Category: Watches

Dragons

I love this art work by Arnold & Son, on the HMS1, and the Metiers d’Art TB Dragon Limited Edition reference 1ARAP.B04A.

arnold-son-dragon

hms1-dragon

arnold-son-1arap-b04a

Dragons of course are representative of all kinds of things in various mythologies around the world. When it comes to such matters I always turn to the master, Joseph Campbell.

Here is Campbell on the meaning of dragons, as told to Bill Moyers <link>.

BILL MOYERS: When I was growing up, tales of King Arthur, tales of the medieval knights, tales of the dragon slayers were very strong in my world.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Dragons represent greed, really. The European dragon guards things in his cave, and what he guards are heaps of gold and virgins. And he can’t make use of either of them, but he just guards. There’s no vitality of experience, either of the value of the gold or of the female whom he’s guarding there. Psychologically, the dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego, and you’re captured in your own dragon cage. And the problem of the psychiatrist is to break that dragon, open him up, so that you can have a larger field of relationships.

Jung had a patient come to him who felt alone, and she drew a picture of herself as caught in the rocks, from the waist down she was bound in rocks. And this was on a windy shore, and the wind blowing and her hair blowing, and all the gold, which is the sign of the vitality of life, was locked in the rocks. And the next picture that he had her draw had followed something he had said to her. Suddenly a lightning flash hit the rocks, and the gold came pouring out, and then she found reflected on rocks round about the gold. There was no more gold in the rocks, it was all available on the top. And in the conferences that followed, those patches of gold were identified. They were her friends. She wasn’t alone, but she had locked herself in her own little room and life, but she had friends. Do you see what I mean? This is killing the dragon. And you have fears and things, this is the dragon; that’s exactly what’s that all about. At least the European dragon; the Chinese dragon is different.

BILL MOYERS: What is it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It represents the vitality of the swamps and the dragon comes out beating his belly and saying “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” You know, that’s another kind of dragon. And he’s the one that yields the bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing. He’s the great glorious thing. But this is the negative one that cuts you down.

BILL MOYERS: So what you’re saying is, if there are not dragons out there, and there may not be at any one moment.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The real dragon is in you.

BILL MOYERS: And what is that real dragon?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s your ego, holding you in.

BILL MOYERS: What’s my ego?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: What I want, what I believe, what I can do, what I think I love, and all that. What I regard as the aim of my life and so forth. It might be too small. It might be that which pins you down. And if it’s simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do, it certainly is pinning you down. And so the environment is your dragon, as it reflects within yourself.

BILL MOYERS: How do I slay…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: How do you?

BILL MOYERS: Slay that dragon in me? What’s the journey I have to make, you have to make, each of us has to make? You talk about something called the soul’s high adventure.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: My general formula for my students is, follow your bliss, I mean, find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.

BILL MOYERS: Can my bliss be my life’s love, or my life’s work?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it will be your life.

BILL MOYERS: Is it my work or my life?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, if the work that you’re doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that’s it. But if you think, “Oh, gee, I couldn’t do that,” you know, that’s your dragon blocking you in. “Oh, no, I couldn’t be a writer, oh, no, I couldn’t do what so-and-so is doing.”

BILL MOYERS: Unlike the classical heroes, we’re not going on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And in doing that, you save the world. I mean, you do. The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth. No, any world is a living world if it’s alive, and the thing is to bring it to life. And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is, and be alive yourself, it seems to me.

BILL MOYERS: But you say I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. Do I have to go alone?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: If you have someone who can help you, that’s fine, too. But ultimately the last trick has to be done by you.

 

 

Patek Philippe Nautilus anniversary edition — that inlay…

Patek Philippe recently released a 40th-annivesary limited edition of its legendary Nautilus reference.

pp-nautilus-anniversary-limited-editions

In the press release, the following mention is made regarding the anniversary lettering that in my opinion features somewhat prominently on the dials:

Both models feature a blue dial with diamond hour markers, the typical Nautilus embossed decor, and a discreet recessed anniversary logo. <link>
One man’s “discreet” is another man’s outrage…on various watch message boards the engraved lettering has been a terrible disappointment to some Nautilus lovers who feel that the additional inscription looks tacky and also clutters a legendarily sparse, yet rich, dial.
5711s
I tend to agree: the styling reminds me of certain automobile motifs, and not the ones called Bentley and Rolls Royce.
ford-super-duty
auto-inlays

Gasp-Inducing (not the election)

I have found that both of the candidates for president cause “gasp-inducing” reactions from average Americans across the whole political spectrum; it is truly a choice between Scylla and Charybdis and one wonders how our boat will sail through the narrow straight.

However, through this blog, I transform frustration with politics into something beautiful…

Here is a true gasp-inducer!!

arnold-son-grail

This is the Arnold & Son Hornet Worldtimer Skeleton, image courtesy of Watchonista.

What this blog is

This blog, FocusedPleasure, is an outlet for moments of joy and presence in a world of increasingly profound distraction and pain.

It is not a place for musings about the declining state of the union or about any other of life’s immovable and antagonizing objects.

It is about this:

worldtimer-reflection-1

Unusually radiant sunlight, the wonder of mechanical watch movement, a map of the world, interwoven threads of a comfortable wool shirt, the names of great cities along with their upside-down reflections in gold, a sliver of blue sky also reflected in the gold, and the faint reflection of the American flag that is the back of the case holding my “phone”…all embody pleasure for me.

And it is about this, which also embodies pleasure:

hudson-valley-sky-1

For the most part I will share the focused pleasure I inhabit when contemplating fine watches, but other stimuli will often make their way into my writing and photographs.

Each word in the title Focused Pleasure is important.

Pleasure (the feeling of joy in its various manifestations) is something we all experience from time to time, and most of us would say that we are starved for more of it, generally speaking.

One might go as far as to say that we are all devoted to seeking and finding pleasure.  But this is not so.  People habitually make choices and indulge thoughts that repeat or amplify various levels of stress and pain.

What I am talking about here is not the so-called “Negativity Bias” in which negative or painful experiences make a bigger impact on our psychological experience and memory than do positive experiences.

When equal measures of good and bad are present…the psychological effects of bad ones outweigh those of the good ones.  This may in fact be a general principle or law of psychological phenomena, possibly reflecting the innate predispositions of the psyche or at least reflecting the almost inevitable adaptation of each individual to the exigencies of daily life. <Bad is Stronger than Good, Review of General Psychology, link>

No, I am talking about something worse than this.  I am talking about the pernicious habit of choosing (usually unconsciously) the more troublesome path, something Freud explored quite a bit in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle <link>.  He began to notice in his clinical work that there was a whole lot of behavior going on that led people away from, not toward, pleasure, and this led him to go ‘beyond’ the idea that a drive for pleasure is always in the driver’s seat.

This blog is an unequivocal affirmation of pleasure and seeks to reinforce the conscious choice of pleasure indulgence. 

The modifier “Focused” is in the title for several reasons.  The first is to repudiate its antonym, un-focused, and to imply that un-focused pleasure is more ephemeral and unfulfilling.

The second is to suggest that a focused mind will be more aware and therefore more prone to choose pleasure and avoid “repetition compulsion”.

The third is to characterize whatever pleasure is discussed as being more intense than it otherwise would be, in the way that a magnifying glass focuses sunlight in such a way that a dry leaf can be made to burn.

And so I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you shift your minutes, hours, and days towards pleasure and away from pain.