“the Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star or to the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread: for howfine soever that may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, that sheep was a sheep still for wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be made everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has it's value, should yet be thought of as less value than this metal.”
-Sir Thomas More
-Sir Thomas More
A friend from Puerto Rico came to New York this week and, like a good, well mannered Puerto Rican (if you don't know Puerto Ricans have impeccable social manners), brought me a gift with her. Come to think of it, I wish all my friends with Boriqua. Anyway, she brought me these earrings from a designer who's store I spotted but hadn't gotten around to visiting. The earrings just so happen to channel this really fab seventies girl who wears wide leg jeans and heels for lunch time who I kind of want to become over the summer- oh, the power of clothes. Anyway, from across the Bermuda Triangle Adriana read my mind and brought me these earrings to get me started.
It's so funny when people buy you a gift. It's this kind of admission to trying to understand you and by nature of this gift, your style. When Adri told me the earrings reminded her of me it really got me thinking, what does she think of me. Of course a part of me is what I put on my body, otherwise she'd reallyyyyyy know me.
Utopia is a kind of funny way to get back to this. The Utopians value nothing except sameness. They make conscious strides to devalue what they know other cultures place an unjustifiable value on- like gold. So, it made me wonder, did Adri know that the gold symbolized value and it would both make me like the gift and prove that she values me as a friend? Did the style alone convince her? Whatever made her choose these earrings, they're really just a hunk of metal, but because she gave them to me they're valuable.
