Even if I were Rich . . .

Certain weekends are indeed the times that try men's souls. Or dignities. Or sense of self-worth. Whatever - it's probably all the same thing. It's not like any of us know what a soul is made of anyway.

There's this woman, you see. (Don't most good stories begin that way?) Ever heard of the Mona Lisa smile? She's got it. It could mean anything, lurking there. It could be sarcasm, masked un-ease, just social graciousness, patience, actual happiness, or (what it comes off as,) bemusement. She absolutely radiates a sense of composure. She could give lessons to politicians in self-possession. She has bearing, she appears daring.

And you'll notice all this is just the social mask.

She's done a few years in the ME, (and completely incidentally, wears gauntlets of ethnic jewelery on her fingers and wrists, plus some scarves here and there, that give her an air of exoticism.) Her face is beautiful, but slightly angular, as though at some point her DNA disdained conventional beauty and at the last minute decided to aspire to be a work of art instead.

And you'll notice these are just externals.

She works as a photographer, and takes the sorts of pictures you see in news magazines, of Egyptian fathers sobbing outside the hospital, or Israeli soldiers lying in the street. Or women at a festival, framed in strung-up lights, their eyes shining.

But more recently she's been working on a media project to help ease one of the American public's latest phobias. The website is fantastically informative, as it traces how a few donors fund a larger pool of think tanks who employ a number of talking heads and media darlings to whip the American public into a frothy, misinformed mess.

And you'll notice those are just her jobs.

And why do I know only about her jobs and jewelry and smile? Because she doesn't have the time to talk to me - or doesn't care to, which is the same thing, really. Hey - life is full of disappointments.

I thought I could be charming and funny or clever in messages, and sooner or later she'd agree to spend an hour or two with me, over the course of which she would naturally fall spell to the conversation of a tall, fit, reasonably well-dressed and well-spoken man who makes insightful observations on literature, history, and world-events at a rate of approx 1 devastating insight per 90 seconds.

That is not what happened.

The very first time I met her was at a party. She could only stay a short time before she went off to attend another party, and I drew her a map. I could have sworn that during those few minutes alone I was funny and flirty enough to make an impression, but it's just possible that the vodka has messed with my sense of how charming I was being. There's a first time for everything.

A vacation came and went, and some weeks later I contacted her. I've always thought that my role in the world of single-dom was to communicate that she's very interesting, and allow opportunity for reciprocation. So I flirted - I made quite clear that I was interested. And the conversation went well enough, then she had to take a phone call, and never came back. I sent her a couple more messages, which went without reply.

Now, you'd think I'd take the hint, right? And I did. She's not interested, or she's already sniffed out your raging insecurities, or something you said annoyed her. Either way, no use pressing further.

One of my greatest fears is being the person who pushes their presence undesired upon others. So when no response came, I sadly admitted to myself that engaging in conversation with me was evidently lower on her to-do list than, well, anything else which she was doing. But hey - life is full of disappointments, isn't it?

In the meantime, life continued apace. Jujitsu, Salsa, Krav Maga, repeat. Even had a couple of dates.

But how little it takes to rekindle hope - a couple of weeks later a message came - it said she had "Just got back into town!" Ahh - from where I had no idea, but this could explain the lack of response, no? I mean . . . not really. The internet exists in most places, but . . . she's an extremely focused person - maybe when she's out working she focuses exclusively on the job?

Thus, the half-excuse was accompanied by an invitation to a film and a talk. She "Just wanted to let you know I'm doing this on Saturday, feel free to drop by if you're interested." She would be on stage, discussing some events she had been been witness to, doing a Q&A with the crowd. She probably sent this notice to everyone, right? Sure, probably. But maybe not.

I wrote back, and we exchanged minimal banter, and perhaps the minimalness of the banter should have given me a clue, but remember that thing about hope springing eternal? Well, what's the difference between hope and wishful thinking? Is there one?

So I went to said talk. Would it be strange to admit I thought about what to wear? Probably not - who doesn't? I hoped to make an impression - and who doesn't?

