Experiences

I visited the American Museum of Natural History yesterday. Wow! When I read Jurassic Park or browsed through Dinosaurs by Macromedia or watched Steven Spielberg's movie, I always thought there's a lot of fantasy in this. There couldn't have been something so bizarre roaming around - and I never really believed that the dino searches were as dramatic as they were made out to be. But there it was - almost completely preserved skeletal fossils of such diversity. I whooped when I encountered my first T Rex. What could be more exciting? And the size of the Baranosaurus is something to be seen to be believed. And that complete fossilized nest of eggs that you can touch ... I'm a dino enthusiast and this was like holy shrine to me. The space center is also awesome. They have this nice spiral walk which traces the origin of our current universe from 13 billion years ago. Every foot you walk is 45 million years - it is done very creatively. They've made concepts such...

I'm a certified nut case. Who else will cry when coming face to face with a painting? True, it was a Van Gogh. True, it was one of my favorite paintings of his. True, it was a moment when years of longing was fulfilled. But crying? I think people at Metropolitan Museum of Art are used to such reaction. Nobody bothered about this crazy woman sitting motionless before the painting obviously in an emotional state. The guard actually smiled at me when I involuntarily swore out loud when I walked into a Monet. I was quite shaken by Picasso as well. I thought of Mozart when I looked at his work--it had the same quality of effortless genius about it. There's acres and acres of artwork in that place! While going through pieces of art through the ages (they have stuff from 3500 BC onwards), one is suddenly struck by a thought: artistic expression is not something that evolved with civilization. Man was born with the ability to be sublime. The visit had the quality of the pil...