The Noguchi Museum

The Noguchi Museum is that quiet respite, a ferry ride away from the burgeoning New York City skyline — imposing more than any skyscraper could through silence. Visitors become acutely aware of themselves with every footstep that echoes in the indoor-outdoor space: a void of beauty and stillness, of simplicity, really, verging on the sublime, where sound becomes a peculiar intrusion into its solitude.

Although traffic has picked up since my last visit two years ago, I still call it a home away from home. But I fear speaking on my nest egg will no longer make it mine.

You can get lost here — that's the invitation — staring into the tiniest of details: a crack in the hard, masculine form of rock that Noguchi carved himself, the places where his canvas meets another base, the shadows cast at varying angles. What might diminish other works of art are the things that make these feel most alive.

And when the shapes, the curves, the pockets, the spaces within spaces all summon the same feeling from my first visit, "I remember" becomes the most powerful thought I have all day.