About Me

My photo
Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
"No, really!"

My Favorite Bit of Paper Cup Philosophy

The Way I See It #76

The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Venerable Things

Although in Blogging Profiles there are thousands of people who are interested in the most esoteric subjects, I am the only one who comes up as interested in "venerable things". Maybe I didn't select descriptive words that would match me up with anyone else on this. Maybe I wasn't very clear.

When I use that term, I intend it to say that I am drawn to objects that are old and have some charm to me. I have the most beautiful crystal inkwell, circa 1800, with a tortoiseshell lid (I don't approve of tortoiseshell, but animal rights was not a big crusade in early 1800s England) and the monogram "L" that is always the first item I put out in a new home. I own a small piece of the Berlin Wall. I love a pair of eyeglasses frames I bought at an estate sale for $1 - they seem to be 1930s, are round, tortoiseshell again and I would look pretty wonderful in them but no modern day lab has been willing to make new glasses with them - they are concerned the frames can't take the necessary temperature. ;( I'm willing to take the heat, but the lab isn't. On my dining room wall, I have decorated with a collection of 1920s-forward kitchen implements with red-painted wooden handles (I like them more when the paint is chipped and worn from a good woman's repeated use of them) . . . I like small, not necessarily "valuable" objects that some other person once loved, needed and/or used. It's that human connection thing again. Someone held this in their hand, wore these on their face, dipped their pen into this . .


So, in the theme of venerable things, the item shown above is about to go up for auction and is expected to fetch some thousands of dollars. It is connected to a celebrity, now dead. Anyone want to take a shot at what it is? By the way, I would not consider this object a venerable thing. Uh-uh. No.

In my ears right now: Blues Traveler, "Run Around"

Why I like it: It speaks of pain and disillusion, but its tempo is upbeat. It's a conundrum. Or the writer/singer puts on a good, brave face.

Something that charmed me today: This morning in my office, everyone happened to land in the same room at the same time for just a moment. We are an amazing flock of seagulls, truly some remarkable characters, who really, really like one another and feel we've been brought together for some purpose that's not yet within our grasp to know. It's warm and beautiful outside. Our small business is soaring out of the recession with a mighty flap of our wings. Things are good right here, right now. And suddenly, every one of us was speaking of past days and addictions. Most of us have overcome most of those addictions. But we spoke very human, very painful, maybe shameful things to one another. I'm not sure how it started, but suddenly we were right there. And everyone was valued, respected, admired by everyone else. I'm the girl here. I teared up at something I heard that was evidence of someone's pain. One of the guys looked me straight in the eye and said, "I can't believe you did that to yourself and I can't believe you found your way out." It's good to be understood and not condemned.


13 comments:

  1. It looks like somebody's pot pipe. Whose, Jim Morrison's?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, that's a pretty good guess considering its appearance, but that's not what it is! And if it WAS that, how would I know whom it belonged to? ;) [No, Morrison is not the deceased celebrity attached to this. I LIKE all the thought you put to it, however.]

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, I came across your blog by way of TOB's and keep coming back to read more. (Your story about Vicente made me smile.) I'm taking a group of students on a field trip tomorrow to tour the nearby underground "city" where the Chinese had opium dens in the 1800s--so my guess is similar to Badger's. Is it a modern-day opium pipe?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Doozyanner, welcome aboard the bus! Pretty funny you'd land here, because I also found you through TOB - thanks, TOB! - and have visited your blog repeatedly. If I could ever squeeze just one more moment of time from a day, I was going to introduce myself to you next (you can see I'm a rookie blogger). What pulled me your direction were the connections of sewing, teaching and being former San Diegan women of a particular age.

    SO ~ that thing that's not so venerable: no it's not a pipe to smoke anything from. A clue to all: it's more a device that provides a service or does a function that someone needs. Think blow dryer. "I need to dry my wet hair. I believe I'll use this blow dryer." This item did a job for a celebrity who would have last used it in the late 1970s.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Are you going to clue us in as to what it is soon? Would this service be intimately personal?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am going to clue you in very soon, indeed. I just wanted everyone with a curious mind to ring in with their guesses.

    And score another one for the Badger! Yes, an intimately personal service, in my estimation.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am flummoxed. Intimate...personal...yikes, all I can come up with isn't fit for a family-rated blog! (I'm glad to have bumped into you here in cyberland. We have Sense and Sensibility in common. Just how many men ARE there who claim to love that movie??)

    ReplyDelete
  8. All right, folks, for those who have waited: it's Elvis Presley's (no I was NOT a fan) irrigation device. Before any concert or show, he purportedly cleaned his nasal cavities with saline solution poured from this device. WHAT? And someone's going to pay some thousands of dollars for that? GO figure!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dooz, I was stunned at how many men come up when you click the link to those no-other-way-to-say-it chick flicks. And if you were a man who really liked it would you actually say . . hmmmm. Do you like Howards End, A Room with a View, Enchanted April, Remains of the Day? I love those and I'm really not all ThAT much a girl. They just appeal to me tremendously.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Gak! Now doesn't that paint a lovely picture in the brain?! I'm glad you finally told us...the mystery was killin' me! ha
    I've read Remains of the Day and really liked it but haven't seen the movie. I've added R w/a V and EA to my Netflix queue. It's been years since I saw HE and liked it, but don't have a copy so can't recite lines as with S&S. I like some girly-girl movies but also like off center ones like Lars and the Real Girl.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I don't know Lars, but I know where to go meet him. Thanks for the tip!
    Oddball movies appeal, too. But the British stuff pulls me hard. As in The Duchess of Duke Street probably 10 times through every episode.

    ReplyDelete
  12. in a former life The Duchess and I had a brief love affair. Masterpiece Theatre every Sunday on my 13" black and white set.

    ReplyDelete
  13. 10 times through EVERY episode. I think I missed many and only one time each. But this is what television should be and so often fails.

    ReplyDelete