Our first steps onto Manhattan were through Grand Central Terminal and while standing atop a terrace overlooking the main concourse, I had the stereotypical ‘they look like ants’ comment to my wife while watching the hurried, directed pace of the commuters. An image that came to haunt me an hour later when at the 9/11 Memorial and Tribute Museum. I scolded myself for finding humor in aligning, even if ever so slightly, with those areas of thought that equate human life to an insect (although with reference to our fragility and at times our powerlessness, indeed, we are just like ants). As for the new World Trade Center complex, it is of a scale that can only be experienced in person. A Kubrick-like presence that is both futuristic and pre-historic. I honestly didn’t know what to make of it. But I can’t see it as a triumph. Not that I want to limit the potentiality of the human spirit, but majesty can be found in the smallest details of life. And when inspiration calls for colossal ambitious effort, it can instead be channeled through forms that don’t hold such tremendous material consequence and without trepidation becoming a structural component. With that said, I was in awe at the Guggenheim.  A “temple of the spirit” was the intention behind the spiral design Frank Lloyd Wright implemented. When standing at the top of the atrium after viewing piece after piece of ardent expression, my head and knees went wobbly with vertigo.  Which happened to get me into dancing mode for a couple night’s at Phish’s Baker’s Dozen residency at Madison Square Garden. When seeing the band in the 90’s at a much younger age, it was about ferocious jubilance coruscating one's consciousness. Now in the thick of middle age (for both me and the band members), the age appropriate tenor is joyful jubilance. And the type of joy that is for joy’s sake only. The more and more joy becomes about something else, or an object, from a result, with an intention, a conditional state, the less and less joyful joy becomes. In some areas of life, kinetic nonsense can be one’s guide. Blaze on.