Types Of Old
Feed your soul to imposter syndrome and let the ravages of time consume your body!
14th-century illuminated Haggadah from the collection of the Museum of Jewish Art & History in Marais, Paris.
The Old of Paris
Stone cold old. History in the streets. They walked where you’re walking, they ate where you’re eating, they died so long ago as to be buried and then dug up again, only bones, for you to look at and philosophically consider. Every inch is crammed with what is past, and on top of it all is people living and making more of it, shoveling more life and more stone onto a place already so full of it that it overflows. Even the most overlooked antique stores sell such precious things; age is a commodity here, barely even something to be impressed by.
The Old of Los Angeles
Where I was born there are no mountains, you are not reminded constantly of the age of the earth beneath you. The ground does not quake, & you are not made aware, as you are in LA, of the fragility of the city, how it is a slapdash structure above faults that could shake it all to pieces, sending a shock down its synapse like a single thought and erase everything you’ve come to know. It has happened before and it’ll happen again. The ocean, too, bearing down from the horizon, wider and wiser than any skyscraper or dingbat. Sorry, don’t mind me, I’ll just live atop you like a lichen and keep water jugs in the trunk of my car.
The Old Of Your Mid 20s
Feeling ancient. Feeling used up and dry and absolutely done for because what do you have to show for yourself? The teenagers are taking over; they’re in the park and they crowd the malls, looking cooler and smarter than you ever did at that age, they have purpose and awareness that puts your stumbling to shame. And meanwhile, all of your same-agers building resumes or buckling down and you are drowning, surely, having peaked too early and too often and will be left behind, senior superlative gone mercilessly unfulfilled. Ah, fuck, it’s too late, you’re too old. Your plans for the rest of this week: feed your soul to imposter syndrome and let the ravages of time consume your body!
The Old Of Reading Books
Words speaking to you out of the past. A distant (or not so distant) time evoked cleanly and clearly that you’re transported; the chasm of decades yawns between you and the signified of the page. Someone wrote it all down in a now that is then, and you are reading them in a then that is now. Their concerns seem quaint, their arguments ring passé, but surely then they were surprising and new and relevant. Your consciousness stretched between the two points, then tesseracted together, joining in a spark of word-magic. A casual miracle for the day.
The Old of A People
How many thousands of years since Abraham? How many since the first time someone blamed us? How many since we decided, fuck it, we’re going to stick around anyway? A power move, if you ask me. I recognize the shape of my childhood in the objects in the museum’s collection and wonder at phenomena like persistence, power, prayer. It’s always nice to look at old things; it’s the best when the old things look back at me. L’dor vador.