I have this ridiculous instinct for quality.
I can spot it a mile, ten-thousand miles away, with only a whiff. My stomach tightens; my heart starts to race; my mind focuses as quickly and piercingly as a cat's eyes on its prey.
I love... I love quality. There is so precious little of it in this world.
I would say I lust after it, but I am not so driven by lust; I can ignore lust. I hunger for it.
Which may be why Hodinkee's post about the year's most important articles, popping up on my Facebook feed, kept drawing my attention.
Not that the magazine isn't filled with all sorts of things of quality. It is; the watches written of are gorgeous timepieces, fantastically expensive and oh-so-pretty. And reading about them is like enjoying an expensive piece of cheese, a beautiful bottle of wine, a well-crafted loaf of bread. It's delicious, but something in my moderately-plebeian upbringing makes me resist the urge to delve into the magazine every time I have a few moments. Some part of my ridiculous psyche deems me unworthy of indulging in such tastes except on occasion.
This time, though, my eyes kept flicking back to the post. Read it, read it, read it....
I clicked, scrolled down the page, enjoying the gorgeous photos of handsome, well-crafted chronometers, finding it intriguing that musician John Mayer should be enlisted as one of Hodinkee's expert columnists.
And, just beside the piece by Meyer, the photo.
That part of my mind that knows-without-telling-me-how tightened. Look, look!
It's gorgeous. No, not just gorgeous. It's...
I'm overwhelmed. It's a heartthrob; and my heart is beating heavily, quietly, ticking as steadily as the dials in that timepiece must be ticking.
Look, LOOK!
I acknowledge the sensation, "It's a HEART-throb," I tell myself, knowing I'll post it on Twitter.
And turn my attention diligently back to Meyer's piece.
Which is interesting, gotta keep an eye on his stuff, he'll be one to read. I can learn a lot from this guy.
The chronométer calls out again.
I click. Skip the video; I need to read, not to hear someone tell me, in their voice, with their excitement, their opinion about this thing.
Read.
I catch my breath on the words filing into my mind; it is quality; this man, this creator of so very few timepieces each year - only 850! - he cares, he cares so much that he's spent years designing this luxurious, beautiful, carefully-crafted piece of art to be worn on a man's wrist, for the simple purpose of determining the hour and minute and second of the day. Francois-Paul Journe's watches have none of the modern parts and pieces, nothing to keep the wheels and dials lubricated, which only shows the great precision that is imperative to these pieces; he expects them to last 200 years and beyond!
Oh, my heart....
My breath stills to a whisper; I somehow don't want to move, don't want to disturb the delicate flow of energy that is this rare flower in the world. To see it in real life, on a handsome wrist would surely turn me into a girl from the nineteenth century, complete with a singular breathless moan of adoration and the resulting lightheaded wavering that put so many corseted women on chaises, resting from fainting spells.
If I am corseted, I realize, it is by the great bulk of mediocrity of this age; and this piece of timeless beauty, created in our age, sets me to incredible wonder, to trembling fits of great emotion.
I am floored (and suddenly, the term gains its meaning), ecstatic that there are still men of elegance who will love such a thing enough to buy and cherish it, that there exists a single man who loved so much as to create it.
Thank you, Hodinkee, for placing this gorgeous oracle of beauty within the sight of those who know how and where to look.
Et, je vous remercie, Monsieur Journe, pour l'artisanat du chronomètre le plus beau du monde.
