The Life of Gabriel

 

THE ETERNAL LUXURY

 

Expensive shoes? Expensive bags from luxury brands? Pure silk shirts? Moisturizing creams that will make your skin looks lighter? Watches that look like James Bond’s ones, so technological? Or that expensive three-course dinner at a trendy restaurant?

Is there anything  in the luxury empire, for us, ordinary people? Well, there’s a little bit of everything. We haven't managed to grow money yet, so we are satisfied with samples of luxury.

Luxury, for me, is being able to be what I want to be. In other words, to be authentic in order to state my wills and fulfill my needs.

If it is remarkable for you to drink champagne without the slightest pretext, then this is luxury for you. And if it's incredible, on a cold day, to have a cozy ginger tea, or even have the freedom to choose an ice cream, this is also luxury. Like the leather boots I bought ten years ago… I still wear them.

Different and simple can also put together a luxurious combination. To have a collection of CDs or masturbate when times are hard. Luxury can be praying in the church near Regent’s Park or in a small chapel in a small town in Calabria, Italy.

To watch a play like I did last week, with Clive Owen, The Night of The Iguana. A painting by an unknown painter who has a gallery a block away from my flat and is decorating my living room; the movie Notting Hill that I love to see a thousand times over and over, a book I borrowed, Between the Acts, by Virginia Woolf, and my most libertarian poems are my luxuries.

Luxury also means the exceptional, the extraordinary, what transcends, excites you and makes a big difference in the banality of things. Luxury is an abstract noun. it's a quality. Would it always be tangible? It is discernable and full of paradoxes, as I told you. And our life is full of discrepancies that give us more charm. Or does it determine our differences?

Things can be big or small, soft or intense. The car. The house key. The last matchstick when we need a fire. It may even be my cologne that no one else notices at the end of the day, but it livens up my morning after the shower.

Luxury is not necessarily an imperium. They are personal pleasures and experiences that seem so unique: to quench a voracious will, like spending the holidays on heavenly island. Luxury is the ticket to meet your family who lives far away. Luxury is the place where I rest with that old pillow of mine and sleep happily. It may be my struggle to say “there is someone here” or “it’s occupied”.

Luxury can be that pooch love that I found today when quickly turning the corner, and  felt as I was being kissed deeply on the lips.

Gabriel Colombo

All Rights reserved