"Why Is It This Way?" - Part Two - "The Door Closed"

"Why Is It This Way?"

Part Two

"The Door Closed"

            Each point (aspect) of antiquarian interest (intrigue) is, and as it further refines itself, an ever smaller... already small... smaller ...point (aspect)

Of actual human interest.  Each antiquarian intrigue becomes a further out toward the end of an antiquarian interest diving board.

            Less ‘people’ venture there; to the ‘end’.  There are less there should one get there.  These less are

            Always small in number.

            It has always been this way.

            To ask for.. or to discover... a larger status (state of affairs), one may

            Wish upon a star?  Yes, certainly.  But one speaks to the antiquarian gods alone.

            Both ‘just to the gods’ and, actually, alone... when doing this.  When one comes back from a travel such as that, one will be in the mundane of ‘does the car start?” and taking out the trash ‘please dear’.  That ‘comes back’ utopia is the opposite of ‘always small’; it is a very large...

            That does not, did not and... will not ever... care about... impassioned antiquarian interest.

            OH ONE MAY HAVE a few local and provincial flirts over a “CHAIR” ... “I BOUGHT”... or perhaps a very rare 1850’s daguerreotype photograph ‘image’ of an exterior view of a newly built store... possibly once in a small Maine village... but “no one is sure (yet) where it was”.  Taken.  Someone did ‘take’ the ‘picture’.  But that doesn’t matter.  When one returns from executing curbside trash disposal placement... all of one’s verbose antiquarian banner waving about the discovery of the old photograph has been ‘forgotten’ and ‘moved on from’ by the ‘a very large’.  Only your personal thoughts... hang by their finger tips.  Then...

            Your thoughts drop off and fall... away.  Too.  Periodically you ‘visit’ and ‘flirt’, just yourself... with your “old photograph”.  There is no point in ‘showing it’.  Even to yourself.  You already know what it looks like.  And the rest of them... went to the beach... “anyway”.

            If I take this banter to the commercial side of the antiquarian intrigue... do you sense how fragile that ‘actually is’.  Commercially I am always ‘getting there’ (to the diving board end) and finding either ‘a very few’ (“always small”) or a... no ...one.  That’s how I know about what I am writing.  You... even you... and the other ‘you’... are too..

            NOT THERE.

            Yes:  You have distinguished between a door mat and a Persian rug upon a “floor”.  And... you’ve carried that up a ladder to a few more decorative accessories that you either... found, discovered, bought, inherited or... purloined ‘along a way’ of a ‘that’ that is actually a murky definition of how you “SEE” the antiquarian ...what.

            Do you

            “SEE”?

            Not very much... in the ‘murky’.  I go on without your participation.  You denote that your ‘collection’ is ‘complete’ “anyway”.  So you go to the beach too.  “Always small” becomes even smaller; a smaller ‘always small’.  I have to wait it out.  Soon enough another wandering thought-as-apparition emerges through the murk.  “I am” says they ‘collect’ Bennington Pottery tobacco jars.  Or was it snuff jars; who knows a difference?

            I do.

            They do.

            So I am in luck?  Today?  I have a tobacco jar and a snuff jar

            “BOTH SIGNED”

            “Isn’t that cute” (that you had to take the household trash out BEFORE) you could further explore this interest of yours in... well...

            “OLD”

            “THINGS”.

            “That IS too bad that they are ALL THAT:  You always have ‘old things’.”

            While I am ‘accommodating’ with that... another arrives wanting to know if I will “take sixty’ for a “that”.  This is in the very small at the board’s end too.  So I say yes.  I know my chance very well here... there and ‘about that’.  But they know too... that I know... too and we have a brief conversation about the ‘cleaning up’ of the ‘surface’ with this including a fingernail scrape ‘test’ to ‘assure’.  These are all just fireflies in the murk at the end of the board of ‘always small’.  I like fireflies.

            Do you?

            If the defining is ‘always small’, ‘diving board end’, ‘murk’ and ‘fireflies’...as the ‘is it this way’ “Why?” and...

            Always has been

            Since ever an “I” may remember

            Ever...

            Is that an ‘it’ or an ‘anything’... at all?  If the Persian rug and the door mat are on the floor of the front hall floor of the front door to the...

            Wait patiently...

            You walk on them

            Throughout the home.

            If the ‘stand’ is a ‘table’ and the chest is a ‘dresser’ and the bedstead ‘was my mother’s’ and the timepiece is ‘the old clock’ that ‘stopped working’... do you look back over your shoulder to the closed front door that is keeping out the murk and the fireflies?  That really is the boundary of ‘always small’.  Just close the door.  It is gone.

            “It” is an individual’s actual interest in “antiques”.  This is the that that has always actually been the way it has always been ever since... “I” may remember.  It is not a something that is “happening now”.

            “YOUNG PEOPLE” have always been “NOT INTERESTED” in “ANTIQUES”.  I know this fully for I was once a young person highly interested in antiques and noticed fully the “no one else was”.  Except “OLD PEOPLE”.  So that takes care of that:  Antiques interest is an ‘always small’ gathering of “OLD PEOPLE”.  Let us just “BANK” on that.

            And move on to “the DEALERS”

            This is the occurrence that there is a workable notion that one may “MAKE MONEY” by (buying and) selling “ANTIQUES”.  Even television shows demonstrate this

            Perchance.

            I remember when this ‘that’ “did not”.  No... ‘back then’ it was a very small ‘always small’ to be an ‘antiques dealer’.  No one asked me about it... back then.  Most didn’t even know I could be, in front of them, an “antiques man”.  Originally we (antiques dealers) were a ‘curiosities vendors’... with some old books and paintings “thrown” into that mix.  A sorrowful plight?  No... really... no one noticed ‘at all’.

            But then the enhanced escapade escaped into a wild movement of ‘things’ called antiques that, as I opened with (Part One), are actually ‘crud’; old vans full of smelly crud.

            Yes... that is what it is.  Do not believe me.  Look down your front hall standing on the Persian rug... in past the door mat... and notice the ‘old (serpentine front) Hepplewhite New England made satin wood inlayed “Federal” “card table”. Then look on further past to the tall clock; the ‘grandfather’s clock’.  Do you smell anything?  Of course not.

            Crud is crass.  It is not a curiosity.  It is not a decorative art.  It is not art.  It is crass crud... that, usually, smells when it is closed up in an old van and has the sun beat upon that closed up unit (“always small”?).

I turn the tide?  I just did?  The always small... is always small... and now buried within the crud... industry... that is pandered and peddled as ‘antiques’ ‘business’.  Bantered, driven, parked, yard saled, flea marketed, auctioned, stall shopped, store fronted and hoarded... crud... is industry.  And not small.  It is very large... the secondary market; used things.  It... here; in our USA but cinched down to New England... is the largest and the finest in the world.  No place else is better... anywhere ever.  Crud.  That is the one word of the largest ‘what it is’.   It does not effect you at all; just close the door.  The crud, like the ‘very small’ antiques intrigue... is gone.  Too.

Then.... what is the... “Why is it this way”

            It is only that...; has always been only that and... is always small.  Keep the door closed.  It will never be seen unless, of course, one ‘stumbles across’ a ‘real antique’ when out and about... and does actually notice that; a ‘real’ ‘antique’.  Then one may address it; that... the ‘antique’ stumbled upon.  Otherwise just ‘don’t’.  Stay back somewhere between the Persian rug and the door mat in the front hall of the front door to the intrigue of the very small apparition appreciated as ‘antiques’.  It is this way... and that is why.