By KIRK MICHAEL

This is the second part of a two-part Dispatch. The first part is available here. 

I navigate by haphazard emotion, glancing over the wonderful cards that describe the provenance of the art, the investments of the rich across centuries. Willem Claesz Heda’s “Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware” has what the title says it has and also a stamped checkerboard knife fitted for Old Dutch clutches, Schermerhorns buying up property on the docks of New York, New Amsterdam, monochrome banquet pieces slapped onto walls like flatscreens, overturned chalices and cutlery, tarnish and husk, the bitter translucent lemon dripping gold leaf citrus, succulent on the table, the pip as acidic as the pupils in my eyes.

By KIRK MICHAEL

This is the first part of a two-part Dispatch. The second part is available here. 

“Beginnings are always delightful; the threshold is the place to pause. 

My luggage trips over the pavement and the brownstone bella vista is dappled by trees I will soon learn are called Callery Pears, the ones that smell of semen, vulgar but pleasing, high on the listicle of “Disgusting Smelling New York Trees, Ranked,” a sign that I have finally arrived in Brooklyn in proper spring, the jizzy crush of it.