This time it's the East 96th St Branch of the library. Two blocks from the hostel, three blocks to Central Park. This afternoon am going to the Met to meet with Paul for lunch, and then I think I might go to the Empire State Building. I've been tossing up since I arrived whether I would bother, and now I think the answer is "Yes."

I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday, which is temporarily in Queens, and saw the rather amazing Picasso and Matisse exhibition - placing their works side by side, to see the development of the two painters over time. Looking at so many pieces it really began to hit home how much I've had enough of Picasso for the time being. I feel like that's not the sort of thing I should be saying - like the man I heard at the Frick on Sunday, commenting "Rembrandt is really not one of my favourite painters." When I turned to see who had spoken, he looked at me and laughed and said, "You're really not meant to let anyone hear you say that." Well, Picasso isn't one of my favourites. Looking at so many of his paintings I realised how much more I enjoy his prints and drawings - alongside the Matisse pieces the colours just looked overdone and wrong. It was beautiful to see so many paintings by Matisse together though. I liked the story of the initial pair of paintings in the exhibition: in 1907 Picasso and Matisse exchanged paintings. Gertrude Stein suggests that they each chose a rather bad painting by the other - perhaps to gloat. Picasso chose a portrait Matisse had painted of his daughter, Marguerite. Apparently there is evidence that Picasso's friends made fun of the Matisse portrait, and threw fake darts at it, though Picasso was later to regret this disrespect and label the piece a "key" work of Matisse's.

I finished reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and then read two books of poetry by Carolyn Forche - The Angel of History and Blue Hour, both wonderful. I read the first in Central Park, then went to Barnes and Noble one night to read the other there, since I couldn't afford to buy it. I feel like I'm going to start writing again soon - I feel like it's been so long since I haven't written that this feeling is a real relief. Now I'm reading Washington Square . I went to Washington Square and read 100 pages of it there. Lovely. Got stopped by a guy who was advertising a hiphop theatre show based on the Book of Job, and he said. "You're reading Washington Square in Washington Sqaure? Cool. How self-referential."

New York