Dearest Mary Angel,

Hello again! And how have you been? Me? I am well and thanks for asking.

Tomorrow I pick up the first photographic member of my portfolio. The name of the painting is A Face For Everything And Everything In It's Face. It is oil on canvas roughly thirty-six by twenty-eight inches, and took exactly nine days of paid vacation, from start to finish, during the summer of 1990. It is the logical outgrowth of a pencil drawing that I did for my father the previous Christmas. So what do you think? I'd call it unusual, to say the least.

Now look closely, and assume the photo cuts off one eye and brow on the left... I've been able to count sixteen faces. Obviously, not all are readily noticeable-- it takes some study to see them all, and each face has a different expression. If you promise not to tell anyone I'll let you in on the painting's meaning... Each face represents a different facet of an individual's personality.

The original drawing had a name other than the one I quoted above. I called the drawing, The Closet-- which I'll make clear to you in a moment.

I wrote a short bio for the painting, in lieu of an explanation, that I had intended to frame and hang next to the painting so that folks would understand what was behind the images, and in my head. And until a few days ago I thought this bio was lost, but there it was, tucked safely in the back of an old notebook. I offer it here in it's brief entirety.

"When we were young and impressionable, the world presented itself in all it's myriad shapes and forms and as children we did what came natural-- we chose those things, like garments, that would shape, form and add direction to our lives; either out of free will, or force of circumstance. In either case we were choosing unwittingly for the adult we would one day become. And for good or ill the choices are now made.

What a terrible responsibility for children! Trying on garments, not realizing that a time must come when a garment worn cannot be removed save through tremendous pain and loss.

Which Garments did you chose? You have only to look in your closet to know the answer..."

Immediately after this entry in my notebook was a revamped version..

When we were young and impressionable and the shape of our lives not set, we, like the children we were, tried on the many garments that life presented to us. The many faces we put on delighted and sometimes frightened us. We wore these faces for all the years of our childhood never realizing that one day these faces; unlike our parents large and strangely funny clothes on those long gone days of playing dress-up, would not come off so easily.

Knowing this, what kind of faces did we try on, not realizing that if the face were
worn too long it might never come off...

So what kind of face have you and I put on? Can they be removed? Do we even want
to remove them?

Well...I know I think way too much, and about things I am all but incapable of changing-- for the things I would change have their origins in human nature. And who can change that? I would change the world if I could. But who knows? Perhaps in some way I can affect changes; through poetry, stories, or even paintings, perhaps I can change a few things. Maybe a few will listen.

Anyway, seeing as how you haven't complained once about all the poems I give you-- and how could you? --I'll leave you with a very short story that I have never bothered to give a name, until recently.

I love you Mary Angel. May you sleep the recklessness of dreams; and dream fondly of me.



Eric

"Koan of Life"

     It was many years ago that I last saw the whale. I remember it as though it were only yesterday; fresh in my mind like the scent of a new house-- like fresh cut lilies or lemon pie. I also remember it was a cold day; overcast and dark. It was the gray sky, heavy and brooding, that compelled me to leave the house to wander and brood a bit myself.
     It was easy for me to do this on days when the unseen sun gave in to the whims of weather; the dampness in the air and the quality of light that seemed to drain the very color from the world awakened dark places within me. I couldn't help but dwell on Life and it's complexities, and on this one particular day I felt a weight of solemnity as though it sat heavy upon my shoulders.
     I walked long, not caring about time, or even where I was going, only to find myself on the beach. I always ended up there... it was my fascination with the sea; the voice that whispers to me... Calls me by name. But I remember the sky was almost black. Gulls cried overhead, dipping their black-tipped wings, floating in circles above a whale, beached and dying-- sad eerie notes rumbling deep from it's escaping soul.
     "Why does it have to die?"
     I turned to the voice and saw a young girl. I guessed her to be no more than nine or ten, and she was looking up at me... into my eyes and my heart. Her face was streaked with tears.
     I looked at her for a moment; not answering the question I realized was mine to answer. I just kept thinking over and over the one thought that kept racing through my mind, 'you're supposed to be extinct...'
     I don't believe the girl really expected an answer, though, perhaps just thinking aloud without realizing it.
     I began to do the same.
     "Maybe... Maybe after a billion years of existence it's finally solved Life's riddle. Perhaps there's nothing more for it to learn and it has nothing left to life for.
     'Boy,' I thought, 'how lame...'
     But she looked up at me pulling strands of golden hair from her face where her tears had held them fast. "What is Life's riddle if it allows something so beautiful to give up and die?"
     I remember looking at her again, wondering how old she really was.
     "Will we give up and die when we solve the riddle?" She asked.
     "I don't know," I said "I'm not even sure we know what the riddle is, much less able to solve it."
     She turned back to the whale and I saw her lips move. "Oh, yes," I barely heard her say, "What is life without riddles?"
     The whale died rather ominously at that moment. Its last breath and hissing exhale a prelude to the final silence of a song the scientific community insisted had ended some forty years before. What must the world have been like when whales ruled the great oceans? The only sounds I didn't hear at that moment were the pounding of the surf and the crying of the gulls; the sound of that great creatures final breath dwarfing all else.
     I turned a glance toward the girl at my side, but she was gone. Perhaps she had never been there.

     Years later, when I'd watch Man's inhumanity toward himself displayed nightly in living color, I'd wonder where we were heading. What path had we chosen, directly or indirectly? It seemed to me then that we would never tire of war and I wondered, 'How long before someone or something finds us beached and dying upon the shore of our own world?'
     I had no answer then and I expect I'll find none now, but I've often wondered how it was that one whale had managed to hide itself for so long, waiting for the day it would beach itself in exhaustion; tired of living and fearing the cold depths of the sea.
     And it's taken me all these years to come to the only conclusion that makes any sense... It was afraid of drowning, afraid of dying alone... Of slipping into darkness. And not just that; it knew it was the last of its kind. Leaving a marker was the only thing it could do to show us just how much we had truely lost.
     That was when it really hit home for us. Not that our world was dying, but that we we're killing our world, and with it, ourselves. Without realizing, it managed to associated indelibly in our minds the plight of Man with the sight of the last whale...
     Dead.


ELAshley
"Very old and poorly written..."
Sometime between:
070582 and 071082 and revised more than once.
Most recent revisions: 042399
and again on: 122299.120000.1
Last 4 paragraphs: 030200.204426.6
Desperately needs revision!

P.S. Hope you liked the bedtime story, Mary Angel. Again, goodnight and sweet dreams.


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Journal Entry-- June 30, 1998 | 12:55am