“Do you not hear a voice in your heart/ which promises eternal
happiness?” (Bellini, Norma)
“Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”
(Terry Britten/ Graham Lyle)
Paige knocked her leg hard against the table. It hurt. Then a voice whispered: I don’t want to die. Paige swung around in her chair, her solitude broken by a strange visitor, the voice an interruption or maybe a discovery, a sensation inside her. But nothing shakes or reaches the vicissitudes of the imaginary inside. I don’t want to die, it repeated. She wasn’t sure if it actually spoke, it was barely a voice, but she believed she’d heard it before.
Immortally, I love you.
“She wanted to be saved. She wanted to tear his eyes out. She wanted to eat his flesh. She wanted to carve her name on his forehead. She wanted him dead. She wanted him around. She wanted him to stand like a statue. She wanted him never to be sad. She wanted him to do what she wanted. She wanted him invulnerable and invincible. She wanted to look at him. She wanted him to get lost. She wanted to find him. She wanted him to do everything to her. She wanted to look at him.
“She had no idea who he was or what he was thinking. She only pretended that she knew him. He was an enigma of the present, the palpable unknown. He was the loved one, and he wasn’t listening to reason. He would save her, and she would never die.
“She didn’t want to die. She wanted to be saved.”
Irrationally, I love you.
Paige turned off the computer. “She wanted to be saved” winked one last time. She tore up all the hearts and threw them in the garbage and, days later, wondered if they should have been recycled with the newspapers. She liked recycling.
“…For the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depend. Orlando had so ordered it that she was in an extremely happy position; she need neither fight her age, nor submit to it; she was of it, yet remained herself. Now, therefore, she could write, and write she did.” (Virginia Woolf)
She sorted through some papers, closed her books, drew the covers off her bed, and undressed. She laid her head on a pillow and shut her eyes. Paige dismissed the present, and then the dead sat on a chair and talked, and love and hate gamboled, trading blows and kisses. Friends and enemies mingling, and her neck out of joint, Paige awoke just before the sun did. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and turned on the computer.
“Love is a necklace around the throat, it needs a durable clasp, so it can be put on and taken off again and again. Some necklaces you never want to take off, though.”
Paige Turner is writing to you.
I love you.
Impressions of an Artist, with Haiku
A Portrait of Peter Dreher
A man, whose insufficient portrait will be rendered here, does not keep cats or wear a beard. He is of medium size, reasonable weight, and looks like an architect or a philosopher or an accountant. But he’s an artist, has a studio and a house and travels between those places, and others, moving with deliberation, and going and coming.
This man likes stillness, so a cat might be a great companion, since nothing can be more still than a cat, especially when it hunts, except for an inanimate coffee cup or a corpse. Holding still for a long time suggests death and maybe infinity.
See. observation
Reclaims exhausted routines.
Noise can be music.
Understanding endlessness might make this artist, who is usually not the subject of a picture, capable of envisioning the scientific hereafter. A very few minds can grasp the concept, the capacity for which might be compared with comprehending the finality of death, which few can, also, though death has an absolute place in life, creating the desire for immortality and, from that, as well as sexual curiosity, everything else emerges: collecting antiques or jewelry or baseball cards, writing love poems, keeping busy, watching soccer, losing oneself in drink.
This man has typical worries, plumbing that goes wrong, the wrong comment at a party, a wronged lover, and he has some that are atypical, unless one is an artist and considers, daily, what is being portrayed or represented, a practice of and in pictures. He might ask himself, what is good about what I’m making? And never know. No one can know. But let’s say of this artist that he is sincere; he would like to make honest paintings. What that is, he also acknowledges, vexes art-makers. No right way, no theological answers.
Cave drawings in Lescaux described prehistorical life, their travails, activities, triumphs. Early humans named their surroundings, and marked out days and nights in pictograms. They required records of their existence, since death—or whatever they called that event—savaged them, a monster swooping down and taking their breath away. Their sincerity has never been doubted. Is insincerity, he asks himself, laughing a little, the fault-line of so-called advanced civilization?
