Old Ladies – True Thoughts, Jewellery & Museums

The moon is one and three; young, mature and ancient in aspect. At its oldest, it is frail, thin, the boundary between memory and forgetfulness. There are few who still revere her. Many of those people died out, were overtaken by conquerors and events, their faces and their tongues submerged in the darkness of the ages.

Like frost or the delicate traceries of ferns, you see their history fade. The guardians keep what they can, commit the images to postcard and guidebook, but know that the conquerors will win it all someday. At this infinitesimally fine moment, these matters are balanced as on a fulcrum; should you decide to remember them, they will be remembered – should you decide to forget, there will be no way back for them.

It is like the archaeological frailty of jewellery. In those days, they beat gold to fineness as of leaves, as of foil, as of a web. When worn by the living, it was beautiful beyond belief – and now, dug up from the ground, it is hardly there, like memories. The endless ticking of the clock wears everything down; it is as Auden said, "Time is not your friend."

One thought went through my mind a lot this afternoon: how odd it is, how coincidental in my mind, that the one word that best describes the theme is evanescence.