Hosta 'Autumn Frost' 25 April 2024

Pristine

Mid 16th century (in the sense ‘original, former, primitive and undeveloped’): from Latin pristinus ‘former’. The senses, ‘unspoilt’ and ‘spotless’, date from the 1920s.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Since I can remember, just-bought new shoes, would invariably, in short order, be stepped on by someone or some other way there would be a nasty mark on its pristine surface. Nothing remains new for long.

Inevitably, a new car, with its special brand-new smell will get a dent. That is the way for anything. That crying baby just out of the womb will soon show the flaws of aging.

To see something that is flawless and pristine is an experience that one remembers as a “first time”.

And so now in my Kitsilano deck garden my potted hostas have that refreshing, bright (I will run out of adjectives her) pristine look. They are unspoiled. They are yet to be bleached by bright sun or get holes from nasty looking (even pristine ones now in early spring) slugs.

At the same time, while many who buy and collect antique cars and restore them to perfection, might not understand the beauty of the obviously not new. That is the case of the used Pentax S3 I purchased at Foto Rudiger, on Venustiano Carranza Street, in Mexico City in 1962. Even then the black paint coating had begun to rub off and the brass beneath could be seen.

There are many photographers who have been known to attempt to age their black-painted film cameras. When my fellow photographers see my Pentax they invariably smile and tell me how beautiful it is.

Is there something of this when we look at people? When I first spotted my Rosemary from the back walking outside the school where I was working (I did not know she worked there also) and saw her lovely straight hair, that very short dark blue mini-skirt and those legs, and those legs! I was dazzled.

Then when 2020 came around when she would get up from our bed I did not notice how gravity had affected her body. Why?

Because she was like my Pentax S3. She was lovely.