Every Friday afternoon Chris visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He usually heads first to the Chinese rooms. Recently he lingered over Qian Gu’s 16th century scroll, Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion, one his favorite works in the Met’s collection.

“It (the scroll) can seem fairly straightforward, almost simple colored-in lines, but in fact there are three or four layers of color in there,” he said last Friday.

“So you find the museum instructive?” I said.

“Huh?” he said.

I meant the visit itself. I’m not into museums so Chris’ Friday visits are forever interesting to me. I like to break it down.

He spends roughly 1.5 hours there, generally checking in to see what’s up in the Chinese rooms first before seeking out something new, which might be an exhibition like the Renaissance Maiolica pottery on view now, or other old friends like Klee’s masterpieces, of which the Met owns many, Degas’s pastels, and Bonnard’s oils.

Once in awhile he’ll get coffee.

“Why not always coffee?” I said. I find Chris’ habits unnecessarily austere sometimes. For me, the coffee is the whole point of a museum visit; coffee and the gift shop.

Yet I can tell by the way he speaks about the museum that the whole experience transcends time and space.

Yesterday he spent time in front of a sculpture of a many centuries old Buddha, and said he felt the spirit in the material, the stone, so strongly that he could almost understand why Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria went around destroying hindu statuary, an act that made him heartsick. “They are not acting unreasonably in destroying sculptures which they perceive are a threat to their own ideas. They are a threat. When you stand in front of a statue like that Buddha, you can feel its living presence,” he said.

Chris walked around the museum after that to experiment with other works of art to see if there was a presence in their materials. He found it more in some work and less in others.

“There’s a lot in the Rothkos,” he remarked.

“Contrary to my upbringing, I am a confirmed materialist,” he concluded.

His weekly museum visits apparently fill him up enough to get on with the unlikely task of painting his own pictures and writing his own stories.

He finds a communal spirit in the materials themselves.