Diane Arbus New York's texture, oddity vs shopping mega malls and ubiquitous NYU t-shirt

Please visit the Metropolitan Museum and here is a  link for  a quick peek.  The Met didn't pick the edgy characters in her haunting photos for their website although the exhibition at the Met was extraordinary and means even more to me because of the "new" hideous New York.   I picked this  Diane Arbus's image from a google search. I have a very heavy book from the exhibition at the Met that I think I saved when I had to throw out, give away and or sell my massive collection of books that I loved so much under duress and trauma more disturbing than just the regular trauma associated with moving.

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={E9C11548-26E7-431C-9F83-03E1EBC758CD}

I think of how much my neighborhood has been crushed (first came gentrification and next came supersification, my term inspired by the Bloomberg administration's tsunami of over the top community crushing development) with it you lost the community, the historic buildings which were so beautiful and many  had these "face facades" (photos on my blog) as opposed to mirrored facades so we lose the texture, the quirky oddities including people and small businesses to the ubiquitous NYU t-shirt and suits.  The people wearing NYU t shirts don't know about NYU tearing down St. Ann's and they don't know NYU's special real estate group wait like vultures for buildings to empty aka mass evictions to buy up or lease, tear down our historic New York to make it NYU-Las Vegas Ville.  (I thought I lived in the East Village, not a bad xerox of mid-town.  The street traffic both vehicular and pedestrian seems as crowded as midtown and in some ways the area is beginning to resemble Wall St. with "Dubai on the Bowery" next to a few token small buildings although I hear the goal is to remove all of them. So sad and yet funny  to be taking a break from NYC only to hear thick french accents discussing visiting the Lower East Side, the East Village and Bowery but they better hurry because it seems the goal is to make it Wall Street with a few token historic buildings and massive big sprawling dorms.   With the rise of just about everything comes more budget cuts which is another big red light that is not going to be addressed but to be endured with how many more causalities of all kinds?)

I just don't feel like painting anymore and painting takes a place to mess up and I need ventilation so my creativity comes out my pores (pours) other ways.   I am mourning it all.

I do want NYU to stop tearing down our historic buildings and most of all leave the Village East and West alone.  St. Ann's from 1847 survived everything but NYU's need and greed to build yet another mega dorm and ultimately where ever NYU buys property the neighborhood dies.  NYU doesn't need to abuse eminent domain to get the job done like Columbia University.

My mind returns to walking through the large rooms of the Met looking at photos of people, real people, odd, strange, the term some use is "freaks" and with great sadness, I think to myself, people will have to come visit a recreation of our neighborhoods in a museum or Las Vegas.  The people that made the area so desirable are no longer welcome -- the mirrored sky piercing windows have invisible "not welcome signs" as do the many fancy stores.  At least Starbucks feeds homeless people every day with left over food.   The sky piercing mirrored condos and glittery zone busting hotels reflect a history destroyed and a community no longer welcome.

I lived in a factory building that was converted for the last 20 years and every winter I froze.  It was so cold.  I had one heat source and I waited for the building to convert the old windows the leaked so much heat, allowed so much pollution including noise in and now my next stop feels like a hotel visit  possibly my last stop in New York City unless I make mega bucks so I can have a home in NYC and out in the country or get "married" to someone that changes my geography because relationships can do that but I do not see me living in my new home for another 20 years. I long more and more for quiet and peace but also for characters, unique funny wonderful characters always.

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2007/12/karls-face-on-facade-st-marks-ambulance.html

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2008/02/devil-on-st-marks.html

http://suzannahbtroy.blogspot.com/2008/02/st-marks-tongue-tongue-tongue.html

My heart just feels broken today , my throat has the 9-11 throat burn and I find myself returning to Diane Arbus. I found this article and I love how the author dismisses Norman Mailer's analogy and his own is sensitive and very smart because art is about "doors"...and about "locking and or unlocking" stories, emotions, etc.

Arbus Reconsidered by Arthur Lubow, Sept. 14, 2003 The NYTimes Magazine click the link to read the article by Lubow and I enjoyed reading his piece!

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02E1DB173BF937A2575AC0A9659C8B63

Her critics put her down because they were so very jealous of her is my guess and now she is being embraced and I see her influence everywhere -- even more or as much as the ubiquitous  NYU students and Con Ed trucks (as infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure..,]  Her critics where probably not capable of empathy and I believe she had empathy and compassion.  Some photos I see by contemporary photographers have compassion but also fear -- fear of becoming the subjects they photograph but you can tell Arbus had a genuine feeling for her subjects and the proof is in how their images and the haunting impact of them still touch us...haunt us, move us to step closer or further away.

If that happens to me I will be glad to not be alive to endure it..."it" being acceptance...too little too late now too alien I am alienated.

p.s.  "She'd go to bars on the Bowery and to people's houses."  from the Arbus article