heightened moments

I was walking down Wooster from Grand, on my way from one Deitch Project exhibition to another when I stepped into what seemed another world, as if waters were parting to life itself. Two women in blue smocks and blue bonnets to protect their hair sat on a stoop eating their lunches. A dark haired woman, not so young tentatively negotiated the sidewalk with a stroller and its twins. A Latino woman stepped out of a car parked on the curb and turned into the sidewalk as if offering the child in her arms. And there across the street a black man sat in the sun, a wide brimmed, circular pointed hat shading his face, a newspaper spread at his feet and and rising from the pavement surrounding him, as if the wings of a phoenix, tribal drums and masks and other african objects in a fan of fantasy directly across from the open garage door that functions as Deitch's entrance. I wondered if it were a part of the installation within, somehow knowing it wasn't. But once inside, transported again by teepee and sphinx and patchwork paintings I thought of Burning Man, and yearned for alternate realities on my way back from lunch to work.