Owls, moonlight unmoors
Wolves, frantic prey scurry
Night licks voraciously.
The artist happened to be walking near a nighttime forest, musing about cave dwellers and their drawings, when he looked up and saw a star streak across the sky. Cave people saw shooting stars too, linking him to Neanderthals in a great chain of being and nonbeing, doing and undoing. But the exuberant flash might vex another man, on the other side of the world, who, watching it leap in his evening sky, could feel overwhelmed by the expanding universe and his own shortcomings. Then the artist imagined the distraught stranger weeping, and the other’s sadness cast itself, like a ghost, across him and the heavens.
A star lives and dies, there is the wonder of it and the immensity of experience, good and bad. Is there an antonym for “wonder”? Hell. Mystery’s opposite? Boredom. By now he was in his studio, staring at a water glass. He had looked at it for more than thirty years, the very same glass. Some people thought he was crazy. But he was only beginning to see it, or he kept seeing it differently and he tried to depict that, how it changed, how his capacity changed, and he himself changed over the years. He didn’t mean to paint an autobiography, but he was, also.
The next day, he placed a skull on a black cloth. It considered him, uncannily. “Alas, poor Yorick,” the artist repeated aloud several times. The skull seemed to levitate. Other than death, outcomes and results were unpredictable, in any case he wouldn’t want to predict the end, unless he could begin again, immediately. The point, perhaps, was to find what he was looking for through its execution; he himself had not lost anything specific, or everything was lost and found again in endless repetitions, and, the more he worked, the more change he discovered in minute variations. He might be surprised by the color of an eggplant or the verve of a flower or the eerie acoustic of an empty room.
A phantasm or a wisp of conversation lay beneath the surface, a palimpsest, rising, later, onto the surface as a still life. In practice, the reality of imperfection and the hope for perfection strafed his imagination and capabilities; he was similar to, and dissimilar from, others in trying and sometimes giving up. Friction between styles and forms required conscious choices, approaches and adaptations to changing conditions in need of living concepts. Things made in time, of time, he thought.
A green vase, a blue
Vase on a dark wood table,
Images inside cups.
The artist worked in solitude which brought him a kind of happiness, but even in solitude, in a peaceful place, the soot of mixed emotions collected in corners. A recollection absorbed him, he glanced at the garden, and an image passed like a summer’s day. His father sent to the Russian front, never to return, his mother whispering to him, consolingly; then he thought he heard her voice, but it was only a breeze whipping through the bamboo. She found him curious, amusing, and perhaps as a consequence—though he could never know—he was rarely lonely.
A farmer’s cheese, green tea tickling his tongue, a long letter from a friend, a sweet kiss when he needed it, the
sun’s regular rise, at slightly different times, during which he might be aroused by an idea, these contented him. He also swayed on shaky foundations, balancing as best he could, unbalanced by what no one can control.
Drawing with pencil.
Sketch a paradise. Damned
War, never again.
Be aware, he remonstrated with himself, otherwise time passes with only a sense of its absence, the way that distraught man, on the other side of the world, might feel it. He buttoned his shirt and combed his hair. He might have a cup of tea, eat a biscuit, sit in a chair, listen to Bach, or watch TV. Half-empty or half-full? His friends joked with him. Invisible choruses sang dissonant arias about the arbitrariness of choice and the dissipations of history, the news on TV shattered composure, as it if were a pane of glass. The common libretto was comic and tragic, everyone’s opera.
Not true, not false, not one, not the other. Standing before an object, his job was to see it, as it was to him, simple and complex.
Repetition with variation: A man, whose insufficient portrait has been rendered just now, does not keep cats or sport a beard. He is of medium size, sensible weight, and could appear to be an academic or a violinist or a bookseller. He’s a painter, has a studio in a village and a house near a city, and journeys between those places, and others, coming and going, thoughtfully, deliberately.
