I was in an endless labyrinth of corridors, surrounded by repeating hallways of the same meaningless canvasses positioned on the wall everywhere I looked. At least there was still sunlight shining in through the clear glass panels of the museum — something natural other than the lifeless paintings I had been staring at for the past few hours. When my parents said we were going to be traveling to New York, I expected some classic street food and a barely containable nightlife. What I did not expect at all was to be stuck in the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the first day of our trip, barely dragging myself along as my parents seemed to absorb the so-called “beauty” of thousands of paintings. I felt like I was watching paint dry, literally. As if the day couldn’t already be worse, the meager AC put up a weak fight against the sweltering Manhattan heat. The sweat at the base of my neck lingered for hours, soaking into my shirt with a tingle of tepid feelings that coursed through my body. Sighing reluctantly, I still decided to “be the good son” and follow my parents onto the “Abstract Expressionism” section — whatever that meant.

A giant floor-to-ceiling canvas with a disarray of brown paint splattered all over the entirety of the work hung before me. I was in disbelief, thoroughly convinced that my little brother could produce something of the same caliber. Looking at the info plaque on the wall that seemed so small in comparison to the painting, I made out that it was called “Autumn Rhythm,” by Jackson Pollock. Thick lines of paint were piled on top of each other every which way, and dried clumps of scabrous material protruded from the chaotic mishap of canvas. It was like looking down onto a blockade during rush hour; the painting seemed like the result of a frustrated outbreak of anger, but at the same time the messy collisions were absolutely mesmerizing. I stared deeply into the intricate web of white lines that sat on top of the initial skeleton of black paint, and I imagined the rough branches of a barren tree during wintertime, with the scattered gray splashes on the canvas representing budding leaves. The image of the tree flashed in my mind, and for a moment I must’ve spaced out, because the next thing I knew I was looking at a real tree through the window of a rickety wooden shack, with a malty effervescent smell that flooded my nostrils. I looked around and noticed a couple of beer bottles lying around the barn, but before I could take in more of my surroundings, a guttural voice pierced my thoughts.

“Jus’ what’re you lookin’ at, son?” slurred a man of medium height. He was dressed simply, with a pair of worn leather boots and a fitted black t-shirt that reeked of sweat. His pants were spattered with paint, and a fresh cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth. I was at a loss for words, and I had no idea what was going on — what happened to the museum?

“I-I don’t really know, sir. Do you know where I am? Last I knew I was in Manhattan,” I replied nervously.

The man chortled uncontrollably. “This is East Hampton you’re talking about — I think you’re a little off the map, son.”

The man began to breathe raggedly, and I smelled a sour odor in the air as he staggered away. I looked around the rest of the barn, and on the floor I noticed a large canvas, fresh with black lines of paint dancing around the center. There was a can of white paint that the man had set down when he came over to talk to me, and — it couldn’t be. I shook my head and tried to retrace my steps in the Met. Then, it dawned on me that I was looking at the same painting that had been in the museum, only now it was on the ground of this barn, half-finished.

“W-who are you, and what’s the date?” I stuttered, too shocked to remember my manners.

“Name’s Jackson Pollock and it’s the sixth of February, 1950,” the man grunted, glancing at me in a strange manner as he made his way back to his work space. “And if you don’t mind me, I have a paintin’ I have to get back to.”

1950? How in the world…? As I backed up uncertainly with a growing fear, my shoe hit a jar of paint and accidentally knocked it over. I turned around and bit my lip as I saw a trail of woodsy brown paint crawl onto the canvas that was just a few inches away.

“What’s it called?” I questioned, half trying to direct Pollock’s attention away from the new blemish, half trying to reassure myself that there was no way I was looking at the unfinished “Autumn Rhythm.”


“I actually don’t know yet, kid. I think it’s my number 30 drip paintin’ —” he stopped abruptly as he noticed the fresh paint that I had accidentally added to his canvas. Unsure how the half-sober recluse that lived in a barn would react, I looked for the nearest exit. Pollock glanced over at me, his eyes glossy to a point of near murkiness, and I couldn’t tell whether I should’ve run or stayed put. “A splash of brown — that’s exactly what I needed. Thanks, kid,” Pollock murmured as he picked out a can of turquoise-gray paint sitting on the floor.

Silently letting out my breath, I watched from a distance as Pollock stepped on and off the canvas, flicking paint everywhere, not even caring where it landed. He didn’t even use a traditional brush; instead, it was just a stick that he dipped in and out of different cans of paint, actively throwing his arms back and forth in a fluid, dance-like motion. Thwip! The paint splattered onto the canvas, resembling the precision of steady raindrops falling from the sky. It was as if Pollock was having an encounter with the canvas, and the painting would later serve as his record of that encounter. He seemed so subconsciously focused on his painting that he didn’t even notice his surroundings anymore. I didn’t want to interrupt his session, but I finally mustered up a question out of awe.