I couldn't make the first showing of the film, so I showed up for the Q&A and stayed for the second showing. It was informative and interesting - it's the sort of thing I would go to in any case, even if it wasn't featuring a goddess on earth. Her self-command and sense of gravitas and composure was immense. She was intelligent and worldly-wise to a degree rarely seen. She could sit in a chair at the side of the stage and somehow command the whole room. I started wondering what my parents would think of her.

I asked questions - good solid insightful questions. On her way out (I had hoped she'd stay for the second showing,) we talked briefly. She said "let's have coffee sometime." I felt shyness creeping up my legs as she stood in front of me. I wasn't nearly as eloquent now that she was standing in front of me. But it didn't matter - I'd been granted an audience - or at least hope of one. An audition, if you will. We would "have coffee" one of these days, apparently. I wasn't on cloud 9 - but 8.5 would be a fair estimate. As I watched the film I thought of things we could talk about.

I sent her a couple of messages over the next week - the lack of response would have been telling - maybe should have been telling - but she'd said we should have coffee sometime, hadn't she? Which is surely the one thing you NEVER say to a person you wished to be rid of . . . amirite? So . . . surely she is, once again busy?

You have to understand, if there's one thing this woman exudes, (besides confidence and beauty,) it's a sense of purpose. She has deadlines and places to be and compassion for the suffering and TED-talks and photo-journalistic assignments for acronymic associations like the AP and panel discussions and progressive projects, and she does all of them (as far as I can tell,) really well - and all while wearing loads of interesting jewelry.

So wasn't it possible that amidst all that purpose-driven living she had a hard time finding time for a personal life? Could be. Might be. Might not be. Hopefully once we talked I would know which was the case.

When Friday rolled around, I remembered that there was an improv group performing that night, and so I dropped her a line. She responded immediately. She knew them - she was planning on coming tonight anyway, so "that'd be great". Ominously, the line "save me a seat?" got no response.

I ducked out of Salsa class a little early. She wasn't there yet, so I paid for her entrance. I'd heard discussions, and an ex-girlfriend had commented to me once how my friend had sunk his chance with her friend because he didn't pop for the taxi, which wasn't a monetary thing so much as a reliable way to indicate romantic interest via a minor display of chivalry. And what's my job here? To indicate interest and give opportunity for reciprocation.

She showed up with two other guys in tow - friends of hers. She thanked me for paying - I said I hadn't known she was coming with friends. We laughed. I had saved the seat next to me. She sat one further down, which put her friend between us. I began to see . . . she had said she was coming tonight anyway. It's odd how you can put a different gloss on words, depending on what you think the prevailing sentiment is. I began to wonder if I was that weird hanger-on guy who every woman sooner or later experiences in their life.

The improv show was a bit of a bust. Not bad by any means, but I had seen them before and they had been better. I decided to give it one last shot. As we were packing to go I asked if they were planning to go get drinks, and she said yes, and off we went.

But we paused at the door, in the crowd dallying around and smoking on the landing, and she fell into conversation with another person there, and then the conversation lagged a beat, and she introduced her other friend standing there, and then turned her outstretched hand toward me and said, "And this is . . . " (beat 1 beat 2) . . . she leaned forward and put her hand on my arm - "Rich, right?"

"Rich? Are you rich?" I asked. "I'm not rich. Yet. Probably never will be."
"Oh, Matt? Right?" She laughed. "Sorry." She turned to her friend to introduce me, but the conversation had moved on.

And I realized I was now the proud owner of a new cliche - the girl I had been crushing on for months didn't even know my name. I had wondered for weeks whether I'd annoyed her or charmed her, and in fact I'd done neither. I hadn't even attracted her attention sufficient that my name registered in her mind. My own irrelevance in all its magnificence towered above me and laughed a charming light little laugh. It was pleasing, in a way, to be reminded so sharply of the differences in how we each experience the world. What one of us looks past is where another hinges the world.

