COURTESY CHRISTIE’S
I don’t believe in God or a soul or energy, but I do think that, every year, I lose a little something fundamental inside myself that I’ll never get back, some internal conviction that makes me more or less human and allows me to get out of bed every morning and not complain as I show up to work to edit or write little blog posts for the Internet that will either be, at best, ignored or, in most other instances, mocked in brief flashes of anger on social media by the superficial and for the most part middle-aged men and women of the art world who seem to take pleasure in that kind of thing, either because they themselves were mocked as children and the dehumanizing veil of online interaction feels like power to them, or because they are disappointed in their lives currently, and want to make other people–even people they’ve never met!–feel worthless as well. I do not, of course, rule out that some of these people are just bad, in a primordial, cosmic way–that they were born bad, and they grew up bad, and they’ve turned out bad, relishing in the act of hurling insults through the ether about topics that, all things being fair, really don’t matter at all. Yes, a year will pass for me, and whatever foolish belief I may have once held deep down that life is not just a joke with a weak punchline grows ever dimmer until I finally disappear altogether. I could only hope, anyway. Sometimes I think I’m already dead, and that, in karmic retribution for the nihilism mentioned above, hell is a cascade of vile opinions from a group of people so mediocre that to respond to them would only validate their self-hatred, strengthening this current of human misery. Most days I wish I had never been born at all.
Oh, but there are other days, reader. Days in which Christie’s sends out press releases for its sales of magnificent jewels. These are special, hopeful days. On June 9, Christie’s New York headquarters will offer the “largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond offered at auction.” The largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond offered at auction is estimated to sell for $23 million to $29 million. Just how intense is the largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond? Christie’s calls it “incredibly beautiful, rare, and historic.” So: pretty intense! If only every day Christie’s could sell the largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond offered at auction! And would that I could blog about the largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond offered at auction each of those days! Ah, who knows what new horror tomorrow might bring! But for today, at least, we have the largest Fancy Intense Blue Diamond offered at auction.