These English teachers up here kid me and giggle when I say this. I explain that I appreciate correct grammar, sure, but I also love the freckles in language too much to try to rub them out. I adore colloquialisms and am a sucker for dialects. In fact, I wanted to teach my friends how to use “fixin’ to”, but it didn’t sound right in their mouths, so I just let it go.
Well … I am fixin’ to embark on Nika’s Big Apple Art Tour 2009, so I purchased a copy of the New York Times in preparation. Eagerly, I flipped directly to the Arts section to discover the must-see summer exhibits.
The first and largest museum advertisement on the page, was for … the Kimbell Art Museum?! That’s right, the Kimbell Art Museum that is twenty minutes down the road from where I live in Fort Worth. It’s on Camp Bowie Boulevard, so the ad tells me.
“I know”, I answer curtly. “The entrance faces Arch Adams Street, if you want to get technical. To the east is the Modern. To the south is Will Rogers Auditorium. To the west is the Amon Carter. And to the north is a hookah shop that used to be a fantastic sandwich joint where I would order a cucumber, avocado, and cream cheese with oil and vinegar on wheat. So, yeah. I know EXACTLY where it is.”
Though I know, I do not go. At least, I don’t go very often. Maybe I enjoy the Kimbell every two years. I visit the other museums even less frequently, which is tragic for many reasons, not the least of which is that one of my Top Ten favorite paintings is in the permanent collection at the Amon Carter (Grant Wood’s “Parson Weems’ Fable”).
There is something about those ruts in the neighborhood that keep us going to the same places, as if our axles are on autopilot, unbeknowst to us. Today my professor encouraged us to approach our lives and work with new eyes in order to see new things. What would happen if you looked down your own street as if you had never walked its curbs and cracks and gravel before?
“Make the familiar strange,” she said.
One way I could interpret that statement is to view Fort Worth as a place that Manhattanites might read about in the New York Times and want to go on vacation. Hmmm. ‘I heart FW’ t-shirts. Not working in my imagination (although, come to think of it, I would like to have one of those). Or I could think of MYSELF as the tourist who is beginning a luxuriously looooong vacation when I step off the plane in DFW in a few weeks. Then I might actually see the sights in my city. Bring a camera, even. (No, I won’t buy you any souvenirs).
I remember last year, before my friends and I all went to Ellis Island together, some of us kept turning to the New Yorkers in our program to tell us whether there is a cafe on the island, about the line for the ferry, or about museum ticket prices.
“What are you looking at us for?” they shrugged. “We’ve never been.”
Whew. It’s not just me. And there’s still time to turn the wheel and run out of the rut. Sure, I may not have been to the Modern or to the Amon Carter or even to the zoo in a month of Sundays, but you best believe, I’m fixin’ to go.