Is our face a map of where we’ve been? Does it register our journey from dread to radiance in the country of our eyes? My guess is that our wrinkles signify a continent of sorrow alongside a firmament of wonder. My creases are on-ramps and off-ramps where I've dared and where I haven't, like a hung jury carrying both innocence and guilt.
Mouths can sneer,
foreheads can frown and eyes can laugh, even noses; I’m told mine flare when I’m
telling a joke. I wouldn’t know. I seldom look at myself. I’m not even sure I’d
recognize me if I ran into myself in a crowded elevator.
The full spectrum is
there but not always decipherable. Yet some people, apparently, can probe our
past and intuit our future as they decipher the nuances of our facial terrain.
It got me thinking
how my face at age five has grown over decades to this one I’m wearing now. Was
the guy in the mirror always there in waiting or has my thrill-a-minute chronicle
shaped it? If I had been born in squalor and fallen in with a band of
mercenaries, would I have the same look? I would hope that my lucky life of
passion and compassion has found a home in this landscape of a face.
Some of us like
Redford or Newman keep the same face for a lifetime. Others like Pacino or
Brando morph as if there was always another Al and Marlon waiting to emerge. A
friend once remarked that she had married Roddy McDowell and ended up with James
Gandolfini.
Our nose always lands in the middle of our face to make for magnificent symmetry, yet the possibilities seem infinite. Siblings and cousins come close but are not indistinguishable. Maybe there’s a guy in Bulgaria who is my double and we're each other's generic equivalent. That’s the sort of stuff of which trashy novels are written and even trashier blogs.
No comments:
Post a Comment