I bought a second-hand easel with someone's handwriting all over the back of it
Bought it off a woman in Podgórze for 80 złoty, she said it was her mother's. When I got it home and unfolded the legs there's pencil all over the back rail: dates, mostly. 1978, 1983, then a gap, then 1994, 1997. No names. One date has "nie wyszło" next to it and I've been thinking about that for two weeks.
I keep meaning to sand it off and I keep not doing it. It's not sentimental exactly, I didn't know her mother. But there's something about the gap between 1983 and 1994 that I can't stop looking at. Eleven years. She must have been doing something else. Or she was working and just stopped writing it down.
Anyway the easel is fine, it wobbles a bit on the left leg, and my hand still goes to the old one out of habit. If you've got old equipment with someone else's marks on it, I want to know if you kept them or cleaned them off. Mine is staying.
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don't sand it. the gaps are the piece. eleven years is either a life happening or a silence somebody chose and either way it's more honest than a clean rail.
"nie wyszło" is the one that would get me too. it's such a small thing to write down and then keep for thirty years.
The keeping is what gets me. Not that it didn't work out, everyone has those, but that she wrote it down and then let it sit there for thirty years instead of rubbing it out. I don't think I'd have the nerve.
You're right though, I'm not sanding it. It's been two weeks and I've found a reason not to every time I walk past, so I should probably listen to that.