In with Old, Out with the New

A Game Changer in Revitalizing our Old Selves

For my 21st birthday this year, my friends pitched in to buy me a born-again film camera- it captures pictures digitally but appears with the aesthetic of developed film. My dad, the photography buff he is, didn’t quite understand the sudden interest in a camera that seemed to take photography back a few decades. I think to many people in our generation the appeal of those grainy pictures stems from their vintage beauty. Perhaps it’s the concept of revitalizing its mysterious appeal from an unknown time that is far more interesting than always investing in the next new thing.

As we observe our parent’s old film pictures, we see that they are captured effortlessly in a nostalgic essence, and we aspire to reclaim that.

A look at our current consumer culture reveals that it thrives off of reinventing this vintage appeal for our contemporary society. 90s fashion trends like chunky sneakers and mom jeans have made their complete comeback. Rather, they’re now paired with the latest iPhone, instead of a flip phone. It seems like we pick and choose what redeems us of that warm nostalgia but what’s also realistic to our current generation.

When I decided to make my New Year’s resolution a few months ago, I adopted the same principle. In previous years, I’d gotten away with making somewhat vague and repetitive goals, the hallmark for a typical new years resolution. With all of the extra time, I’d have this year, I decided to challenge myself in reading twelve books by the end of 2022. For years, I’d regurgitated the same desire to read in an endless cycle of procrastination. Maybe tomorrow, next month, or next year would be a good time. Nonetheless, there was this particularly unique feeling that almost slipped my memory from those years of reading, and that was that childlike urge of getting lost in a story.

As a kid, I’d observed my mother closely as she got lost in her own stories. I’d peek through the clear squares on our living room door that formed a barrier between the stillness in that room and the life outside it. I could see the new rotation of novels she had chosen from the library that month. She always sat in the same curled position with her legs tucked away behind her, while she lay rested against the armrest. Her petite figure barely covered the area of the longest couch in there. Her eyebrows would be creased, as she cocked her head left and right for her eyes to fully gaze at the words. Those words and the stories in her novels were the gates to a fresher worldview for her. Something always captivating about the covers of my mom’s novels was their blank still-life image diminished by a vague title secret of the words behind the cover. After she finished one, she’d move on to the next one. It wasn’t until I got a little older that she’d brief me on the main points and conclude it with a point of relevant maternal advice. Though she was unconventional in her reading choices, she presented a black-and-white perspective on the activity itself. She’d poke at my Dad’s claims that the online news articles on the Yahoo! home page were just another form of biased misconceptions and not true literature. I’ve realized that I’ve developed some of the same opinions along the way.

My hometown library separated the kid’s books from the adult books, so for a while, exploring the upstairs adult area became more enticing with age. It seemed like going upstairs to choose books was the next sequential step in my maturation as an adolescent. Nonetheless, I naturally moved away from the fictional books I’d read when I was younger. I always remember Scholastic Book Fairs and March’s Reading Month providing that fictitious edge to reading, so much so, that we’d bring imaginative stories to life through our passionate investment in characters and storylines. For example, before the first Divergent trilogy movie release, my friends and I spent a whole week adjusting our wardrobe to fit the monochromic colors of the different factions. To others, it might’ve appeared like we took turns dressing up as human condiments, but to us, it was an ode to one of the best books we had read at that time.

We seemed to have lost touch of that time, as reading faded into a chore of SAT passages and assigned readings. However, I’ve unknowingly personified this consumeristic principle of in with the old and out with the new. A few years ago, I snuck into my mother’s old bedroom while visiting my grandparent’s home. I climbed onto her creaky bed and brushed my hand down her collection of dusty books stacked in parallel rows down her wall. I pulled a book out, where it left a gaping hole in the case like a missing puzzle piece. Flipping through the pages like a fan, the rustic smell of an aged book lingered. Like a film camera, the back cover captured my mom’s curvy name effortlessly printed with the year, 1997. As I unfold the book now, I find myself reclaiming a piece of my youth that had once slyly slipped through my fingers many years before.