afterwards dammit. So, it is truly a measure of a meal's success for me if I am willing to sacrifice a night's sleep to complete the experience.

Tomorrow is my last day here so I am headed up to see the coastline. Once I have a more reliable internet connection I will be posting pictures from everything I have been doing here. Basque Country really is beautiful with fantastic food and great people. The people have to be great since otherwise you would never figure out how to get anywhere!

War & Peace Update Part III: The Half-Way Point

So, I am officially through half of War & Peace and have admittedly become rather enamored with the book in all honesty. All I can say is that in college I wanted to write a book that encapsulated many of the inherent contradictions of our society and humanity in general, but obviously I did not have the patience to read a book that captures those contradictions beautifully. Good people do bad things with profound consequences, bad people do bad things with no consequences, good people do good things with no consequences and bad people even once in a while do good things to great acclaim. Sometimes life seems to be so beautiful you can hardly contain your excitement for even the simplest of pleasures and sometimes life feels so frivolous you wonder how you can get from one day to the next. The book is a journey through the human condition, which makes it painful at times. It often will depict how one inane action in one single moment which one might think inconsequential can drastically alter the course of your life. Though it is hard to accept that someone you have come to care for could make a disastrous decision against all better judgment, fall in love with the wrong person, or cause harm to anyone or anything, it happens from time to time in the course of a life. People tend to recover and life continues onward for most if not all parties involved. Anyway, I cannot wait to see how it all turns out in the end, though that is still another 700 pages away. Ha.

Arroz Negro con Bacalao

Tonight I went to a Spanish restaurant with another postdoc visiting Bilbao. This place had been recommended to me by a friend who had visited here to do some work at the Guggenheim at one point. It was a delicious meal with a relatively inexpensive but decent Rioja. I was going to order a paella but the waitress suggested this arroz negro, and I am extremely glad I listened to her. The flavors, spices and textures were all perfect. As a perfect cap to the evening, we tried the apple tart and the cheese tart, both of which are totally local ingredients and absolutely delicious. In some sense it reminded me of how much I used to love going out to eat. I mean, I do like German food. It is largely rather hearty, nutricious and filling, and I do always enjoy a good beer. However, sometimes a nice local wine blends perfectly with subtle spices, bold flavors and interesting textures to stimulate the taste buds, then a slightly sweet and well-paired local dessert coats your mouth, cleanses your palate and leaves you fondly recalling the meal for hours to come. This dinner did all that.

My Night.

Tonight after work I walked the 40 minutes or so from my hotel to downtown Bilbao in order to meet some other people from the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics for dinner at a traditional cider house. The food was great and the local cider delicious, but for me it was all about the walk. The night was cool with a subtle sweetness from the hint of salt in the air blowing in from the sea. The river flowing through the town was shimmering beautifully from the soft lights coming off the many bridges and buildings. The architecture blended modern and ancient into a rather beautiful, serene landscape. The night was dry and cool, and many people were out near the river to exercise or simply walk with their families. It made me feel at peace ... at home. At least as though this was the kind of night I hope my eventual home has once in a while.

The Guggenheim

I arrived on Sunday afternoon in Bilbao after a relatively uneventful flight. It is amazing how nice it is to arrive at the airport and have your scheduled flight both exist and leave on time. For me, that is a rarity these days. Anyway, after finding the bus from the airport to town, asking a few people and walking 20 minutes or so, I found my hotel. Best of all, I did all of this without uttering a word of English. As it turns out, my hotel is rather pleasantly located only about 10 minutes from Guggenheim Museum. So, after dropping my stuff off and puzzling a bit over the remaining clues from the New York Times crossword puzzle I had picked up on the plane, I headed off to see the museum.

I started in a room where was one room with some work from the Guggenheim permanent collection. The particular pieces I really enjoyed were by artists named Matthew Ritchie and Javier Perez.

Perez had designed a mask and garment for a street festival in Brazil. They were both stored in a separate room from anything else with dim light except for a spotlight shining on the white garment hung on the wall and the gray mask suspended in the middle of the room. The garment was a simple white linen robe that hung gracefully. The mask was made of braided pieces of gray rope with small almost translucent strands sticking out all the way around it. The face had a rather horrifying expression, and the whole room left me feeling rather haunted. It certainly had the desired effect and it was interesting to think of how the lighting and design had elicited those emotions.

The Ritchie piece was a large, sprawling piece that seemed to me to model quite well the combustion and chaos of the cosmos. It featured a large, steel sculpture full of interweaving lines in the form of waves suspended above a cardboard mat with similar structures but done in various colors. Protruding through the holes formed by the steel waves were thin steel rods with small round objects welded to the tops of them. Surrounding the sculpture were both brightly colored paintings and a black and white wall mural featuring similar interweaving patterns and small, ill-defined protrusions. The whole exhibit felt vibrant and alive, so it left me feeling energized and refreshed.

The main exhibit features several rooms of work by Cy Twomby. Apparently he is from Lexington has been producing art for over 50 years. The pieces were often centered around creating something with inherent natural beauty in unexpected ways. He had sculptures made of discarded wood and plaster which me made to look like growing plants, gigantic paintings of bright flowers filled with texture and color and depictions of water from simple, repeated patters. It is always interesting to me to see esteemed art that has been created through rather simple means. Some of the pieces portrayed the great skill and techinique this artist had crafted, but some seemed strewn with random flickerings of paint or carelessly drawn scratches a child could make. Of those that seemed simple, some when viewed from a distance revealed new layer of depth or perspective I would not have suspected or thought about. However, some did not connect with me in that way and the simplicity of the piece drew me a little bit out of the exhibit as a whole. Overrall it was an impressive body of work spanning several galleries as well as decades, which left me thinking about the beautiful symmetries and textures in nature we so often take for granted and how they are present in many unexpected forms around us all the time.

The permanent collection is a series of large, steel sculptures by Richard Sera. These pieces are interactive in the sense that you can walk through them and experience how the geometry and coloration of the walls paired with the lighting shifts your perception of space. Many of these pieces would curve in a direction with one wall curving having an inward or outward bulge and the wall opposite bulging similarly. As these things twisted and turned it would shift the space you were in, alter your relationship with them and change your perception of words like middle or straight. Plus, the walls would tower above you making you feel small and confined, though from the outside the objects seemed perhaps only 12-15 feet high. Some of them would spiral, some were simply bent straigh paths and each had a unique shape and curvature so each created a different sensation when exploring their interior geometry.

The building itself is rather beautiful and full of interesting geometries. Even though it is a giant stainless steel piece of abstract art, it rather seamlessly blends into the surroundings and to the river below. It was a great start to my trip, though I wish someone was here to share it with me. Tonight I was going to head to a paella place a friend recommended near the museum, but due to an accident on the highway delaying my bus and difficulties getting the internet set up in my room, I left for dinner later than I intended. So, I simply went to small place near the University. However, I have the whole week so hopefully I will get to tell the story of the paella restaurant on the river another night.