“Mr. Pollock, if you don’t mind, could I ask where you get your inspiration from? Is it nature?”

Pollock looked over at me and gave me a weary smile that showed how physically tiring the action painting really was, and he replied simply, “I am nature.”

Still thinking about the meaning of that last tidbit, I blinked and instantly found myself on the bench in the center of the gallery, sitting right in front of “Autumn Rhythm.”

“Son, can we move on? You’ve been sitting there for at least ten minutes now!” my father called as he walked over with my mom.

“Wait,” I replied. Ten minutes? Was that really all the time that had passed? I bent down to tie my shoelace, and I saw a speck of turquoise-gray paint that seemed to have been splashed onto my shoe. What the… this can’t be real. Looking back, my parents had their noses buried deep in the six-panel museum map, so I decided it was safe to sneak away.

Eager to test my new skills, I rushed to the next painting and stood in front of it, waiting hesitantly to see if anything would happen. This one seemed just as abstract as the Pollock — it had two half rainbows of squiggly lines that poured down both sides of the bare white canvas, and the multicolored lines looked as if they weren’t even dry yet.¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ The sign read “Alpha-Pi,” by Morris Louis. I closed my eyes tight and began to focus hard, trying to harness another connection so I could “enter in” again. However, a stiff tapping on my shoulder broke through my attempt, and I whipped around to find myself staring at a security guard who had his hands crossed in front of him at the level of his waist. He did not look very amused.

“Excuse me, what exactly are you doing?” he questioned, his eyes locked in a steely gaze with mine.
I shifted the line of my eyesight to the ground and chuckled sheepishly.

“Uh, you see…”
“Never mind that, sir. You were mumbling to yourself, ordering others to ‘stop being so distracting.’ I just wanted to remind you that this gallery is supposed to be kept as quiet as possible.”
Was I really? “Oh, sorry about that. I-It won’t happen again,” I stuttered, my face slowly turning the shade of the security guard’s red tie.
That’s weird. Why couldn’t I enter “Alpha-Pi?” Maybe only certain works of art had the possibilities of time travel within them, or perhaps I had to have some sort of emotional connection with the painting first. With the Pollock, I was drawn by its sheer size and disarray, but with the Louis, I just tried to rush through the process. Pausing for a moment, I tried to figure out how I could get into another painting. I guess I’d find out after seeing more art. I walked back to my parents and asked, “Have you figured out where you want to go next?”
A couple of twists and turns later, I found myself in Gallery 601, which was part of the Met’s extensive European Art collection. Looking around hopefully for something moderately captivating, I was disappointed to see a room filled with uptight portraits of random French officials, some of which who were probably celebrities in their heyday. I spotted relief in the form of a smooth oak bench, and rushed to save my spot so I could wait for my parents to finish. Twisting around on the bench, I laid eyes on a hectic scene that seemed too real for the simple oil strokes on the canvas. In the middle of it all was an old man that had his right index finger angrily pointed upward. A second man dressed in red covered his eyes and grasped the bridge of his nose while he handed the central figure a goblet. A calm man with a wispy beard sat near the foot of the bed, looking down into his lap. A curled-up scroll and a little can of ink lay next to the stone bench that he was sitting on, and I stood up to look even closer. I peered over at the little sign next to the painting — it read “The Death of Socrates,” by Jacques-Louis David — but by then all my surroundings had disappeared and I was in. This time, my body passed through the canvas and straight into the void beyond the wall. The journey that followed was nothing like what I had ever read about in my worn, dog-eared time-travel books from elementary school. There was no hypnotizing spiral, nor was there a thundering voice that announced I was crossing over into another dimension. Events of the artist’s life were passing by me, and it was as if my feet were glued onto an invisible conveyor belt that kept me moving. What I saw on my right shocked me. A pale, dead man with deep knife wounds in his chest lay in a bathtub while another man knelt on the ground and hurriedly made sketches of the fresh corpse. What was that? On my left was a monotonously painted studio with students clustered around an easel, watching the teacher outline the body of a model. Where exactly was I headed, if I had just passed the painter’s workshop? All of a sudden, the “belt” that was moving me along stopped abruptly, and ejected me onto a hard surface.