I excused myself (metro closing and sleep and such) and went home. I hope she wasn't bothered by her mistake, or thought that I was too bothered by it. I was of course, but not very. The joy of chancing on an epiphany outweighed the assault on the ego such that I was overall pleased more than hurt.

And should she ever happen to read this, I can only say this; Miss, I'm as enchanted as ever. The smile that plays around your eyes betrays a thousand thoughts left unspoken, which I wish to hear. Should you find the time to remember my name, you know how to find me.

I stand convicted of mediocrity and half-measures. I stand convicted of never have sold my soul for any one thing. I bear the guilt of never giving myself wholly to one woman, one idea, one project, one pursuit without in my mind if not in my body following a thousand other potentialities. I stand eternally strung between the many blazing beauties before my eyes, each within reach and each calling to me to approach and here be great and I cannot choose any one even as the inconsequentiality of my life as I live it bears down on me with a weight that bores right through me.

"The Definition of a Gentleman" (May God grant me strength . . . )

Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature; like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast --- all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp saying for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization. by Cardinal Newman, from The Idea of a University, a series of lectures given in Ireland, 1852.

It was while walking this morning I came round a corner To so nearly be struck by three roses upon a thorny branch borne. I ducked in annoyance, stepped, then seized by sudden greed spun And grasped at one to tear it from its place and bear it with me where I went, But too late I turned, my fingertips but slid across the surface of the nearest petals And I, not caring so much to stop or step back, walked on with only a memory of what I had wanted.

