![]() They didn’t find the mystery of the fountain of youth but rather a way to embrace change, so time doesn’t inflict a scar but a layer of patina and, sometimes, wisdom. ![]() ![]() Such is the Proustian cycle silently taking place everywhere, a process that reminds us of the impermanence of things and our equality when it comes to acknowledging the passing of time, or, as the French poet Jacques Prévert called it in The Dead Leaves, “the cold night of oblivion.”Īs the passing of time leaves its traces, some buildings and places, like some people, seem to have learned the secret of aging well. When we visit as adults the bedrooms we inhabited as children, we reflect on the otherness of the experience, as if such place was stuck in time, but then the same space comes back to life from a new perspective and originality when somebody else takes it over (for example, our own children when visiting their grandparents). We all have seen how places are transformed by the presence, or the absence, of people who make a difference. To come back to life, such spaces also need the life traces of their inhabitants and visitors. In other cases, dwellers sometimes are up to the challenge posed by fixer-uppers and decide to take on restoration or renovation projects.īut the revival of a home, of a neighborhood, or of an entire town doesn’t come only through the physical transformation of one space. As life continues, empty nesters leave their big households for smaller, more convenient dwellings. Urban and personal decay don’t always go hand in hand.
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