I’ve got a thing for ancient places.
Old staircases, worn in the middles from a thousand thousand feet descending, ascending, carrying trays of food, old books leather wrapped, candles dripping thick wax to throw light on stone walls. I’ve got a thing for ruins, for rubble where walls once stood, for light pouring through paneless windows, casting streaks of shine onto the cobbles below.
It’s time, really, time and its inevitable passing that keeps me in love with these magic places, that keeps me returning to them, seeking them all around the world when we wander.
A thousand lives lived in these spots, a thousand different souls wearing away solid rock to something smooth. It’s hand-carved banisters now in decay, it’s the view that shines through the holes where windows once filled. It’s all that cannot, that should not, be renovated. It’s the reminder that no matter what we make, no matter what we try to re-make, to fix, to destroy in order to make room for the progress we convince ourselves we need, there is one thing we cannot ever get back, one thing that will always be irreplaceable. One thing, only:
Time.
I think I’ve got a thing for seeing time’s passing, be it in face of hand-stacked rock walls, the weathering of wood, or the wrinkling of human faces. I think I worry when that display is threatened, when people seek to renovate away the evidence that endurance grants, when they Botox or cheek-implant or lip-fill away the laugh lines and crows feet that came from so many hours laughing, so many others wiping away tears.
There’s a rule in design, and I think it should apply to just about everything in life: “Never remove what you cannot put back.” We’ve gotten so convinced these days that everything can be improved, optimized, rolled back, that we tear down all that was to make room for all that we’re so damn convinced will be better. Will be new, right?
I just want soul. I just want a reminder of our ephemerality, I just want to remember that our stay here is so short, so fleeting, and so much more beautiful for it. I want to see the slow erosion of all things, be they hard as granite or as soft as skin. Show me what once was in the patina of what is now. What a gift this existence here, what an absolute honor to walk this world for a time, to see what was built by hands not our own, to witness the artistry of stone masons who etched their symbols into the walls they set, or those who laid the roofing tiles, the carpenters who made doors and floors of mahogany and oak. You can make something newer, you can lay carpet atop it all, but you cannot buy the soul once you’ve stolen it. You cannot put it back.
In truth though, this isn’t about houses, it’s not about ruins or stones or cobbles or mason marks in window sills. It’s about us, it’s about love, it’s about humanity, it’s about our own relationship to our own bodies. This is about this strange and morbid tendency we have adopted as a species to always believe, truly believe at a deep and fundamental level, that what’s new is best, and that we should be pursuing that, no matter the cost.
We seek the fire of the beginning in our relationships, convincing ourselves that once those flames turn to embers (though they burn hotter) that we’ve done something wrong, we’ve lost something along the way. New, we think, we gotta find something new, those first kiss goosebumps, that electricity we swear is worth more.
We allow needles into our foreheads, into the soft skin above our lips, we slice the delicate bits beneath our ears and allow it all to be stretched taught and then fastened somewhere the scar will never be seen. We iron flat the wrinkles we’ve earned through surviving a world built to undo us. What of all we found hilarious, what of the proof that we found joy? What of the tears we cried at beauty or betrayal, what of the hands held then dropped, and what of all that furrowed our brow and left quotation marks between our eyebrows? What of the parentheses of our smiles?
These are those purchased with time. These are those paid for with the only currency we can never earn, steal, or even counterfeit more of—the hours and minutes, the seconds and years, of our tiny little lives.
Still we burn things down and throw them away when they show signs of their aging, when they no longer carry that brand-new scent. All these houses sit in ashes after we chase so many new sparks, all the creaks and stains of what was once solid oak. Still we weep when we realize far too late that we cannot grow a new oak tree in a weekend, we cannot undo what was done.
Give me the historical features of this human condition, of this human life. Give me the wrinkles, the scars, the geological signs of grief or giddiness. Give me the face stained by memory, give me the house that took its time to become the home it became.
I ramble when I am weary, and I am wearier than I’ve been in so long with the way things go these days.
I think I’m tired of the great big push for the next big thing. I think I’m tired of the “then I’ll be” mentality. “If I can lose 10 more pounds, then I’ll be happy.” “If I just got that raise, then I’ll be less stressed.” I think I’m just tired of the treadmill we’ve all been cattle prodded onto, the endless treadmill that keeps us buying and wanting and “needing” and comparing and forgetting. Mostly forgetting.
I think we forget what we’re here for, I think we forget what matters. I think we forget that it all comes back to time, in the end, it always has. We wake and we choose, every single day, what we’ll invest our energy, our soul, our love, into. We have so little time, why do we waste it on all that never matters? Why do we worry so much of what we look like, of what pieces of ourselves show the devastatingly lovely passage through a lifetime? Why do we destroy what was, aim for such horrifically triumphant renovation, instead of realizing that we cannot buy back what we have lost, we cannot, we cannot, we cannot.
It’s just time, in the end, and I’m here to shout about it a spell, I guess. If you’re tired of a world that keeps trying to convince you to delete, to replace, to upgrade, to refresh, to renovate, your home, your car, your hair, your skin, your life, your SOUL every few months, I suppose I will say you are welcome here. I keep the old wood, I cherish your cracks.
I wish for you such perfect understanding of the fleeting fury of this brief blip here, I wish for you the clarity to see through the haze of it all into what matters. Just love, really. Just love, and just time.
Time.
I love you all.
Be good.
