“What do I want for Christmas? Just you.”
An ongoing digital archive of 1,410 items (and counting) proving that I read, I saw, and I actually paid attention.
“What do I want for Christmas? Just you.”
“If I heard that song I wouldn’t get married for anything in the whole world.”


âIf you keep a place clean, people will respect it; if you let it get dirty, theyâll make it worse…Just make the park beautiful and youâll appeal to the best side of people. They all have it; all you have to do is bring it out.”




“I first saw the Bourse de Commerce, really saw it, in April of this year, but by that point I had been living in Paris for more than six years. Iâd visited the Louvre of course, a minute or so stroll towards the river, and the MusĂ©e des Arts Decoratifs just down the street. I had seen shows at the Centre Pompidou, a few minutes to the east, and I had been, grudgingly, to the vast mall at Les Halles right next door many times when a trip to Muji was unavoidable. Iâd even met friends after work at Iovineâs pizzeria one bitingly cold winterâs evening, almost directly opposite the Bourseâs grand entrance, but still, Iâd never seen it. It was just one more pile of haughtily beautiful pale Parisian stonework that my eyes slid over and my brain failed to register.”
“Filling personal spaces with purely decorative, cheaply made trinketsâor tchotchkes, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, junkâis as American as apple pie. âOver time, Americans have decidedâas individuals, as members of groups, and as a societyâto embrace not just materialism itself but materials with a certain shoddy complexion,â writes author Wendy A. Woloson in her book Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America.â

“It may be that there is no place for any of us. Except we know there is somewhere; and if we found it, but lived there only a moment, we could count ourselves blessed.â

âNow of all the bonds between homosexual friends, none was greater than that between friends who danced together. The friend you danced with, when you had no lover, was the most important person in your life; and for people who went without lovers for years, that was all they had.â
