SHIFTING AESTHETICS

I don't know why I find myself attracted to old, abandoned houses, but I do. Perhaps it's my admiration for the wabi-sabi aesthetic of finding beauty in what architect Leonard Koren has described as things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. There may also be something else at work here — a sense of profound sadness that these myriad decaying structures once sheltered people with hope, unnoticed dreamers who struggled valiantly but finally succumbed to the harsh realities of life. Whatever the case, I look upon these old places much as William Carlos Williams does in his nostalgic poem Pastoral (When I Was Younger).  I continue to find beauty in whatever life remains,  whether it be the "properly weathered" colors of old wood or the changing angles of a leaking roof that will surely collapse in time, but which is holding its own today.  As Williams concludes in his poem, these things may not be "of vast import to the nation," but they always deserve our attention, for they remind us that most things — even our own lives — continue to yield beauty, even as they surrender to the ravages of time.

                                          Pastoral (When I was younger)

                                               by William Carlos Williams

                                              When I was younger

                                              it was plain to me

                                              I must make something of myself.

                                              Older now

                                              I walk back streets

                                              admiring the houses

                                              of the very poor:

                                              roof out of line with sides

                                              the yards cluttered

                                              with old chicken wire, ashes,

                                              furniture gone wrong:

                                              the fences and the outhouses

                                              built of barrel staves

                                              and parts of boxes, all,

                                              if I am fortunate, 

                                              smeared a bluish green

                                              that properly weathered

                                              pleases me best of all colors.

                                              No one

                                              will believe this

                                              of vast import to the nation.

From The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1909-1939