“The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.
How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms,—to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower’s leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a pscyhological fact. Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character.”
(Image from here)
I have been rereading bits of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s War & War, mainly the ending passages, but I have also been flipping through the rest, with the intent of excerpting some of the fervidly marked bits (“…we are not obliged to do anything except to comprehend that the appropriateness of the one great universal process of thinking is not predicated on it being correct, for there was nothing to compare it with, nothing but its own beauty, and it was its beauty that gave us confidence in its truth”) with enough context (which that quote entirely lacks, as the tense issues should reveal) for them to make the same sense here as they do in the book. But I cannot seem to do that.
“What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?
Describe your street. Describe another. Compare.”
- Georges Perec
Sixteen Stylish Maxims for the New Year
Style and taste are a particular sort of intelligence, and vice versa.
Aesthetic judgments rarely transcend the culture of the judge.
The style of studied nonchalance is the psychological triumph of grace over order.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. Which is why Fashion is shallow, but taste is deep.
There’s no right or wrong about style. Like a poem, it simply is what it is.
Real luxury is understanding quality, and having the time to enjoy it.
In the end, aesthetic judgments are perhaps merely enthusiasms.
In matters of taste, if you can see the trees well enough, you don’t have to see the forest.
To consciously avoid fashion is in itself a fashion.
Today tradition is commercially merely another commodity. As is History.
In a world of plentiful choices, taste is the hallmark of restraint.
Luxury may be, as Balzac says, less expensive than elegance. But both are less expensive than fashion.
Uniforms both include and exclude.
Taste is one of those human concerns in which a lack of experience is no hindrance to opinion.
Precision in dress is the neurotic refuge of the perpetually insecure.
Deliberate nonchalance is intended to imply a strength held in reserve.
There organizing bookshelves keep track of which books you’ve read and which ones you haven’t. Perfect for New Year Resolutions these could be that extra push you need to get through those books you’ve been meaning to read. (via 9bytz)
I just want the “Will be read…” part, really…
Tuning the Sleeping machine
-David Sherman
(13 mins.)
(Watch in the dark, with headphones.)
That… was my point? Whether something is dull or interesting is indeed relative and subjective, but even within #mesnwear, though this fit isn’t Andre 3000, it also isn’t tame. But my point was that outside of menswear, this is pretty flamboyant. It is self-consciously, conspicuously au courant, working button cuffs aside. A flashy, trending color, color-matched across two conspicuous, three total items? Peak lapels? However much I admire the outfit, if I saw this guy walking down the street, my first thought wouldn’t be “that guy’s well-dressed”; it would be “that guy reads #menswear,” and then it would be “Nice job doing #menswear.”
I admit phrasing might have been a bit catty, but I meant no disrespect; your blog’s first-rate. I was just offering a view from someone on the street, and San Francisco’s streets have their own fair share of flamboyance.
Maya Deren - A Study in Choreography for Camera
