Something Gold Stays

 A friend once said, "It isn't like I'm so into fashion, as much as I simply love beautiful things."  If we surround ourselves with beautiful things, why wouldn't we want to clothe our bodies in a way that makes us feel beautiful?  The solace of age is beauty: our own.

We enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art the last time we were in NYC, and I immediately want to make my way to the modern and contemporary art: I am addicted to the adrenaline of challenge, the rush as the mind's eye adjusts to something new but instead, I found myself in the room of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities. 

I stand in the hushed high-ceiling room, autumn light filtering through a nearby window framing one of the greatest cities of our time. I recognize what the poets called the eternal moment.

I peer through the glass casements at the ancient  Hellentistic jewelry, unable to move on.

The jewelry is astonishing, exquisite rings and necklaces and bracelets. The tiny sculptures are so strong and weighted delicately with itself. Architecture of the body: Adornment, the adored. A  recognition that beauty is consoling, the need for beauty exits.

I would wear this jewelry today. Thousands of years later I could wear it perhaps with the same joy and love of our physical selves that a woman would then. She would wear a linen chiton; I would wear a  linen sheath. We'd both wear the same sandals.

It isn’t about making an impression: it is about a love of beautiful, our beautiful selves.