nostalgia
I haven't been keeping my little columns to the Garfield county local paper. They seem so trivial. But recently Glen and I watched an Italian movie called "Summer Hours". It was about a old woman wondering what to do with her estate, which included much art. It got me thinking about our situation. It would be nice to have some discussion among family. Anyway, her is what I wrote.
Nostalgia. What good is it to have nostalgic thoughts, be nostalgic, or want nostalgic momentous? The very word “nostalgic” sounds like a disease. Maybe it is, a disease of the spirit.
Museums are for keeping pieces of the past. One walks through, looks, seldom touches and drifts on by. Perhaps a piece once belonged to someone you knew or heard about, but from the glass display case it has a hard time meaning very much.
Some of us are made of nostalgia bones. We want to walk in the past. We want to build our own past to be worth wanting by the young. Oh yes, if what is built is money, then it is wanted--wanted and used to pile up more “stuff”. If we become famous, then perhaps that “stuff” can live on and float from auction house to auction house collecting even more worth as the “once- belonged-to’ phrase pushes it. But what about the rest of us common folks and our stuff? The English tried to do something about perpetuity by developing a system where the oldest son inherited whatever the parents had built or inherited. But even that isn’t enough to always hold together a family’s identity. Families use up money, sell property. They disperse, for there is something of the second law of thermodynamics to them--break down and change, restructure and always change. No such thing as a perpetual motion machine, a system has to have energy put in to keep going. So what makes sense to put into a family? A place? That could help for a few generations. A few valuable mementos, if they are beautiful, utilitarian, or valuable might last a while, but sooner or later no one will remember what meaning they have. What about the written word? If a person is skillful enough to have had the insight and the energy to write about themselves and whatever it is they want to preserve, or a descendant does it for them, then a whole bloodline could have access to copies, which is easier to share than something more material, like money or artifacts; and through the ages, there will likely be a few who would want it. Genealogy is the number one hobby, it is said. Certainly, it is the only thread that could be given equally to each far flung family member. But another thing that might be left to the young, besides a good name, genealogy and family stories, is the unwritten tradition that each person is responsible for him or herself, that they get an education and go forth to follow their own passion. And the energy to keep the system going? Well, Love, of course.
At the start of this new year 2010, I try to make sense of my efforts and the pile of “cents” that has accumulated into dollars and into “stuff”, and wonder what to do with it. I wonder about it and about life and if I have loved enough....
Send suggestions or musings to Veda Hale, Box 956 Panguitch, Utah 84759 or email vedahale@hotmail.com.
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