Category Archive: Big Ideas
Ce Moment
My great friend Lisa Benson (a New Zealand artist) gave me one of her recent works—a small transparent red lucite card, like a thick credit card, with the words “CE MOMENT” cut out. She likes to hand them out to…
Kumari of Kathmandu
The Kumari’s temple in Kathmandu, Nepal is one of the favorite places I’ve visited, probably because while I was standing in the courtyard the young, kohl-eyed Kumari herself—as described in Encyclopedia of the Exquisite—appeared in the temple window like a…
Idleness by the Numbers
I’ve been too busy, so today I looked back at Essays in Idleness, by the medieval Japanese monk and scholar Yoshida Kenko (1283-1352). I need Kenko to remind me what it’s all about. “What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when…
Between Waldorf and Astoria
Yesterday I was reading about New York’s haughty hotel culture at the turn of the century, when the word ‘ritz’ became synonymous with a certain style of urbanized high life. There were ‘the ritzies,’ who often ‘ritzed’ those on the…
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