For The Love of Old

People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.  ~James Baldwin 

photo © 2010 Ky | more info (via: Wylio)

On Monday mornings, I love to watch the show If Walls Could Talk on HGTV. Even Matthew likes to watch it with me, which is saying something!  Usually he grumbles and groans if he finds our television set to HGTV… which, obviously, is always.

He and I both have this passion for old homes.  We love history, we love to browse antique stores (I much more than him), and we love to admire the incredible woodwork and detailing and character of homes built in the early 1900’s or before. 

For some reason, my heart just reaches out to things that are old. Old books, old kitchen gadgets, old photographs, old movies, old homes, old people.  They all have a story to tell; they’ve all seen so much life. 

I have this ultimate, ultimate dream: to live in a tired old, pre-war New York City apartment with worn hardwoods and detailed mouldings and great big windows that pour forth light and peer out to a tree lined street below.  To have a quiet little nook beside that window, with my computer and a desk piled high with books and papers and coffee and a bagel from some nearby cafe. 

Yep, that’s my ultimate dream. To be surrounded by so much history and energy and life.  If I ever write a novel, it will probably be there. New York inspires my creativity like nowhere else.

Sometimes I feel a little resentment towards new construction and modern art and contemporary design.  I’d take a tired old colonial home over a giant modern mansion any day.  Things that are new just seem somehow cold to me.  But then I have to remind myself that we, right here and right now, are creating our own history, assigning our own meanings to things, and are a part of what will someday be considered vintage and of a bygone era.  It’s ok to appreciate things that are old, but sometimes yearning for them as much as I do is just another way of ignoring the beauty of the present day, and wanting what I can’t have. 

I’ll never stop loving history and all things vintage, but I have resolved to live a little more in now and a little less in then. Because while then was beautiful and fascinating, now is where we are and always will be. 

Do YOU have a love of old, too?