The first thing I noticed was a numbing feeling that prickled at my skin. Opening my eyes, I found myself lying down on a rough stone floor. The thing was, there was no artist. This wasn’t like my previous escapade, where I had seen Jackson Pollock working. This time, I had traveled back to Ancient Greece, to the actual year when Socrates had been executed. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and spied three mysterious people ascending a staircase, with one person pausing halfway up the steps and slowly waving goodbye. This was definitely a detail that I had not seen when I first looked over the painting. Glancing down, I was relieved to find out that as my body traveled through time, my clothes had been replaced with an ordinary toga, so blending in wouldn’t be a problem. I ran over and shouted:

“Hey! Are any of you responsible for that commotion over there?”

An old man with a gnarled walking stick slowly turned around and looked at me.
“Go back and cry if you truly wish, infidel. That man rejected our gods and corrupted the minds of the young men of Athens.”

“But why would he deserve to die? Isn’t Socrates one of the greatest philosophers of all time?” To be honest, I had only seen that name once or twice in my history textbook when I skimmed the chapter on Greece, cramming facts right before a test.


“Tread carefully with your words, boy. He has his reasons for taking the hemlock. It was 280 to 220 for the death of this man, and I cannot argue with a democracy.”

“But—”

“Don’t speak too fast child, or you may find yourself in one of the jail cells here underground.”

“What about you?” I curiously asked the woman that had been trailing the group. She looked at me for a brief second, and I could immediately see the unrelenting emotions of grief and exhaustion that swirled around her mind in a vicious circle. I was caught off-guard as the woman conveyed these strong feelings to me through her eyes. She wasn’t crying. No, this wasn’t the kind of sorrow that could have been wept away; nor was this the kind of fatigue that could have been slept off. After keeping eye contact for just a few more seconds, the woman looked away and declared in a bitter tone:

“My name is Xanthippe.” Taking time to choose her next words carefully, she finally continued, “I am just a devoted wife and mother, and I was here to say goodbye to my husband Socrates.”


The controlled tone of her words amazed me — there didn’t seem to be any sort of quaver in her voice as she carefully detailed her situation. Most wives and close friends would have completely broken down by now, but not Xanthippe. Her ability to maintain composure even in the event of her husband’s death stood as a testimony to the people around her, telling them she could not be oppressed.


At this time, the old man that had been climbing the staircase stepped in front of me and waved his rugged walking stick in front my face.

“Are you finished?” he interjected rudely. “Socrates is about to die, so get used to his absence.”

I was infuriated by the attitude of this insensitive human — no, creature — who had neglected to see Xanthippe’s despair, and I could not believe that someone so old in age would say something so shallow in sentiment.

“Shut up, old man,” I yelled. I could no longer stand this man’s spiteful indifference, and I ran over to Socrates. As he was about to lift the goblet of poison to his lips, I hurriedly knocked it over, deterring him from his death sentence. The man that had been sitting quietly on the stone bench next to the bed glanced over at me with interest, and all the mourners looked on silently as Socrates turned to me with a smug grin on his face.

“That still won’t stop the government from killing me. Besides, death is nothing to be afraid of,” the old man whispered.

Death is nothing to be afraid of. Those words echoed in my head right before an anguished shout broke the silence and a wooden walking stick slammed across my skull, knocking me out cold.

“Unggghhhh,” I groaned painfully. When I opened my eyes, I was in Gallery 601 again.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” My mom rushed over to the bench, and looked at me with concern. “Are you hurt?”

I felt my head, and my hand passed over a knot that must have been from the encounter I had with the angry old man and his walking stick. I looked at the painting on the wall, but nothing seemed different. On a sudden spur of wild thought, I asked my mom how Socrates had died; I secretly hoped that maybe I had some effect in delaying his death.

My mom looked at me strangely and replied, “As far as I know, he died from drinking hemlock. Why do you ask?”

“Oh,” I answered dejectedly. “Just interested, I guess.”

“Perhaps he’s had too much art already… we shouldn’t have dragged him along to the Met in the first place,” my dad said while he looked over in slight disapproval at my mom.

“Well, I’m sor-ry! Shame that you boys don’t know how to appreciate art,” retorted my mom glaringly.

“No, it’s not that —” my dad and I both said at the same time. “I’m just a little tired,” I finished truthfully. Those little adventures were starting to take a toll on my energy, but I didn’t dare tell my parents that. Not yet.

“Let’s go grab some dinner and call it a day,” suggested my dad lightly.

My mom agreed, and we proceeded to make our way through the maze of exhibits until we finally reached The Great Hall and saw the looming doorway that still had people pouring in and out of the museum. I yawned. What a day, I thought. But this definitely wasn’t the end.

“Dad, when are we going to MoMA?”