Dear Zoe,
In the digital age, nothing gets lost, but, very rarely,
some things also get found.
Your ‘loud chewer Funtrest share' on FB made it impossible
for me not to go looking for this long fragment of a letter I wrote about
self-portraits that I sent to a young artist friend of mine almost a couple of
years ago now. You might pick up the tale here if you wish:
September 2015 … I
made a small bit of video for my wife, Dawn, while I was away, hiking with a
couple of friends near Eldora, Colorado. She and I have been married for almost
thirty years. Now, I love bran flakes and cold milk. Usually I eat two bowls
every day. Dawn has told me - every way there is to tell a man - how much the
sound of me chewing and slurping my bran flakes drives her up a wall. You could
ask her, if you had the time.
I set the small digital camera up on the wide railing along
the walkway, part way up on the side of the cabin – it was a house, really –
where my friends and I were staying. The shot would be framed by the dark brown
siding behind me and a grove of light green aspen back behind, near the deck.
I pressed record. I had made a brief test to ensure that I
would be just far enough from the camera so that Dawn would mostly see my head
and shoulders. I was wearing a soft, dark green, long-sleeved cotton shirt
against the early morning chill. I stepped a few steps to where I had left a
white ceramic bowl of bran flakes and milk on the railing. I picked it up and
carried it toward the camera, leaning close. The sun was still low, shining bright
into my face. I cradled the bowl in my right hand close to the lens. The other
held the spoon.
I took a full spoonful of bran flakes, milk dribbling back
into the bowl. A mouthful of chewing - slowly, thoughtfully - looking straight
into the lens. The sun made me squint. Creases. Bags under those nearly closed
eyes. My full cheeks and large nose, sunburned from the alpine hiking. White
mustache, almost hiding my upper lip.
She would see my chewing. The camera might pick up the
sounds. It was a face that would scare children, but it almost never did. I
could never figure that out. A large, red-faced old man. Old enough to know
better. I sometimes practiced stretching and twisting my features and bugging
out my eyes in the bathroom mirror. How could the neighbor girls, Alia and
Maya, Ginny and Sidra not see me as I appear? As I am?
But this video would be for Dawn. She would somehow see me
smiling in just the imperceptibly upturned corner of my mouth. Maybe she would
see me laughing behind my eyes.
I ate my bran flakes and cold milk, looking at a woman I had
loved for thirty years – if only in my imagination on this morning from five
hundred miles away. I stepped to the camera and pressed the button to stop the
recording.
Let’s call it art with a small ‘a.’ It was more and less
than that. I cut off the front and back of the video footage on my computer and
attached the self-portrait to an email. The subject line said, “Good morning,
Dawn.”
Her reply, the next morning: “Hilarious.” She said that she
thought I had an endearing face. How do
some people see that in me? I had
looked carefully at the video. One big red face. Piggy eyes.
I had recently seen a sketch – a self-portrait of a young
woman. I could see life in the few marks she made around the eyes. She had
posted a two-dimensional image on a digital screen. And still there was life. I said something
about it to her and she said that after looking into a mirror for a long time,
some feeling must have shown through.
It’s as good an answer as any. Tomorrow, I’ll be home. I’ll
have a bowl or two of bran flakes and cold milk. Oh, Dawn will say something.
She’ll tell me she missed me. She’ll touch my face. She must see something
behind my eyes. I’ll laugh as I take another bite of cereal. And I will slurp
the way she has heard me slurp a thousand times before.
But love is not about counting. It’s about looking somewhere
and seeing something, somehow. I’ve seen it in other people’s eyes. Or maybe
it’s my imagination. I think that there is an art to seeing well.
Okay …. That’s my word sketch. Poet Billy Collins has said
that to make the reader feel, the poet needs to be calculating. So, given our
conversation, so far, let’s say that I was aiming for your heart. Not to tear
it out, but that you should feel something as you read those few words – feel
something about more than just my face. If I completely failed to touch you, I
will be disappointed. But it’s just a little bit of art. And maybe it’s also
about you. I had felt something as I worked on this self-portrait. I did what I
could do. I am not responsible for what you feel. My answer to all of this,
such as it is, is that Art happens somewhere – somewhere in between the artist
and the person who appreciates a ‘work.’ Without some feeling on both ends,
there is nothing but words and lines.
You and I are not clueless. We learn from what reaches our
own heart and we work with our medium over time toward some thing that will
reach others. We express ourselves – we add something we cannot grasp - and we
hope to reach someone else. It’s a charade. Three letters, starts with ‘A.’ Or
is it four, starts with ‘L?’
**
… and now, this time I’m adding an additional few words for
you, Zoe. The video of me eating bran flakes for Dawn still exists as well.
Would you like to see if my words were true – or , at least good enough?
You are right that Dawn and I have figured some things out.
We have lived with each other – sometimes for Dawn it’s just with the sound of
me chewing my bran flakes and cold milk. But it’s been harder than that. But it
is our love – only ours. Love - in
the living over time with each other. Everyone else has to make their own love
between themselves and some other – and many others, as well. Each love is its own, I do believe. And Love is more than we can ever fully
know.
So ask me for the link to the video, if you want to. It’s
probably only funny if you know the characters in the story. And even then,
well, it’s only a little funny.
And now, with much thanks to Dawn, I get to write some of my
own story. It’s what I do with some of my time. And live a healthy life. And
laugh.
yours truly, bert
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