Older things and nearness
Where I live I am surrounded by old things. The house I live in is 150 years old. My neighborhood is older than that. Taking a walk down my street leads me past box gutters and old stone foundations, wrought iron fencing and leaded glass windows. You might find a tree limb grown thick through and around a railing or engulfing an ancient rusted chain. There is stained glass and carved wood. You might find cut square nails or bits of green apothecary glass.
There is a magnetism to things so old that their creators are long dead. But unlike magnetism, we can never be pulled all the way together. We are separated by years and generations. Separated by time. And by death. I am also intimidated by older things in a way. There is a permanence to things that have withstood years and wars, the Great Depression, Vietnam, the Cold War, and Justin Beiber.
There’s something truly unknowable about age beyond our comprehension. It’s one of the most interesting things about traveling. Here in the US, the oldest building still standing might be 400 years old. In Rome you’ll see structures from before Christ wandered the desert and turned all that water into wine. You tread cobblestones that have seen wealth and famine, war and peace, blood and sweat and tears. It’s impossible for us to fathom what life was like through all those years, those different eras. Eons.
It’s said that a house can have good bones. While my house may have good bones, it will stand long after that’s all that is left of me. It stood for 120 years before my first bones even started to grow, and I expect it could stand for 120 more after mine are cast into the sea.
We have these “things” now, cheap plastic and glass and small electronic parts and batteries and cords and plugs. Landfill. What we build for permanence in this age is digital — it is information and knowledge and progress. Where before a building or a sculpture or something crafted was a testament to the cunning of man, now it is word counts and clicks and shares and sometimes awards. Perhaps these words will hold an attraction to some distant relative of mine.
If you’re reading this, distant relative, don’t, for the love of God, embarrass me.
