The last time I visited my Grandma Gibb, she told me I was sentimental. In her life history she wrote that I had old fashioned values. I think what she's trying to say is that I was born in the wrong decade. Perhaps even the wrong century. I couldn't agree more with her.
I just finished reading the book "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell and now my heart aches. The darn book has consumed me for the past two weeks and now that it's over I'm left feeling hopelessly out of place. Is it possible to feel like you are literally better suited to a different era?
Don't get me wrong, life in this day and age has its perks. I am far more educated than I ever could have been in a different day and age and I'm sure the tangible inferiority of women back in the day would have seriously frustrated me. Yet those two perks and other things from today, like faster communication, quick and reliable transportation and easier access to wealth and information, seem so petty in comparison to what my life could have been like if I was born years and years before.
So lately I've felt rather disconnected. Perhaps it's my depression being kindly enough to remind me that it still exists, but I don't think it's just that. I sincerely feel like I'm stuck in the wrong place. I am Ashley Wilkes. And this is where I really belong.
Pictures from my Grandma Wendorff.
"Yes, life has a glitter now - of a sort. That's what's wrong with it. The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour."
- Gone With the Wind
I think we are bosom cousins.
ReplyDeleteEverything you say, I feel the exact same way.
Old photographs fascinate me.
I read Gone With the Wind 9 years ago and it changed me. I felt out of place when it ended because it consumed me for so long. I felt transplanted to another place and time.
I made Maren read it thinking she would love it and she was mad at me because it didn't have a happy ending.
There is sequel "Scarlett" written by someone else. Not as well written. But I still liked it. And it satisfied my need for "more".
AMEN!! When I read books like that, nothing can compare. And I start thinking in the way that the book reads? Does that make sense? Everything seems more elegant and sort of slowed down in my mind. I love it so much.
ReplyDeleteI've never read that book, but now you've convinced me to do so! P.S. welcome back!! Happy happy day!!
ReplyDeleteI have never read Gone with the Wind (though maybe I will now...), but I so know this feeling. I also suspect that I was actually meant to be living in a different time. It's the weirdest thing, being nostalgic for a time you have never actually lived through, or known firsthand. Maybe I would find it just as unsettling as I find 2013... but I will never know, and either way it's nice to dream.
ReplyDeleteI don't know you, and you don't know me, but I have always felt the same way!
ReplyDeleteGone With the Wind is my most favorite book and movie! You should read the sequel (written by a different author) called Scarlett. You would love it!
P.S. - Ashley Wilkes is a dude... :)
Another thing we have in common, I would have looooved to live in the 30s-50s! I love all your old photos.
ReplyDeleteHow much do I love this post! So good and I'm with you! But to that I will add that I would never have had braces or contacts AND I looked into my heritage, which would have meant I would have been a servant. Ha! A buck-toothed, blind servant! I guess that's more Jane Austen times though. I loved/hated that book. What the heck? I wasn't ready for the ending and found it incredibly frustrating! Well, I think I found HER frustrating throughout it, but I read it quite some time ago. I might change my mind upon reading it again. It is a classic after all. I WILL say reading through Grandma Gibb's book has me remenissing and I wasn't even there! I think that's just what happens when you read about a different time. it seems so romantic. One day our Grandkids will likely think the same thing about our time.... So old fashioned! ;)
ReplyDeletemy thoughts everyday!!! All this technology makes me scared for the future of my children (the none existent ones :))
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