pretty

It is one thing to look around a packed subway car, pick out the most attractive people - "attractive" meant conventionally - and realize that they aren't the happiest or most successful people.  That's obvious, trite, and our culture is geared to force that basic understanding on all but the very least observant.  But then, what advantage do the attractive have?  It isn't that they have the best sex lives, relationships, or are even in the best position relative to their sense of their own good appearance.

So is it anything?  What advantage is it to be very attractive physically?  This, I suppose: the residual animal fact of improved and accelerated mating possibilities - this in the procreative, or at least diverted procreative, sense, rather than in the hedonistic sexual sense.  And, I suppose, a boost to those good side effects of attractiveness - the need to exercise (in our culture, anyhow), to maintain good clothes, the attention to presentation (if not overdone).  And, above, a subtle plus in their interactions.  The attractive, other things equal, will be tended and listened to a little better, a little sooner, a little longer.  That, so long as the attractive keep other things equal, rather than leaning on their attractiveness, is a meaningful dividend.

(By the way, I suspect that, purely relative to physical appearance, the best sex lives are had by those who are attractive enough: that is, attractive enough to appeal, but not so attractive as to discourage pursuit.  And there's a bonus for being something of a "type", so that the subpopulation that takes an interest can key in quickly and easily.)

cocktail hour

One gift of social conversation is to charm the fancy into plain talk of family, pets, natural beauty - and to raise the coarse to discussion of ideas, ideals, hopes.  To humble the high, and to raise the gutteral.

to market

To own may mean to own actively, such that the object owned is modified, becomes worn, or is integrated - as a cutting board is owned or a business is owned by a hands-on proprietor.  Or to own may mean to own passively, as an investor owns, with an eye to disowning the object - selling or trading it.

When my grandmother covered her couch with plastic, or her pickup truck's seats with towels, she was not trying to extend the wear of the upholstery for her own use - she was trying to preserve saleability.  (This paid off handsomly in the case of her eventually vintage pickup truck, but the pristine couch - of pink and mint rayon, flecked with metallic threads - was eventually tossed.)

A person contemplating investment must consider which sense of ownership is intended.

Reuben

Better a midlife crisis than a midlife melt into watery irrelevance.

branding

Puritan Luxury.  Quaker Coats & Totes.  Shaker Chic.  Ascetic Glam.

bling

Luxury that is not a style is a response to emptiness or pain.

microclimate

As ice melts to water, so the sharpness of first love softens into the flow of a relationship.  As water to vapor, so a relationship diffuses into the two lives lived in its loving atmosphere.  As clouds form and drop their rain, so the fresh love comes as both newness and memory - as the everdiscovered other and as the forward promise of seasons to come.

ahead

Do not confuse the virtues of adulthood with those of childhood, or a good family dog.  It is not virtue to wish to be liked.  Leave that to the spaniels and toddlers.

today

Kindness in all things that do not require its absence, and even then, absent only to the extent required: a goal.

second wives

Luxury is communication except to the hedonist and the casually wealthly.  And they are too rare to account for the quantities of luxury consumed and displayed.

Baie Longue

Schools of half silver, half translucent fish circle us. Their long fins, black edged like goth fingers.  Smaller clutches of tiny golden fish gild the edges, and three sapphire blue fish cross the scene, under turquoise waves. 

ortolan and then a Cuban cigar

Luxury is pleasure, tarted up by means, to flirt with disgust.

Kahn

No one has ever owned a book, however many have been bought. 

suits

Good taste narrows one's options, but shouldn't narrow them to a point.  There are tribes, I suppose, where priests, women, men and children are each given exactly one way to look, dress and act - in the best of taste, as it is doubtless felt.  But of course, as I say that, I realize that once there is "exactly one" way, it turns out not to be - that participants become sensitive to small variations and these grow in significance, until what looks like uniformity to outsiders has blossomed into a range of significations for the tribe.

Nice

There's a dreamland in which John Waters marries Edith Piaf, who, six months later, gives birth to an inverted Eiffel Tower, a sailor perched on each upturned, hooflike leg, and a girl from port perched on his, whispering the lyrics of "C'est à Hambourg", all watching a marching band silently circle the impaled point of the Tower, clad in the skin-tight sailor stripes of Jean Paul Gaultier.

apex

A block north of my office is a public high school.  If I come into work at around 8:45, I pass through clusters of high school students talking and playing, waiting for the morning bell.  But talking and playing doesn't tell it - there is a crackle of energy, a static charge.  One can feel them discovering themselves, adulting, as surely as in a sci-fi movie, when arcs of lightning encircle a transforming hero or villain.

This morning, waiting for the crosswalk light, I find myself wedged against a little group of four, who pay me no mind during the quarter-minute I am their neighbor.  That is not unusual - I am only a commuter - but this quartet is especially absorbed.

Three boys and a girl, of equal height, similar backpacks, each in loose tshirts over jeans, in an inward-facing square, shoulders almost touching at right angles.  I'd guess them to be about 14 years old.  And in that casual, but intense way of older children, they are fumblingly, but utterly, focused. 

Three of them are taking turns gently twisting and slightly pulling one nipple of the fourth - one of the boys, through his tshirt.  It is not detectably sexual, or bullying, or even a joke.  It is all a bit slow, a little solemn.  All eight eyes are on the same point, all four mouths are slightly open, the three working arms are each hovering - waiting their turn, or having it.  The girl's part in the twisting and pulling seems to be given - and received by the fourth boy - equally to that of the other two boys.  All four have the expression of being lost in discovery - this sensual feeling, perhaps, of pulling on a male nipple - or having it pulled - of reaching through a layer of cloth and finding the nub of something just detectably responding to the sensation of being pulled - or having such a part found by others.  That a;pme is enough for awe, but perhaps they are feeling a new piercing.

The light changes and I walk on.  They will walk on in a moment, I suppose, waking to the world, but knowing something about what hands and bodies are.

public service

True gifts are known by their power in being given.  They go on to others as giving, or work on the one who receives.

squawk

Honesty is a symptom of freedom.  External pressures meet internal sensitivities, and the self evades the discomfort.  The internally stout can resist greater external pressure.  Friendly environments do not so test the weak.

Of course, this is a special sense of honesty - in that it is the truth-telling of the truthful, and the telling of the preferred lies of the false.  And we are each both, at different times.

children

The inscription over the playground entrance reads: May I never fail a friend, nor fight a foe but fairly. Oh, let them heed!

reaching

Water and light are the dollars and cents of nature.