I brought my old digital camera along and took most of my photos with it but none of my SD card readers work anymore. I still wanted to post something so for now there won't be any photos. I'll add them once I get a new card reader.

We spent most of the day around Rockefeller Center, had some extra time before the MoMA would open so we went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Even as someone with a very difficult history with Catholicism, it was hard not to cry in there. So much attention to detail, so much human effort put into it. The building itself is a work of art. It's a testament to what we can achieve as human beings. As we were walking down the center aisle, my mom told me this funny story from when she first immigrated here from Russia. Her first job in New York was at some high end boutique. She was a seamstress. One day, her boss called off work while she was already on the way there and it was raining like crazy that day. She was living paycheck to paycheck in a foreign country and had no clue what to do at that point. So she went to St. Patrick's Cathedral to get out of the rain. Mass had already started. When she went to receive communion, she made the sign of the cross with her left hand rather than her right hand, the Eastern Orthodox way. The steward, an older woman, smirked at her and said, "You're not a Catholic, are you?" My mom shook her head, mascara streaming down her face. The steward smiled at her and gave her the wafer anyway.

I think I was about twelve the last time I went to the MoMA, so of course I enjoyed it much more now that I have an interest in modern art. I finally got to see some Rothko paintings in person. My favorite installations were the ones that utilized television sets. One of them was this arrangment of cathode-ray tube monitors in this pyramid shape, Paso del Quindio by Jose Alejandro Restrepo. The monitors show footage from this journey the artist took through a dangerous mountain pass in Colombia. It was all black and white. Tall skinny trees swaying in a torrential downpour, mist slithering through deep valleys. I also liked Wipe Cycle by Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, where nine monitors are set up in a grid. Above them is a CCTV camera pointed directly at you, its footage displayed on four of the monitors. Two monitors are delayed by eight seconds, the other two by sixteen seconds. The other monitors show clips from old television broadcasts and commercials. I love art about surveillance (which will be relevant later on in this post), communication technology, the flow of information, etc. I also liked a lot of the short films they projected on the walls, especially Syntagma by Valie Export. I didn't get to see the whole thing since we were on a bit of a time crunch, but I'll try to find the full thing online so I can fully appreciate it.

My favorite floor overall was probably the fifth floor, dedicated to art from the 1880s to the 1950s. I love art about the industrial revolution and WWI. They showed old short films of people working on the Ford Motor Company assembly line, some of Marcel Duchamp's sculptures, lots of Picasso's work of course. I loved a lot of the photography they showed from this era, such as A Sea of Steps by Frederick H. Evans, The Hand of Man by Alfred Stieglitz (because I love trains!!!), The Storm Tree by Anne W. Brigman. Power Station by Joe Munroe reminds me of my own photography of my local power substation, and Pacific Gas and Electric Company by Minor White looks so ahead of its time, like a frame from a Ridley Scott film.

After that my mom dragged me to Uniqlo. I hate clothes shopping, but I especially hate shopping at stores that specialize in boring clothes. (My grandma jokes about how I'm an anomaly, a girl that doesn't like buying new clothes.) So I sat down in this little sitting area on the third floor and did some people watching for a while. From where I sat, I had a direct line of sight to the top of the escalators. At one point, this skinny man with a long gray beard, maybe fifty years old, stood at the top, looking down. It seemed like he was talking to and gesturing towards someone at the bottom. Eventually, he pulled out his phone. I glanced back over at him and he smiled and waved in this extremely creepy way, pointing his phone camera straight at me. This scared the shit out of me so I got up and started speedwalking around the store so he wouldn't find me. I feel like a crazy person when I think about this interaction. Maybe he was pointing his camera and waving at whoever was at the bottom of the escalator? If so, why did he only start smiling and waving once I noticed him? Surely the camera would've been pointed downward rather than straight at me. I feel so sick whenever I think about my face being on some stranger's phone. But he seemed to have no reaction to my reaction, like he wasn't actually looking at me. I don't know. When I found a hiding spot, I took a peek over at where he was standing to see if he was still there, and he seemed to be laughing at something on his phone with some other guy.

I sort of pushed this moment to the back of my mind for the rest of the day so I could enjoy myself. But knowing how many people have been unknowingly recorded in public and posted online to be laughed at and ridiculed... I'm so scared that that just happened to me. I would honestly prefer if this guy was just using my likeness to jerk off alone in his room rather than posting it online for a whole bunch of other weirdos to see. I don't use Instagram or TikTok anymore so I wouldn't know. Sometimes I wish cameras weren't so accessible to the general public, because it emboldens idiots to think they have a right to surveil you for an audience just because you're in a public space with security cameras. I hate that we live in a world where we are constantly being recorded and monitored by the state and various corporations trying to harvest our data to sell us more of their useless junk. But I especially hate when random dumbasses choose to make the panopticon even more inescapable.

We stopped by Rough Trade (I could've gotten The Ascension by Glenn Branca but I decided not to and now I regret it) before taking the F train to the West Village. I went to an extremely cramped record store that had no air conditioning and got Closer by Joy Division along with this little poster for a Japanese screening of a documentary about them.

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