9.21.11

Loss
In my junior year of high school, I was enrolled in an art class at the south end of campus. I sat across from two girls, one of which I was attracted to, one of which I was not; but I had to make jokes for both so as not to lose face. The result was that the girl I was not attracted to became attracted to me. The other girl I couldn't say. She (the girl I was not attracted to) wanted us to take a picture together near the end of the semester - I was sitting down at the art table and she was bent down from behind me, her arms wrapped around my neck and her head to the left of mine (to the right in the picture). She gave me a copy of the picture which I still have somewhere. The other girl must have taken the picture, but I don't remember; I don't even remember what she (the girl I was attracted to) looked like. I remember the picture though, vividly - the lighting of the room such that it turned out terribly blurred. I remember the feeling of her arms around my neck, her face close to mine; why do I remember her?

For a few days in art class we were assigned to attempt a self-portrait. It was to be my next masterpiece as all high school art projects are when you are sitting across from a girl you are attracted to. We began simply enough: the basic shape of the head, the symmetry of the face, adding the ears at the same level as the eyes (which I had no idea was the case even though I had been looking at faces for upwards of sixteen years, including the face of the girl I was attracted to. The girl I was not attracted to had smooth, brown skin and long, dark, strong Latin hair; she was just a tad shorter than I was).

Next we added the nose, mouth, and hairline. I took great care to add my characteristic Widow's Peak and scraggly sideburns. A Widow's Peak is said to be an omen of early widowhood.

"And ye Jentyl wymen whome this lewde vice doth blynde Lased on the backe: your peakes set a loft" (Barclay 1509).

After the basic hairline, we went back to the eyes. Here great care was taken, mirrors getting closer and closer to faces across the room, silence in the contemplative poetry of self and self. The brushing and nervous scratching of pencils, the condemning judgement of the No. 2 eraser.

After many minutes of work, I put pencil and mirror down to view the portrait in its entirety. I looked at the proportions and hairline (which, again, pleased me immensely) and then meandered down the face to the eyes of my creation. I was suddenly transfixed. Deep within those sullen, two-dimensional orbs I saw something strange and terrible; something that looked back at me in the sudden realization of life. It was the mirror that looked back, it was me; beyond the windows of lead and tree I had crossed the bloody, arcane river braved by Frankenstein. I was startled and entranced, and then it was gone; the monster fled before me and I was left alone, never to see his living visage again upon the page.

"I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" (Shelley 1831).

The girl I was not attracted to had produced a pitifully disproportionate portrait - her head was much too sphere-like and much too small. I said I liked it though; her's is the only other portrait I remember.