Day by day, he would add, every day is a good day.
Madame Realism’s Conscience
“Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
—Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers
Way past adolescence, Madame Realism’s teenaged fantasies survived, thought bubbles in which she talked with Hadrian about the construction of his miraculous wall or Mary Queen of Scots right before the Catholic queen was beheaded. Madame Realism occasionally fronted a band or conversed with a president, for instance, Bill Clinton, who appeared to deny no one an audience. Could she have influenced him to change his course of action or point of view? Even in fantasy, that rarely happened. She persevered, though. At a state dinner thought bubble, Madame Realism whispered to Laura Bush, “Tell him not to be stubborn. Pride goeth before a fall.” Laura looked into the distance and nodded absentmindedly.
Over the years, Madame Realism had heard many presidential rumors, some of which were confirmed by historians: Eisenhower had a mistress; Mamie was a drunk; Lincoln suffered from melancholia; Mary Lincoln attended séances; Roosevelt’s mistress, not Eleanor, was by his side when he died; Eleanor was a lesbian; Kennedy, a satyr; Jimmy Carter, arrogant; Nancy Reagan made sure that Ronnie, after being shot, took daily naps. When Betty Ford went public with her addictions and breast cancer, she became a hero, but Gerald Ford will be remembered primarily for what he didn’t do or say. He didn’t put Nixon on trial; and, he denied even a whiff of pressure on him to pardon the disgraced president. Ford’s secrets have died with him, but maybe Betty knows.
The Pope, President Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and an Eagle Scout were on a plane, and it was losing altitude, about to crash. But there were only three parachutes. President Clinton said, “I’m the most powerful leader in the Free World. I have to live,” and he took a parachute and jumped out. Henry Kissinger said, “I’m the smartest man in the world. I have to live,” and he jumped out. The Pope said, “Dear boy, please take the last parachute, I’m an old man.” The Eagle Scout said, “Don’t worry, there are two left. The smartest man in the world jumped out with my backpack.”
Whatever power was, it steamrolled behind the scenes and kept to its own rarefied company, since overexposure vitiated its effects. So, when a president came to town, on a precious visit, people wanted to hear and see him, but they also wanted to be near him. They stretched out their arms and thrust their bodies forward, elbowing their way through the crush for a nod or smile; they waved books in front of him for his autograph, dangled their babies for a kiss, and longed for a pat on the back or a handshake. Madame Realism had listened to people say they’d remember this moment for the rest of their days, the commander in chief, so charismatic and handsome. And, as fast as he had arrived, the president vanished, whisked away by the Secret Service, who surrounded him, until at the door of Air Force One, he turned, smiled, and waved to them one last time.
Without access to power’s hidden manifestations, visibility is tantamount to reality, a possible explanation for the authority of images. Everyone comprised a kind of display case or cabinet of curiosities and became an independent, unbidden picture. Madame Realism dreaded this particular involuntarism; but interiority and subjectivity were invisible, they were not statements. Your carriage, clothes, weight, height, hairstyle, and expression told their story, and what you appeared to be was as much someone else’s creation as yours.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
If the President of the United States—POTUS, to any West Wing devotee—dropped his guard, power itself shed a layer of skin. Ever cognizant of that, one of the great politicians of the twentieth century, Lyndon Baines Johnson, called out to visitors while he was on the toilet. Suddenly, Madame Realism took shape nearby, and seeing a visitor’s embarrassment, she shouted to the president, “Hey, what’s up with that?” LBJ laughed mischievously.
It gave her an idea: maybe he had consciously made himself the butt of the joke, before others could. A Beltway joke writer had once said that self-deprecating humor was essential for presidents, though Johnson’s comic spin was extreme and made him into a bathroom joke. Presidential slips of the tongue, accidents and mishaps supposedly humanized the anointed, but the unwitting clowns still wielded power. Laughter was aimed at the mighty to level the playing field, but who chose the field? To her, the jokes also zeroed in on powerlessness; and Madame Realism trusted in their uneven and topsy-turvy honesty. To defame, derogate, offend, satirize, parody, or exaggerate was not to lie, because in humor’s province, other truths govern.