The Persistence of Memory

I know I have many times quoted the famous Tolstoy line about happy vs. sad families. But I'm beginning to wonder if all divorces aren't the same as well. It's just odd how much we all seem to live out the same things. Namely, the expressed desire of our former best friend to have no contact with us - to shut the door forever. On an odd, (and still emotionally raw note,) I'm writing this in bed in the morning. I just woke up from a dream in which I and a number of old friends were sharing a weekend together - and Cynthia, my ex-wife, was there - and I was able to talk with her a bit. It was exquisite. And by exquisite, I mean I can only compare it to having unanaesthetized dental work done. Every moment is full of a grinding minor discomfort, and the wonder that it doesn't hurt more than it does, but it's the constant expectation of the imminent arrival of the inevitable unannounced searing jolt that's killing you. But it was good - to see her, and talk. The old sarcasm, (which I treasured) was there. But the real reason I mentioned it is that when I woke up I came out of one of those sleeps that was deep enough that your mind's mainframe has to do a bit of an update to allow you to function. It's kind of like Location: searching//: Istanbul Marital status//: single Health status: searching//: fucked up knee; recovering toe; recurring pain in elbow Work status//: currently awaiting beginning of school year Fucked up situations or imminent catastrophes on near horizon: searching//: None //: Accessing updated to-do list: . . . (Ok, I don't know how YOUR process of coming out of a deep sleep works, but that's a surprisingly accurate representation of what happens in my brain when I wake up from a heavy sleep. The location finder only kicked in this time because I have been travelling, and recently enjoying the experience of waking up in a pink room filled with playskool kitchen sets, and thinking "Ok, just stick with me here -I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for this, which will be coming to me any moment now . . ." ) And, if you care, the space between the "situations on near horizon" and "updated to-do list" is where I have to hit the escape button, if I hope to go back to sleep. Once the to-do list starts scrolling, all sorts of data-trees start flashing on the screen, and it's day-on. Not that I'm actually going to DO anything about those things today. Heaven forbid I actually DO something. I'll just start thinking about them a lot. Anyways, in my dream, I had just woken up from a night of (apparently heavy,) drinking, and found someone had made a minor architectural wonder out of Pringles on the kitchen table, someone was starting to make pancakes, a wife of a friend informed me that people were still laughing over the fact that last night while intoxicated I had purchased an unaccountably large amount of women's cosmetics from the convenience store, the purpose of which was still to them unclear, and then I went into Cynthia's room and she was straightening up some things, and I sat down on the floor and started with some hesitation, and a great deal of apprehension, to talk to her. And when I woke up, as I realized that I wasn't going to get to talk to her, to get to ask her a few things, and learn how she is doing and who she is becoming, I felt quite sad. But then I got a flash of memory of all the times that my mind had to do an update on what the fuck had transpired last night, and all the times that the conclusion was that I really would rather stay asleep, because I was dreading how this day was going to pan out. And then I would have to get out of bed, and buckle up, and prepare for another day of war. And THAT was over. I don't have to dread first contact in the morning. I don't have to explain constantly, and have every motive and choice of word questioned. I don't have to think 5 steps ahead in a conversation. And dammit, ain't that nice? WHY do we have the need, (cuz it's located a lot deeper than simple desire) for holding a shared narrative with someone we care about? I think maybe the answer lies in the wording of that last question. Because if you don't care about someone, you can just say "well, fuck you, you are clearly a moron." But if the person in question is one with whom you have spent a long time, and had accumulated years of conversation, you tend to think that you should be able to explain your side of shit. That if anyone can hear you, and understand what you mean, it would be them. But they don't. Not only that, but you find that this person, who has every reason to know you better than anyone else on the planet, actually seems to understand LESS of you than a common stranger you just met would understand. And the only possible reasons for this are that A. we are fundamentally wrong in what we think about this situation, and they recognize it, and we do not. We are, in fact, deceiving ourselves. Or, B. the more a person comes to know us at a deeper level, the less reason they find to grant us the empathy necessary to understand us, ie, we are at heart so flawed as to be undeserving of the love that was once given. Or, C. over the course of the years spent in our presence, the other person has become so emotionally crippled that they can no longer function in our presence as a civil, sane, and rationally oriented person would. We are, quite literally, psychologically toxic. I myself tend to go with option C, adding an extra shot of espresso with a little lemon twist in it. You'll like it, I promise. It's what I'm having this morning - hang on, I'll show you what it looks like. Ready? I am toxic to her, because I am a highly addictive, reality-altering substance. One dose of me, and you see the world with a new and vibrant clarity. Two doses of me, and you begin to question your previously held assumptions, because it-all-starts-making-more-sense-now. Three doses of me, and you would sell your own grandmother to stay right here with this feeling, except that grandmothers fetch so little on the market that it's not really worth it. So, as a recently divorced woman of my acquaintance wrote - "I'm not interested in constructing and living out of a narrative that just erases those (good things . . . and times that were happy and loving.)" I am able, and strong enough, to live with the pain of still remembering what was good, and I am not going to let someone else push me into scrubbing away and erasing and fixing and patching and remolding reality so it can create a cleaner plot-line from a later perspective. I have sat in on enough suture-sessions to know that a clean sever is extremely rare, because that would require a very sharp and smooth object moving in a consistent direction at a high velocity, and life is mostly populated with oddly dull, slow, unfinished and jagged objects that cannot move in a straight line to save their goddamn lives. That's not me making excuses, that is just a fact of physics. Pick up anything you want and throw it across the room, and you'll see that it never flies in a straight line - it spins and wobbles around an uncertain center and impacts at an angle less than true. The exception is a throwing knife well-thrown by practiced hands. So why are we and our partners so injured? Because neither of us really wanted to hurt the other - and so let us be grateful for small favors. Let me also be, however slightly, proud of the fact that I can find myself able to countenance my own actions and inconsistencies and inflictions, and that I do not need to write someone out, and pretend that what was good was bad, and what was happiness was delusion, and what was, in brief, now no longer was at all. It is sad, both for us and for them, that they will no longer have the memories we cherished, (and at least I still do,) of the very sweet times we spent in the hearts of the other, for it was a precious privilege, and a painful loss, and to deny any of it would be but a miserable robbing of one's own most precious storehouse. On a tangentially related topic, can I just pause for a moment, and speak in favor of the greatly underchampioned value of shutting your goddam feelings off, and putting on a nice tone of voice, and maintaining the social niceties when conversing? I mean, by all means feel free to say such pointed things as "The amazing degree to which you attribute me agency to affect you speaks volumes to the degree to which you seem to be avoiding any great degree of introspection, self-reflection or personal growth in favor of mentally masturbatory blame-casting," if you want, but there is no reason to go all red-faced and spittle-inflected when you say it. It just makes you look ugly. I mean, the purpose of life, insofar as I can tell, is the creation of a little bit more beauty in any given environment in which you find yourself. There are already so many unattractive things in the world - why be one? Aaaaah, the wisdom I could share with the world - if they would but let me, the ignorant bovine-minded piss-trousered fuckwits. Let others come to their sure conclusions. Let them have their officially sanctioned versions. The more bloodless and anemic of a creature you are, the more you will seek shelter from feeling your uncertainty. Let them enjoy the flimsy hovel they have constructed of tissue-paper and twigs of half-notions just salvaged from the masticating jaws of deeper reflection - grovel in the little pity-pit they've excavated in the center, to shelter in what warmth remains them, because until they are willing to endure the cold and lashing rains of self-doubt for a period, they'll never construct a wall of stone, nor a warming hearth that can contain an honest fire. The only thing that bothers me about that last paragraph is the degree to which I am sooooo sure whereof I speak . . . Surely I have it all wrong.

