"Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes"--C.G. Jung
Bernardo Bellotto, dit 'Canaletto' "The Bacino of San Marco on Ascension Day", 1744-45. The Scottish National Trust
Austria-Hungary
"The Forest and the Faustian Soul" (June 2014) "Why Democracy Needs Aristocracy" (April 2014) "Of Majesty and Anarchy" (Sept. 2015) "On the Nature of Wealth and the Wealth of Nature" (November 2017)
Austria-Hungary
"The Forest and the Faustian Soul" (June 2014) "Why Democracy Needs Aristocracy" (April 2014) "Of Majesty and Anarchy" (Sept. 2015) "On the Nature of Wealth and the Wealth of Nature" (November 2017)
 Paolo Uccello, "The Hunt in the Forest" (ca. 1460). Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
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“People were always chasing after some leader or another, and stumbling from one superstition to the next, cheering His Majesty one day and giving the most disgusting incendiary speeches in Parliament the next, and none of it ever amounted to anything in the end! If this could be miniaturized by a factor of a a million and reduced, as it were, to the dimensions of a single head, the result would be precisely the image of the unaccountable, forgetful, ignorant conduct and the demented hopping around that has always been the image of a lunatic.”--Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities.
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The East Coast
"The Lost Soul of Mr. William Fife III" (Feb 2017) "Reflections on the Revolution in Motown" (July 2014)
 John Singer Sargent, "Ships and Boats" (ca. 1867)
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"A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in tension and skill. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained, and juices can flow and ideas can germinate, for ships, like men, respond to challenge".--James Michener, Chesapeake
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Metropolis
"The Case for the City-State" (July 2012) "The State as a Work of Art" (Sept 2015) "The Necessity of Bugatti Capitalism"
(December 2016) "Quiet Desperation and the English Way" (July 2014)
(December 2016) "Quiet Desperation and the English Way" (July 2014)
 Tullio Crali, 'Motore, Seduttore di Nuvole', ca. 1921. Provenance unknown
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"Engineering--the effective use of power--began to prepare for a new and most significant advance. The term was applied first to the running of engines; then to the designing of engines. Now it begins to be clear that both the source and the purpose of power is not the engine, but man."--F. Emerson Andrews, "Human Engineering", The North American Review, June 1932.
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The Baroque: Petersburg, Paris, Dresden, Vienna
"The Beautiful Violence of Old Masters Painting" (April 2018) "Old Masters and the Meaning of Life" (April 2018);
"The Late, Great Viennese Nobleman" (July 2014); "A Short History of the Human Soul" (April 2018)
"The Late, Great Viennese Nobleman" (July 2014); "A Short History of the Human Soul" (April 2018)
 Bernardo Bellotto, dit 'Canaletto'; "Neumarkt in Dresden" 1749-52; Hermitage, St. Petersburg
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"But during the interval throughout all of the seventeenth, and most of the eighteenth century - it was the chief social centre in Germany, and was second, indeed, in the north of the Continent, to the French capital alone. Its patronage of art was immense, and was exerted as wisely as the universal taste of the age allowed. Within its walls flourished many of the most prominent craftsmen of the day, and their handiwork was rivalled by all of every kind that Dresden's magnificent rulers could buy from neighboring cities, or import from other lands. Into the treasure-cabinets of these great Electors flowed the full stream of contemporary production; and what then came to Dresden is still there in its entirety for us to see, its collections having been singularly free from the mutations of sale and spoliation which have destroyed or decimated so many in other places."--M.G.Van Renssellaer, "The Green Vaults of Dresden", The North American Review, 1881
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Byzance-Islam
"The Genius of Byzantium" (May 2014); "Long Night's Journey into Day" (Sept. 2016)
"Lebanon the Magnificent: An Inquiry into Exile and Terror" (August 2017)
"Lebanon the Magnificent: An Inquiry into Exile and Terror" (August 2017)
 Constantinople, ca. 1455. From a manuscript at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France;
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"Everywhere Western man longs for Constantinople and nowhere has he any idea how to find her. To do so is to reclaim, at last, the meaning of an empire that once defined a hierarchy of imagination long ago abandoned by our civilization; of an eleven-century political, religious and cultural struggle that sought to reconcile Christianity and Antiquity, transforming the Western spirit into a brilliant battleground between Latin and Greek, Augustus and Basileus, reason and faith, ancient and modern.Yet to unearth this Byzantium, this “heaven of the human mind”, as Yeats dreamed her, is not to go searching through histories and legends, glorious ruins or immortal poems. It is, instead, to be found retracing the evolution of a new and profound conflict in Western thought that began with the mysterious conversion of the first Constantine and ended, at the gates of the marble and gold City called ‘the world’s desire’ by the sons of that city, with the unconquerable faith of the last Constantine—himself heir to the great Palaiologoi who resurrected the dormant title of Hellene to describe their own noble line of descent.." --Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna. "The Genius of Byzantium" TIC, May 29, 2014.
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Asia
"Tao and the Spirit of Art"
 Zao Wou-Ki, French-Chinese émigré painter, "Paris 19-11-59"; 1959. Private collection
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"There is a thing that existed before the creation of Heaven and Earth. It is independent without changing and goes around without dangering. It is regarded as the mother of the universe, its name I know not. Designating it, I call it Tao. Describing it I call it Great. Heaven takes its laws from Tao. Tao takes its laws from its spontaneity. Tao cannot be seen, nor heard, nor touched. It returns to nothingness. It is the form of the formless, it is the image of the imageless, the fleeting and the indeterminable. Tao in itself is vague, impalpable--how impalpable, how vague! Yet within it there is form. How vague, how impalpable! Yet within it there is substance. How profound, how obscure! Yet within it there is vital principle. This principle is the Quintessence of reality and out of it comes the truth." --C.F. Liu,"The Vitality of Lao Tze's Philosophy", The Monist, July 1925.
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