Capturing the Charm

I believe that the way in which not to become disenchanted with life is to surround yourself with the things that charm you, whether from the past or the present. The things that charm me are the idea of life in the old west, when many men were still honest, and when a hard day's work was actually hard. I love the idea of bringing to the present the ideals of the past that I love. I love the idea of working with my hands to raise a living, of raising good honest kids who know how to love, learn, laugh and work hard. I love preserving the past by storing it within myself. I love old books that capture the charm of the era in which they were written. If I were to tell somebody what to leave behind when they die, I would tell them to leave something beautiful for the future generations to cling to in a world that gets increasingly uglier by the decade. I love the idea of keeping in my home only the things that I truly need and love, and keeping out the things that rankle my soul. My perception is that young people are getting more and more superficial, and that they don't appreciate quality or even know what quality is to begin with! I wish the previous generation had shown them. I wish that every child could have grown up in the country as I did and tasted home-grown food and gone to sleep with a hand-knitted blanket on sheets dried in the sun. I wish all kids could have watched the cows and gathered eggs and raised their own ducks and seen them through their whole life-cycle (short as it may be in the predator-ridden woods). I wish that every child could have been read to from great books, and snuggled with in a rocker by the woodstove. I wish that all children had known what it is to be loved, so that they wouldn't fill that void with superfluous things and thoughts and words; wouldn't fill it with cheap sex and self-hatred.