Of Children Grown and Going On, of One More Day Now Come and Gone . . .

I recall Poland as an odd place - where winter's hand was heavy on the land, and summer's was somehow equally so. Spring and fall were themselves just as intense - spring a time of suffocating pollen, and the sensation that the lifeblood of the earth was strongly stirring itself beneath your feet, compensating for its long sleep. Fall was perhaps the fairest of all, yet coming off of a summer so heavily drenched in sunshine and treesap and contemplating the approach of another deep dark frozen season, when the sun would seem to rise at 9 and go down by 4, fall always assumed a kind of poignant and dreadful urgency, perhaps similar to what a man soon to enter prison might feel in his last few days of freedom. These, then, are the prominent feelings that accompany the memories that play through my mind when I remember back to Poland. The more I travel around the world, the more I perceive, or think I perceive, that a people are of one cloth with the place from whence they come. I know it sounds silly - fantastic even - I can hardly credit it myself. Yet, I have come to think it is true. Whether their character springs from their native soil, or whether the two things just become so associated in my mind that I cannot separate the one from the other I do not know, but foreigners and transplants somewhat aside, when you look upon the resident of a land, who for long generations has not been uprooted, you can find in his manners and habits, trapped in the crevices of his hands and face and soul the soil of his home, much as you would upon a stone dislodged from the side of a mountain. Nowhere was this more true than in Poland. The people have a heaviness in them that parallels that of their climate. They are serious at heart, and even their levity rides like foam on a deep, dark river - you may hear light laughter, and see them downing beer in the sunshine, but none of that negates the powerful force lying under which carries it along. They are a somewhat sad people, it seems to me, though they carry their sadness well. Somber tones inflect their voices when they speak unthinkingly, for they are imbued with a dread of the future, and an underlying conviction that it holds nothing very good, at least in store for them. This tends to manifest itself at worst in a surly and mopish character, or at best in a wry and self-deprecating anticipation of being thoroughly fucked unknown forces of the future. Life is, in their approximation, something that easily spins out of control, much to the cost of the onlooker who has not correctly anticipated its antics. I myself believe this peculiarly Eastern European worldview evolved from generations of drunken villagers laughing raucously in close proximity to dancing bears. I was not surprised then, to receive a recent email from one of my past Polish students, asking advice about her university choices, and how it would affect the rest of her life. I remember this student particularly, because she had an air of self-possession in a degree not usually encountered in people of any age, let alone those in their teens. Whether or not she felt any of the confidence and assurance that she projected I do not know - I would suspect not, as it is my experience that what is projected to the world and what is actually felt usually only coincide in the more pathetic portions of the emotional spectrum. She became a natural leader in the class, but only in her chosen circle, for like many natural leaders her power was much predicated on the fact that it was never seen to be wielded or by any effort extended - her influence over others was what it was, and she neither wished for it nor rejected it and thus all recognized it to be her rightful due. At the end of our year together, (and a year is a great deal of time in which to become fond of a group of young people,) somewhere near our last class together, I spoke to Joanna, and told her that her life could turn out to be very, very interesting, or really quite boring, and I was curious to know which it would be, so would she please write to me about once every 5 years or so, and let me know what had become of her. She agreed, and every year or so, probably as often as it occurred to her, she dropped me a line and told me of how she was doing - what was meaningful in her life, what she was worried about, etc. I was glad to hear from her, but little that she said engaged my interest overmuch. Then, about a week ago, she sent me another message. It began with "I don't know why I am bothering you, but I just feel as though I don't have anyone else to talk to who will listen to me." What she went on to say was nowhere near as dramatic as such a beginning might lead one to suspect, but all the more dramatic for how heartfelt it was, and how non-dramatic of a person I know her to be. She is, like so many people of her age, having to begin making her own decisions, and they are not small ones. She has decided that Poland is not the country in which she will make her eventual life, and so is looking at the possibility of moving abroad now, in order to do her schooling in England or another place. As large as this decision is, (and I think we can all recall how fraught was the decision of where to go to school,) it is only the first of a number of difficult decisions she has in front of her as she transitions from the haven of being directed by her parents into a world in which she makes her own decisions. Her parents are offering to sell their plot of land so that she can go abroad, but the money will only pay for a year, or two at most. She knows she will have to work tables, and wash dishes, and struggle to make ends meet, and I assured her that in the end, what people determined to do, they usually got done. So if she was determined to make her life in London, she needn't worry - but she would need a lot of determination to carry her through the rough (and impoverished) sections of the way. In the end I advised her to stay in Poland for the first two years of her education, and then transfer abroad for the final two. Although she liked that advice very much, I don't know whether she will follow it or not - I get the feeling that the main value the conversation had for her was in being able to talk with someone outside of her own town and circle of common friends, and hear an outside voice - and I am immensely proud that at the moment she thought to speak with me.

