The · Affected · Provincial’s · Almanack

merrow_sea kindly shared with me a article on vertical gardening that you might find as delightful as I did. The potential is huge for cities: Imagine 'chia-buildings', which are designed to accommodate vertical gardens on their surfaces. The urban landscapes of our planet would be utterly tranformed, as would the surrounding suburbs. Now that's a future that I could embrace!

But let us digress: Long ago, I chose to be an aesthete rather than a connoisseur; which is to say that, to me, luxury is less about cost, pedigree or provenance than the sensed qualities of a thing. True, sometimes money and "suchness" go hand in hand, but not always. A $7 Jack-in-the pulpit is far more exquisite in texture and detail than the Hope Diamond, at least to my mind.

These gentlemen have a wonderful take on luxury (thanks, imomus):

“When you are on a beautiful carpet placed directly on the sand, with maybe some beautiful women, drinking some tea and with some very nice music, it’s really luxurious.”

“I think luxury is not related to materiality, it’s just some incredible situations. And as architects, you have to produce incredible situations.”

Wonderful, humane ideas, and ones which I've tried to live out. Rustic luxury to me is sitting in a bog at night caressed by warm rain as the tree frogs start an otherworldly drone. What could be more luxurious than enjoying and cultivating things that took millions of years to make? A Stradivarius is a stone axe compared to an orchid. Nothing made by humans can match it--the textures are just too rich.

Here's my crackpot prediction: Luxury in the 21st century is going depend less on how much you are able to buy and more about how much you are able to appreciate: the scent of blossoms, the dappled light from a canopy of trees, etc. Cultivate rather than collect. Time rather than money. Slow rather than fast. One's status will depend upon how much one can do with very little. Imagination, wit and inventiveness are the new currency. Building a beautiful life and sharing one's breakthroughs with others will be the goal: moth eclosion parties, gardening parties, fragrance parties, etc.

Long live the new luxury!

~W

"The Affected Provincial's Companion can be read not only as a witty appraisal of dandyism but as an anti-apocalyptic enticement to forge one's own life and world into the texture that sings most to one's senses. In a world where it appears cynicism and jaded sneers are valued as survival mechanisms, this is a spirited act indeed." Read more...

Thank you, Maria!

~W