“Any American who is prepared to run for president should
automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”
—Gore Vidal
She herself followed, whenever possible, G.K. Chesterton’s adage: “For views I look out of the window, my opinions I keep to myself.” But presidents were nothing if not opinions, and, at any moment, they had to give one. Maybe since they were kids, they had wished and vied for importance, to pronounce and pontificate, and they had to be right or they’d die. The public hoped for a strong, honest leader, but more and more it grew skeptical of buzz and hype, of obfuscation passing as answer, of politicians’ lies. Yet who one called a liar conformed to party of choice.
Some people are talking, and one of them says, “All Republicans are assholes.”
Another says, “Hey, I resent that!”
First person says, “Why, are you a Republican?”
Second person answers, “No, I’m an asshole!”
Some jokes were all-purpose, for any climate. Madame Realism first heard the asshole joke about lawyers, but most proper nouns would fit, from Democrats to plumbers, teachers to artists. Jokes could be indiscriminate about their subjects, since the only necessity was a good punchline that confronted expectation with surprise, puncturing belief, supposition, or image.
“Mr. Bush’s popularity has taken some serious hits in recent months, but the new survey marks the first time that over fifty percent of respondents indicated that they wished the president was a figment of their imagination.” —Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report
Her fantasies often skewered Madame Realism, threw her for a loop, but at times they fashioned her as the host of a late-night talk show, when, like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, she held the best hand. Madame Realism imagined questioning presidential also-rans, who had sacrificed themselves on the altar of glory and ambition—Al Gore, John Kerry, the ghost of Adlai Stevenson. Suddenly Adlai stated, out of nowhere, “JFK never forgave me, you know, for not supporting him at the Democratic convention.” Then a familiar, haunted look darkened
his brown eyes, and pathos quickly soured their banter. Pathos didn’t fly on late-night TV.
Anyone but an action hero understood that even a rational decision or intelligent tactic might awaken unforeseen forces equipped with their own anarchic armies, and some presidents agonized under mighty power’s heft. In portraits of him, Abraham Lincoln morphed from eager Young Abe, saucy, wry candidate for Congress from Illinois, to a father overwhelmed with sadness at his young son’s death, to a gravely depressed man, the president who took the nation to its only civil war. Madame Realism treasured soulful Abraham Lincoln, because he appeared available to her contemporary comprehension, a candidate ripe for psychoanalysis. She pictured speaking kindly to him, late at night, after Mary had gone to sleep, the White House dead and dark, when words streamed from him, and, as he talked about his early days, his ravaged face lit up, remembering life’s promise.
What do you call Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell in the front seat of a car?
Two airbags.
In the nineteenth century, even Thomas Carlyle believed “all that a man does is physiognomical of him.” A face revealed a person’s character and disposition, and, if skilled in reading it, like physiognomists who were its natural science proponents, why human beings acted the way they did could be discerned. Also, their future behavior might be predicted. Criminals and the insane, especially, were analyzed, because the aberrant worried the normal, and, consequently, deranged minds had to be isolated from so-called sane ones. The sane felt crazy around the insane.
Though face-reading as a science had gone the way of believing the world was flat—poor Galileo!—facial expressions dominated human beings’ reactions; each instinctively examined the other for evidence of treachery, doubt, love, fear, and anger. Defeat and success etched an ever-changing portrait of the aging face that, unlike Dorian Gray’s, mutated in plain sight. Animals relied on their senses for survival, but beauty made all fools, democratically. And though it is constantly asserted that character is revealed by facial structure and skin, plastic surgery’s triumphal march through society must designate new standards. For instance, Madame Realism asked herself, how do you immediately judge, on what basis, a person’s character after five facelifts?
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