"New and Improved"?

Originally posted August, 2009

I recently scored an absolutely amazing vintage china cabinet

at a local flea market...to say I got it for a song would be a gross understatement.

It was such a steal that I even felt a momentary twinge of guilt

as I loaded up my treasure, knowing full well that what I got for a mere $85(!)

was going for upwards of $600 just a few blocks away at the chi-chi antique stores in town.

Upon getting it home and placing it in the kitchen corner,

I began to fill my newfound gem with wedding china and household wares

procured two years ago, but heretofore unpacked.

Hooray, I thought!

At last, a fitting showcase for my shiny, new Calphalon,

my glistening Corningware, my sparkling ivory Mikasa.

The new juxtaposed against the old,

the timeless contrasting sharply with the transient.

Would my designer label china have looked any more elegant

displayed in a modern, new Ethan Allen piece?

Some might say yes.

But like so many of you, the inherent beauty in what others

might perceive as junk is this:
my chippy, peeling, flea-market find has lived a life.
Not to anthropomorphize, but it has tales to tell.

Each chip, each dent, each coffee-stain ring speaks to an existence

foreign to my own, yet strangely similar.

Utilitarian practicality is now sharing the stage with stylistic functionality,
but to us junkers, the beauty has always been evident,

even if Farmer Jones and the Missus might not have fully

recognized it before relegating it to the storage shed.

Yes, my pristine Mikasa serving pieces

have a resplendence all their own,

but they have yet to live a life.

They still have much to learn from the wisened old veteran

which provides them harborage.

I'm hoping they will confer, as we would all be wise to do

in our own small corners of the world, be they kitchen or otherwise.

*** this is a re-post from August 2009***