Constantinople and the Weight of What Was Lost

Constantinople and the Weight of What Was Lost

Constantinople, 1490sI arrived in Constantinople several decades after the fall. The city had been Ottoman for long enough that it had begun to absorb its new identity while still carrying the wounds of the transition, the way a body carries a scar: healed but not...
Blueprints of Eternity

Blueprints of Eternity

Various, consolidatedI have a specific memory that I return to when I want to understand what architectural certainty looks like from the inside. It is not from Florence. It is from Vienna, in the 1850s, watching the planners of the Ringstrasse explain to each other...
What Leonardo Taught Me About Light

What Leonardo Taught Me About Light

Milan, circa 1495I was in Verrocchio’s workshop before Leonardo was well known and I was in Milan when he was painting the Last Supper and I want to record something specific about what it was like to be in proximity to a mind like his, because it is relevant to...
The Pattern I Keep Recognizing

The Pattern I Keep Recognizing

Present Day, February 24, 2026I have been preparing to speak for longer than most people have been alive. The preparation has looked like silence from the outside. From the inside it has looked like five centuries of watching the same pattern arrive in new clothing...