In Praise of Idleness Drawings 75 and 76

Old house

In Profile

Ruins and the Passing of Time

“[Ruins] are relics of another time, of other lives, but they are of my time, too.  They are statues, memorializing the transitory nature of life.”
— Brian Vander Brink, Ruin:  Photographs of a Vanishing America

Derelict house along Highway 97 between Yakima and Goldendale, WA

Ruined house with Mount Adams

“Maybe these buildings fascinate me because they represent all of us — metaphors for our transient lives and the inability to stop the passing of time.”
— Brian Vander Brink, Ruin:  Photographs of a Vanishing America

When I see an old, abandoned house like this, I wonder about the lives of those whose home it once was.  Here it was situated under the wide, open skies of eastern Washington — an arid place, hot, but with snow-capped Mount Adams anchoring the horizon like one of those giant Buddha statues.  What would it have been like to grow up in this house?

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
— Ecclesiastes 9:1