This marble statue of St. Emo the Drama Queen resides in the sculpture garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As far as large scale institutions which house, collect artifacts which were created by poor inspired and perhaps starving artisans across the ages (who knows maybe there are a number of creators in the collection who were rich and well-fed) the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of my favorites. Perhaps my personal all-time favorite but that could just be the result of familiarity, I mean, I am not really very familiar with the collections at the Louvre or the Museum of London, or any of the other ‘World-Class’ places.

Note to self: Do become more familiar with large institutional collections of Art as they have been gathered about the globe in a convenient pattern for the sake of tourism.

Anyways, I went last Friday as part of a soulful return to NYC. Its sort of my spiritual home in the city, if you will. See, when I first moved to New York City, I was a young, misguided brat who had his head half out of this world and my thinking found me climbing the obelisk that is parked at the top the hill, directly behind the Museum. During this act, I was in a spiritual trance or high on some substance, I can’t remember which, but before the aliens came down and visited me, I found on one of the corners of the base of Cleopatra’s Needle a shiny black stone. At the time it seemed very, very important and highly mystical.

Of course, I was completely alone at this time, and knew noone in the city, so I was basically praying to be able to meet people, make friends and find my way around the place. So for what its worth, you can say that those prayers were answered, especially as I have been to a dance party in the Temple of Dendur, but that is officially another story altogether.