The oldest thing

Beauty found in immediacy plus heat

“Reading” (1948), Fernand Leger

Wednesday afternoon, I tried to identify the oldest object in my life. There’s the coffee thermos I’ve owned for 27 years. I have T-shirts that are two decades’ tattered. My car is 16, my puffy jacket is patched with duct tape. Recently, my dad’s cousin shipped me one of my grandfather’s service shirts from the Navy, with …