Snowden

Well yes, of course, systems administrators are latter-day switchboard operators.  Imagine if Sarah from the Andy Griffith show ever fled through Moscow!  Moscow, Tennessee, that is.

Tweed Courthouse

What does luxury do?  Many things, I'm sure.

Sometimes luxury glows: Tut's golden funeral mask really would be less beautiful without its precious materials and workmanship, indeed without its pharonic coiffure and false beard - that is, shorn of its branding.  But it takes centuries to entomb the cultural ugliness of the artifact and centuries more for the patina of patrimony to develop. 

Contemporary luxury glows best when it is, actually, popular.  The British royal wedding was luxurious in a way that designed for masses to luxuriate in it, and was thus a distant and effective cousin to well-appointed public parks, which were meant to be, in the old fashioned phrase, elevating.  But all this must be done carefully and, forgive me, by the right people.  Misappointed luxury is a mess, enjoyable only as a shtick: Dame Edna.  A showman's luxury is for a simpler, sometimes dirtier, cultural phase: Frédérick Lemaître (as portrayed), with his dandified cane and coat, Liberace, drug pushers with their diamond-capped teeth.

So, often, luxury sickens: little need be said here, except that sickening luxury is a winking, syphilitic thing, beguiling even as it pustulates.  A crust of jewels is often a social crime that almost as often half-hides, half-advertises the actual crimes leading to acquisition.  The manicured, coiffed, neurotic, primped and pimped dog - a symbol of personal, social and moral disorder - Trouble.

Usually, luxury asserts: it is a kind of boldness, or big-toothed smile, or warning.  And that is half of why luxury sells: it promises to sell you.  The nicest paper we buy is to print our resumes on.

Sometimes luxury coddles: sensitivities - real or imagined, natural or acquired, rational or affected - are recognized and dealt with.  The incredibly soft scarf occasionally adorns an incredibly sensitive neck, like a dressing of gauze.  More often, such scarves eventually render the neck more sensitive.  In either case, luxury is a thing to be consumed, to cozy up in, to hold and squeeze as a child does a teddy bear.  That is the other half of why luxury sells: it is a little ball of ownable comfort, occasionally excused as an investment.  Luxury in this very common form is a teddy bear, and usually as infantile.  Lotions.

And thus, luxury often teaches: the needs and tastes implied by luxury are taught deliciously, because indirectly.  Why should there be swans in the lake? Why shouldn't there be steak sauce on the table?  Why are courtrooms expensively appointed?  What is the blindness that necessitates revolution?  There is much to be learned in art musuems, and an important minority of the lessons on offer from art - especially the applied arts - are the lessons of luxury.

Always, luxury signals: any of the foregoing.

sightings

In the subway, the old man who seems to be wearing a suit because it is the only thing he has to wear outside the house.

pivot

My mind knows its needs.  I find myself slowing, now and then, and it is frustrating.  I have so much to do.  But something is being considered, cooked up, within.  Some unseen timer's bell rings and there, enabled by the pause, is a new understanding, well worth the temporary dip in productivity.

March

From my perch at the shoe shine shop, I see the morning's latter commuters pass. Soldiers of many armies. Some their own sole troop: an army of one. Others, like me, of the great professional guilds, phalanxed. Most of two loyalties, officers of the family brigade, making their daily expedition to reinforce some corporate redoubt. 

day by day, trench to trench.

Fight.  It is wisdom.

fear

If I were to wish evil on a society, I could do it no greater harm than to see much of its male youth unemployed. I feel like Francis Urquhart to say it, but some sort of public service conscription is preferable to that.

ask Mr. Malaprop

And there he was, nervous, shaking, perspiring audibly.

empty rooms

A nightmare: my head empties of loved ones and self and only work and pleasure remain.

Manhattan Island

People live and thrive in different particular habitats.  Each person is compatible with a few at most, and that uncomfortably.  Some of us are riverine, others live in the forest canopy.  None of us are truly global.  The things I know how to do - some of which are, in fact, impressive - would be naught in most settings.

Saugerties Lighthouse

We're born to work, after all? Yes, but  peace and beauty and nothing to do are a fine alternative. 

Gorgias

Philosophy distances when it does not debilitate.

after Nash

In city apartments
The best dog breed is that
Better known as a cat.

gulp.

Unless your roots are blessed with location and sunk deep enough to tap water, you must engage, you must run, you must race, you must win your water.

shepherd thyself

The memory of possibly repeatable happiness is the whip that drives the great human herd from within.

on the take

Man is another of the grasping animals.

go

In New York City, stamina is a kind of intellegence.

eulogies

Children are life after death.  The childless fear a final scene like Dirk Diggler's.