Essays, notes, and observations on objects, placement, atmosphere, and instinct.

I cried the first time I saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace. I had seen photographs — everyone has. I thought I knew her. I didn't. Nothing prepared me for the moment I rounded the corner and looked up at the top of the Daru staircase. She fills the space in front of you — headless, armless, magnificent. My heart pounded. Tears flowed.

Around me, people kept walking.

Later, I watched strangers weep in front of the Mona Lisa. I stood there for quite a long while and felt nothing. Respect, yes. Recognition and admiration, absolutely. But I wasn't having the same reaction others were.

I have a piece of labradorite that fits in my palm. It's not large. It's not the most dramatic stone in the room. If you set it down on a table in ordinary light, you might walk past it. Most people would.

But when you pick it up, turn it slowly, find the angle, and give it just enough light but not too much, something happens. A flash of deep blue. Then a hint of raspberry. Then a purple so dark that Prince himself would wear a coat made from it.

You don't get it all at once. You have to work for it. The stone decides when to show you.

There is a piece of labradorite on my nightstand. It isn't large. It doesn't need to be. I say goodnight to it; I say good morning. Not always literally — though, occasionally, yes — but I pause, every time.

Depending on the light, the stone offers a different version of itself. On grey winter mornings, it looks nearly dark, almost unremarkable. Then the cloud cover shifts, and the surface ignites in electric blue — that specific, hidden flash labradorite is famous for. It looks like something lit from the inside.

It takes two seconds to notice. Those two seconds are the whole point.

I have been drawn to things that glint or shimmer for as long as I can remember. Not diamonds, necessarily. Not jewelry in the traditional sense. Just small flashes of light that catch your eye unexpectedly — a shard of glass in the sand, a mica fleck in a rock, a piece of quartz turning slightly in the sun.

The moment always feels the same. A pause. A small interruption in whatever you were doing. Your brain registers it before you do. Something reflects light in a way that feels intentional, even though you know it isn't.

But my fascination with sparkle didn't begin with crystals. It began with movies.

I walked into a room recently to hear a lecture on aesthetic intelligence — a term that has become a polished framework for something I had been practicing for thirty years without a name. I sat in the audience and listened, and recognized, absolutely everything she said. Not because I had studied her work, but because I've been doing the work.

I didn't arrive here through a curriculum or a consulting engagement. I arrived through decades of doing. Neiman Marcus. Saks. Louis Vuitton. Jordan Marsh. Wolford. Lilly Pulitzer. Not as the salesperson, but as the one shaping the environment.

I love rocks. I never used to. I went most of my life not caring, not paying attention to them at all. Now I dream about them. Their form, their size, shape, and color.

And I buy them. For myself, for my customers. I choose carefully and considerately. I picture where they'll go, who they'll sit next to. I giddily await their arrival.

Opening the boxes that traveled halfway across the world to meet me is an anticipation like no other. Unwrapping each piece is a thousand ten-year-olds' Christmases at once — a dopamine hit I can't describe.