The Guggenheim Effect: New York City Reunions and the Circle of Life

Elissa and I at the Guggenheim, November 2016. Thrilling. The
glass dome and a painting from the exhibit that was up.
My photo, a rare good one.

The Guggenheim was in the news recently for getting another grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to continue to digitize its collections, and the news brought me full circle to some wonderful memories. 

The circular, curved architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan continues to draw comments good and bad as it did when it first opened in 1959. A unique architectural style, iconic, Wright took 16 years to draw up its various plans and died before it was finished. So did its founder Solomon Guggenheim. Wider at the top than at the bottom, Wright wanted it to be "a temple of the spirit." It housed all kinds of impressionist and modern art at one time, but we thought it looked rather bare in November 2016 when we wound our way up the curved ramps to the top and fixated on the dome skylight.  

Natalia and me, together, joyful.

My daughter Elissa and I were in New York City to reunion with my dear friend Natalia from Ukraine. She was visiting her son Ivan, who had an IT job in NYC, and his family.  They lived across the river in Jersey City, New Jersey, which turned out to be a fabulous sight for viewing the new World Trade Center.

I lived with Natalia at the end of my Peace Corps service in Starobilsk. She later moved to Kyiv to be closer to her children. I didn't think I'd see her again when I left Ukraine, and the language barrier was the worst with Natalia because she was a soulmate. We both felt it, we knew it through pantomime, efforts at understanding, and laughter, lots of laughter. Not being able to communicate fully, to become immersed in those long intimate conversations among friends that bring comfort and joy, was almost painful.

Seeing Natalia in New York brought tears of joy.  She gave me a beautiful work of art she had created, but seeing her again was the best gift of all. It was a fantastic, emotional reunion, and we repeated it when she and Ivan visited us in Sylvania a month later.  That was the best Christmas gift ever! Thank goodness that Ivan was our translator.

Natalia & son Ivan in Sylvania, Ohio. How fantastic that was!
On Main St, with my family, at Wildwood, a tour of Toledo.
December 2016

It felt like life coming full circle. It felt like being in the Guggenheim, strolling up pathways to meet old friends and loved ones, finding surprises along the way. The circle of life. A temple of the spirit, what Frank Lloyd Wright wanted it to be, what he bequeathed to future generations.

The Guggenheim effect! This New York visit brought even more reunions on top of the precious visit with Natalia. Elissa and I came full circle with several friends whom we hadn't seen for years.

I got to see my friend Alice Twombly after many years doing our own things, living our lives. It was as if we had never been apart. We carried on where we  had left off, a seamless narrative between forever friends.  She remembered her father's business in Jersey City, we reminisced about our time together in Madison, Wisconsin, took a slow walk up memory lane, up and down the ramps of our lives' experiences.  

Me with Natalia, Alice, and Christine and Elissa with Eric at the
Guggenheim. Powerful experiences, happy moments.

We met world-traveler Christine Comerford, who lives on Long Island, a friend my sister Andy and I made on a fabulous Gate I tour in Sicily. We shared a beer at a pub on the East River, near the new World Trade Center, just like we had done in Taormina. 

It was, however, bittersweet to visit the new glass tower that replaced the Twin Towers tragically destroyed on 9/11. The view from Jersey City across the river was amazing, moving, and it was even more so when we got up close and could touch the mementos, salvaged pieces of metal, the names of first responders and the thousands lost.  We were standing on sacred ground.

And finally on this trip, Elissa got to see her friend Eric, from her Maumee Valley high school class, whom she had lost touch with. In fact we met up with Eric, who had long lived in NYC, at the Guggenheim. He and Elissa reminisced about mutual friends and high school antics as they went full circle to the top.  I remembered Eric's father, a Math professor at the University of Toledo when we were there, and his mother, a great cook. 

Being at the Guggenheim. It was a passage in the present through time, the stuff memories are made of and that sustain us as we move up and down the ramps of life. Coming full circle.  

SOURCES: 

* https://www.guggenheim.org/news/guggenheim-neh-grant & https://www.guggenheim.org/library-archives/library-archives-projects/guggenheim-listening-project-reel-to-reel-collection-digitization

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_R._Guggenheim_Museum.  There's a Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain too, designed by renowned Canadian architect Frank Gehry. Amazing isn't it? Frank Gehry also designed a Center for the Arts building closer to home, next to the Toledo Museum of Art. 

Guggenheim in Bilboa.

This is the University of Toledo's Center for the Arts,
a Frank Gehry building built next to the Toledo Museum of Art

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