As our first semester of Interdisciplinary Studies of New York comes to a close, I have come to realize how many aspects of New York and its culture I took for granted. On our first day of class, we took a walk to Madison Square Park to view the outdoor exhibition, Delirious Matter by artist Diana Al-Hadid. It was interesting to see how the sculptures installed across the park displayed signs of deterioration in their molds and composition. The white paint and sagging elements of each sculpture juxtaposed the leafy greens of the plants and the rigidity of the trees. I walked through this park every day for two weeks to get to Baruch and did not notice the sculptures lying all around me until Professor Eversley pointed it out to us. It is funny how I was so caught up in getting from point A to point B that I didn’t notice the beauty of the world and the art around me. I took a picture of three women in front of one of Al-Hadid’s sculptures. Each person is in front of a wall of “Delirious Matter,” which to me represented the passing of time. As time moves forward, our idea of the events that happened in the past fades, which forms this deteriorating wall. One woman is sitting and facing the wall as if she is looking at her past. She is contemplative and wondering how experiences in her childhood and early adult-hood are affecting her current life and her future. The elderly woman to the left of her is sitting on what looks to be a wheel-chair. She is reading a book and has her hat hung on the wring of her chair. She has lived long enough to understand that her past cannot change the outcome of her future. She is complacent, not in a bad way, and she will live the rest of her years doing what she enjoys. In this case, it means reading a book under the shadow of a tree on a sunny day. The last woman is sunbathing on the ground and is furthest away from the wall of the past. To me, it seems like she is living and embracing the moment. She is soaking up the radiation from the sun and is happy doing so. She doesn’t care about what happens tomorrow or the day after that but is instead content with what she has. After taking this picture, I felt a close resemblance to the woman who has her back facing us. Often times, I look too deep into the past and get stuck in the quicksand of hypotheticals. I question what I could have done better? What should I have said? Why didn’t I do X? Yet, I want to be sunbathing in the sun. I want to live in the moment and understand that the past is a part of me that I can’t change. I want to live for today and understand that every new day there is something to learn and see. Something that I can absorb using all my senses.

Art is all around us. This class has taught me how insipid life will be if I simply go through the motions. I have bigger eyes now to view the art that is around me in plays, operas, galleries, etc. And living in New York provides me the best opportunity to go after these events and embrace them while living in the moment.