The Cloisters and Packing

Well, well, well, what have we here? First weekday of no work, and already I'm up to no good. My day starts with yesterday.

I took myself up to the Cloisters, the last vestige of New York City I had any desire to see and cross off my list, and man, I'm really glad I went, they... were... beautiful! The Cloisters were built in the 1930s to look like real medieval cloisters farrrrrr in uptown Manhattan, on that upper peninsula of Inwood along the Hudson, and it's where the Met appropriately hosts medieval art. Along the river in the summertime, it was just so beautiful, and a little nostalgic, and made me miss Europe. I wish I had gone sooner, but then again, I only recently found out being a student at Columbia gives me free museum access in New York, so it's better this way. There was even a special exhibit on the unicorn.

The walk to the Cloisters

A view of the Hudson river from inside the Cloister walls

 The entrance to the museum.

 Inside, an entrance to another room

A replica of a Cloister chapel... or something. I didn't get too close, tours annoy me

A unicorn tapestry! I was yelled at for taking a picture in that room right after that. "Oops"

 The Holy Grail. (Unofficially). Don't try to tell me it's not, we all saw Indiana Jones!

On the subway ride up I was listening to Of Monsters and Men, a band from Iceland that was at Coachella. The whole album kinda reads like a concept piece of a Viking voyage, and looking at this book made me feel like it was a page straight from a song, so I lolololol'ed

This reminded me so much of Sleeping Beauty, I had to take a picture. There's a scene where the three fairies are trying to figure out how they will protect the princess after Maleficent delivers her evil omen, and in order to not be overheard, they shrink themselves down and hide in piece like this to discuss their plan...

 

The Cloister courtyard

A medieval medicinal garden

Courtyard with ivy

After this, I went to Herald Square area for awhile before coming back home, eating, and then starting in on packing. I already got the process going on Saturday when I went through all of my clothes, jewelry, shoes, etc, to start The Purge and get rid of anything and everything that could be spared. It was hard to be as generous as I wanted, but as I told my wardrobe and shoerack at the end: "Don't get too comfortable. You've only survived Round One."

So I'm slowly whittling things down, last night got into the packing. I put on music and went through things as I packed them, and played dress up in more of my clothes as I tried to determine what I still wanted to keep. Because I only came to New York with two suitcases of clothes and a curling iron, most everything I have here was also acquired here, and it was weird to go through the books I had bought (like the whole Harry Potter series), remembering each crowded trip to The Strand bookstore, and every bookmarker left in them (like a picture of me and Ronnie from the Michael Jackson birthday party in Brooklyn in August 2010!), or the book Jayna bought for me at the book fair our work did once, and new hire documents for the job in New York, and then the job at Columbia, and I was able to reflect on literally my entire time here, and I was relieved to find that, while I had fun and I'll miss this, I'm happy to close the books on this adventure and call it a day.

When I started to see the dawn coming through I figured it was time to pack it in. I showered at 4am, watched an episode of Game of Thrones (slowly but surely) and went to bed around 5am. I woke up at noon after having had one of the best sleeps I've had in months, and starting back in on the packing and sorting today. If I don't make it to yoga this afternoon, I WILL go tomorrow morning!

...maybe.