What beautifully written and wonderful sentiments, and thank you for sharing them here. While probably only we 'old timers' might grasp the deep meaning here, we can understand as like the old arms we study, which were once the things of the time, we have become the past.
My quest into looking deeply into the history and memories of these 'old warriors' is to experience their past, much as I venture wistfully into my own.
"...on the walls there were displays of old weapons in which rusty steel blades, condemned to silence, slept an eternal sleep. The soft golden light filling the room could no longer wrest a single gleam from those old dust covered guards darkened by time, the metal marked by old scars"
"The Fencing Master"
Arturo Perez-Reverte (1988)
p.243
For me the darkened old warriors are icons of history, and like me
wear the age, scars and darkness proudly.......as well earned. That is why I prefer these dark old swords, untouched, not 'restored' or vigorously cleaned.
While obviously not as 'attractive or shiny' as they once were, I see them, as myself, in earlier glories, such as they were.
The past is only mute, to those who will not listen.