Yesterday we went to Central Park to see The Gates. I’m having difficulty writing about them.

How do you write about something that has no meaning? About something that’s just pretty? I wonder if that’s the point of the Gates – that they mock our need to find meaning. It’s okay merely to describe how the Gates look and what they make you feel or think. There’s no prescribed way. Meaning isn’t important. It’s all very Zennish.

With that preamble – the Gates are pretty cool. I like how a gust of wind will rush through a row of them, making some of them billow while inexplicably leaving others alone.

I was surprised that the Gates are not all the same width. Each Gate is as wide as the pathway it’s on. A Gate is not expandable – its width cannot be adjusted – so it’s as if it can be only at that one spot and no other. I wonder if each Gate had an assigned location.

At one point yesterday I turned to Matt and said in this mock-Valley-Girl/mock-stoned voice, “I think, that, like, each of the Gates? Has its own personality?”

We spent nearly two hours walking through the park, starting at 81st and Central Park West. We walked up to Summit Rock, over to the Great Lawn, up to the southern edge of the Reservoir, back down around the Lawn, up to Belvedere Castle (the crowds on the stairway leading up to it got backed up), down through the Rambles (which were gateless), past the lake, over to Bethesda Fountain, then over to Columbus Circle. As we reached the southwestern corner of the park, we saw a bunch of people taking photos of one particular Gate. We wondered what was going on, and then we looked up and saw a hawk devouring a squirrel on a tree branch. Gross. I guess the Gates can’t divert attention from everything.

Here are a ton of Flickr photos. And I particularly like Matt Pecori’s photos.

It’s too bad we didn’t go on Saturday, or maybe we could have gotten one of the free fabric swatches. Jake Dobkin appears to have found particularly good use for one; I think this is my favorite Gates photo of all.