Weekly recap + what we ate: Spring Break

My brother’s family was in town the last week of March for their Spring break. It had been almost two and a half years since we saw them in person- last time they were here, the baby was eight weeks old. Of course there have been many video calls since them, but seeing them in person was pretty great.

I feel so lucky that we live somewhere where there is a wealth of things to see and do, and most of it is free. One thing my brother and sister-in-law really wanted to see was the new Yayoi Kasuma exhibit at the Hirshhorn, the contemporary and modern art museum on the Mall. I had missed the last Kasuma exhibit when it was here, so I was eager to go this time, even though it meant lining up at 9:00am for tickets on a Sunday. Fortunately, my brother and his In-laws went down on the early side to get in line and my sister-in-law, my mom, and I followed with the kids at a more reasonable hour.

I will admit the only work of Kasuma I had been familiar with were pictures of her pumpkins. The current exhibit featured two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, but first up was a pumpkin:

I was unprepared for how the pumpkin took up so much space and how looming it would feel in its dotted room. I also love how the precision of the dots contrast with the more organic curves of the pumpkin.

The Infinity Mirror Rooms were another kind of overwhelming and immersive experience. These are rooms where the walls are made of mirrors so they seem to extend without limits. There was a time limit on how long each museum patron could be in the room – 30 seconds for the first room and 60 for the second. I think there is something ironically claustrophobic about being in a room that seems to stretch for infinity. The first room featured all these stuffed protuberances that came out of the ground like a field of polka dotted cacti. It was kind of whimsical and fun.

The second room featured polka dot lanterns aglow in a dark mirrored room. This room reminded me a little of being out on Hallowe’en, and how disembodied one can feel in the dark, even when surrounded by lighted objects. (I’m sure there’s some kind of metaphor for life in that somewhere…)

After we went through the Kasuma exhibit, we also went to see the Laurie Anderson exhibit. The exhibit was a fascinating blend of sound, film, and visual images. There was one piece that featured projections of people sharpening knives, the sound almost symphonic. There was also several rooms with words and pithy thoughts scrawled, graffiti like, all over the walls and floors. Here were a few of my favorites:

I find the Hirshhorn rather overwhelming to visit, to be honest. In think contemporary art requires a lot of mental bandwidth from me, and a lot of it, while interesting, demands attention unrelentingly. At the Hirshhorn, a lot of the exhibits often have audio as well visual components and sometimes I don’t feel like I have room to process everything. And a lot of the time, I had to admit that I just don’t “get” what I’m seeing, even though I read the little placard next to the work. Sometimes I feel like I’m either overthinking contemporary art, or under thinking it. And honestly sometimes it just makes me giggle. I’m glad I live near and can visit in short bursts and take things in one exhibit at a time.

At the time of my brother’s visit, most of the museums were still open on reduced hours, so we spent one day walking around and visiting monuments since we couldn’t go to any museums. We saw the MLK memorial and the FDR memorial, those being two of the closest to the cherry blossom in the tidal basin. Of course it wasn’t officially peak bloom anymore, but there was still lots of blossoms to be seen. And lots of petals to rain down on our heads like snow.

Among all that, I had one last supertitle gig for this season, and perhaps my favorite of all the vocal recitals I worked this year. The pianist for the recital was also a composer and the second half of the program was entirely songs cycles that he had written. He introduced each song set and there was something wonderfully personal about a hearing a composer talk about the backstory of their own work.

Another fascinating thing that happened that week – I took my mom to the Mall to find an outfit for a meeting she had coming up. As we were walking to Macy’s, we saw a good wandering around the parking lot.

“Strange!” I thought. But I’d seen a lot of geese flying overhead recently so I didn’t really think much of it, though I have to admit that seeing a goose wandering in the Macy’s parking lot has a certain charm, so long as one stays out of the goose’s way. Then, as I was walking up to the door, I saw:

Why yes, that is a goose and two eggs in the planter in front of Macy’s. In my head I have a story (much like when my middle child was born) of a goose couple starting to fly off on a journey when suddenly the mama goose says, “We need to pull over now! The eggs are coming!” And she lays two eggs in the middle of a parking lot. (I, fortunately did make it to the hospital with my middle child…). Anyway, given that there were clearly two geese guarding the precious eggs, we figured it was better if we just went our merry way into Macy’s and let the geese have some family privacy. Or as much as one can have in the middle of a parking lot.

What we ate: we actually ate out more than usual because cooking dinner for twelve people seemed overwhelming.

Saturday: take out thai, picked up on our way home from the airport.

Sunday: We had dinner at a new to us restaurant with lots of outdoor seating and firepits. Though the evening was on the chilly side, the restaurant staff brought us blankets and lots of extra firewood for the firepit. Of course half our blankets were immediately commandeered by the kids to build blanket forts…. The food was pretty good and they had these fun smores kits for dessert. The fun thing about their s’mores is that in addition to the typical Hersheys chocolates they also had York Peppermint Patties and thin Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Such a brilliant idea!

Monday: ordered Vietnamese food. We needed something quick because we were having family photos taken.

Tuesday: Terriyaki Tofu and grilled Korean Beef and grilled veggies. With rice and seaweed salad on the side.

Wednesday: I had to work so I got a take out grain bowl from Beefsteak.

Thursday: Japanese take out.

Friday: Pizza and movie night at our Tennessee AirBnB (more on that next post…). Pizza Hut, which was better than I had remembered, though they were out of mushrooms, which I have never encountered before.