What is the sound of one tumblr reposting?

Like many people, I once harbored the belief that there was within me something - some strain of endurance or achievement or good taste or culture or education or perspective or possibly just potential, that set me apart from what I would wish to view as the common herd. Then I found tumblr.

A few months after I first encountered the website, I created my own tumblr blog. For many years I have maintained files on my computer of interesting design ideas to replicate in the house I hope to build one day - or ways the cheap, old BMW motorbike I am looking at buying could be reworked to look uber-cool, concepts for photos I would hope to take one day once Claudia Schiffer comes to her senses and stops blocking my email messages - you know - that sort of thing. I have folders of photo ideas, recipes, ideas for novels and poems, interesting house designs, jewelry I could make, etc. So when I found on tumblr a constant feed of photos of gorgeous and interesting things, I quickly wanted to find a place to collect some of these so that I could replicate them later. Since it is much easier to move photos about within tumblr itself than it is to export them out, with the additional bonus that tumblr will host the collection for you, so you don't have to take up heaven-knows how much space on your own machine, starting a tumblr acct seems like path of least resistance.

Over the month or two that I have had the tumblr acct, my tastes and interests have meandered slightly, from the sartorial to the numismatic to the antique to the culinary to the plain aesthetic, and I have accumulated a large, large, large amount of photos which reflect my interests and personal taste to a high degree. So much do these photos appeal to my particular sense that sometimes when I open my tumblr blog, I find myself awed by the beauty of all the things I see before me, and the strength of the resonance surprises me.

From this I have learned two things. First, I have learned to better identify what it is about a scene that piques my interest. I am learning the particulars of the ranges of colors and compositions and elements that to me most appeal. Secondly, I have learned that my taste in aesthetics no more sets me apart from the common herd than a baboon's love for a banana. I am a most typical man - I am a product of my generation, and the media that feeds us all. My taste in things is not mine - it is my world's, and I simply swim in it.

A Motley Assortment