Supposing I found myself chasing another fly ball and ran head-on into a basketball backboard, supposing I woke up once again lying under an arbor with a baseball glove under my head, what words of wisdom could this man of thirty-odd years bring himself to utter? Maybe something like: This is no place for me.
Our culture reveres youth, aspires to agelessness and is frightened by signs of age, wear and decay. As a consequence of this obsession, and the qualities of our man-made materials, contemporary environments have lost their capacity to contain and communicate traces of time. Our buildings often seem to exist in a timeless space without contact with the past or confidence for the future.
One thing I assume of age is weariness.
Damned if I don’t get more tired every day.
Tired of what I do, following arcs like lobbed rocks — the inevitability of truth.
But the complexity and the gray lie not in the truth, but in what you do with the truth once you have it.
Building structure requires serious listening, serious reflection, and serious imagination. All this requires experience, and no matter how experienced you are, it costs you. We spend our time and nerves to save users their time and nerves. Well-designed things give us the invaluable present of time. Well-designed products do not just save us time, they make us enjoy the time we spend with them. They make us feel that someone has been thinking about us, that a nice person took care of the little things for us. This is mainly why we perceive well-designed things as more beautiful the longer we use them, and the more used they become.
Throughout his career, Wilson often answered fan mail and outside requests for his time with this form postcard:
Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him to: Read manuscripts, write books and articles to order, write forewords or introductions, make statements for publicity purposes, do any kind of editorial work, judge literary contests, give interviews, conduct educational courses, deliver lectures, give talks or make speeches, broadcast or appear on television, take part in writers' congresses, answer questionnaires, contribute to or take part in symposiums or 'panels' of any kind, contribute manuscripts for sales, donate copies of his books to libraries, autograph books for strangers, allow his name to be used on letterheads, supply personal information about himself, supply photographs of himself, supply opinions on literary or other subjects.