DON'T KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE.

Monday, parked on 21st Street, just east of Gramercy, I saw my BMW, the precise BMW I "made" last month on their website--non-metallic dark dark blue enamel with that insanely hot russet/saddle/southwest/kinda carrot shade of doughy, creased leather they do---oh my Goodness.
I gasped and half-uttered aloud a "Holy *ish" or "Fire-ay," or something. To see it made me happy. I was happy it was real, that it was in my way...

For a couple of years (June 2008--April 2010), I was anxious over a loss (vague and also particular?); I was not so encouraged by luxury as I used to be, could not see my way back to an aspirational sweet spot wherein magazines and sugary songs and certain rooms and manicures and new jewelry served to brighten and enlighten in to-tal. Graduating from college and moving back to New York and working and The Reception and getting older were responsible (klar-ly).
Ways of seeing and getting realigned.
I was agitated, but then--Lo--
broadened!
The breezy, bling privilege of the Aughts bore a parallel cynicism. Did I enjoy Paris Hilton's white Dior sunglasses and Louis bowling bags with puppies inside and discos and canned champagne and G-Unit and my velour sweatsuit and pavé hoops and boys with black cards? Not enough...I was a nihilist.

I'm not sure I have a good memory, but I devote mucho time and space to remembering....I remember lists--so many--item after item to buy, en realidad, out of realidad. I spent most of my class time in high school writing and rewriting lists of things/directives/products. (Being temporarily cynical and irreligious) I would have balked at the idea then, but I think those lists were like prayers, mantras. Engaging with the images of things, their imprint, putting to paper my intentions/desires to consume and display and GO, made me hopeful and shiny and confident--like, I AM WHAT I WANT! In college, independent geographically, if not financially, I became an (over)active consumer of stuff and risk*, and--no need to parse it right now but--that's when the plays at contempt, the glittery, false Existentialism began--like, OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL SO FUCKED UP AND HOTT AND DOOMED AND HOTT!

Since 2008, in fits (of Great Depression) and starts, I've done what one does (in America?) when fed up with/forced to limit hangovers and waste and trick satisfaction, I've found religion, or, a renewed faith in the Sun and Moon, myths and spirit-information--the value of VIDA, unknowns.

And en este momento, almost-May 2010 (!), winter lifted, I've somehow been drawn back comfortably to listed luxuries (schoolgirl crushes) and pulsing aspirationalism. Because I've realized that, like that faithless/feckless cynicism of before, an embrace of asceticism in a religious moment, would be, for me, fakery (like, I watched Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World and I loved it soo much, but I'll never be able to retreat utterly from the Social-Sensual World like her because it's not in my nature). I'm a born patron and prospector. My astrological chart calls me "Baroque," and how. But that Baroque-ness is essentially my quest for pleasure--POSITIVITY, PLEASURE, LUXOR!--a source of hope, not self-conscious despairing (duh).

Monday's run-in with Beemer led to a search for whats-happening-at-Burj-Khalifa (an Armani hotel--cute) and a serious perusal of this Paris Hilton story in Esquire.
I'd watched the first half of Simple Life Season III: Interns over the weekend, and felt, all the way through, regretful of my old attitudes about Hilton. I watched the show in real-time and bought tabloids and "Stars are Blind" (even as a ringtone), but I was snide too, sort of resentful and mean about her. I did not actually appreciate her skill and contributions. I called Paris "dumb" and "trashy;' I refused to believe the stuff about her American Icon-ness. Now, it's stupid obvious to me: Paris is a figure of substance and power, responsible for revolutions in imaging, an Omni-American--Protestant-pedigreed but also Hollywood, hard-working with a screen, a projection of ease.

I've pinned part of a Post headline about Wall Street above my desk: DON'T KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE. I take it as a reminder (prayer, mantra?) to not forget my Baroque-ness or dispose of recent sources of Baroque, the content of the last decade. I'm only beginning to love and understand it all, eat is sans cynicism (w/ religion). The new decade does not have to be cast in opposition to the olde via disapproval/rejection of art and customs; we can mark a change of spirit and wisdom, and then embrace THE WHOLE OF YESTERDAY (TODAY AND TOMORROW).




*I wrote an essay about risk in the Aughts last week and posted it and removed it and posted it and removed it. I didn't like the writing or self-revealment, but the thesis stands: 2000-2010 was a period of RISK...2010-2020 might be a period of CARE.