I return to this topic again and again. My love of old, broken things has so much to do with appreciating beauty — wherever it resides. It’s so easy, in our culture, to embrace the new or chase the perfect, but to scorn that which doesn’t live up to our expectations of the “whole”.

Perhaps “new” has to do with hope. That somehow, new speaks to possibilities, the boundless energy so wrapped up in the American spirit of adventure and innovation. And yet, new is exhausting. The endless quest for new and improved can so easily leave us lost in a sea of change. 

All things change and I would never want to convince myself otherwise. Change is good as it constantly refreshes and renews. To me the broken shows me at once, that change. What something is as well as what it once was. With the broken there are so many ways to embrace it. And that embrace is what beauty is all about.