Against Vacating.

Against Vacation:

At the heart of the high internal tension, the enduring and gnawing discomfort, is the loss of the normal alternate rhythm of work and rest, work and rest, that brings such immense satisfaction, variety, and joy and that is, in fact, the very stuff of life. Most Americans were born into and inherited a world in which work doesn't "participate in happiness," to quote [John Crowe] Ransom once again. It isn't naturally coupled with rest or leisure. Work and rest are not paired together, like dance partners, but set at odds, like gunfighters.

Grief, yes. Especially when we're told, time and again, that "if you find something you love that pays the bills, you'll never 'work' another day in your life," the idea of leaving something you love behind for the capricious incidentals of even the most well-planned vacation feels ridiculous.

The Pattern Language of Retail Architecture

Christopher Alexander's famous book, A Pattern Language, is an analysis and distillation of architecture throughout history, looking for the recurring, natural, and organic patterns of construction in housing and communal layouts that emerge from human activity. People like thick walls that imply the building is held up, sunny counters, waist-high shelves, built-in seating. People like having a tree in the front yard; it lets their monkey brains know there's a place to run if a lion shows up. Alexander's book has a touchy-feely, new-agey approach sometimes, but his basic merging of architecture and psychology is brilliantly spot-on.

It occurs to me that, somewhere in the world, there is an anti-Alexander who has studied the Gruen transfer, "that split second when the mall's intentionally confusing layout makes our eyes glaze and our jaws slacken. The moment when we forget what we came for and become impulse buyers," and pushed it to extremes. A Pattern Language for Retail is probably one of those evil books you can only get from obscure sources, because it describes the ways in which color, layout, and blaring music can be used to disorient the shopper, make him anxious, and tell him that the only way to alleviate the anxiety is to buy something.