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University of Northern Iowa
Painting My AgeAuthor(s): ED TAYLORSource: The North American Review, Vol. 295, No. 4 (FALL 2010), pp. 3-5Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23055023 .
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N A R
Painting My Age ED TAYLOR
But when my glass shows me myself indeed
—William Shakespeare
For my grizzled, half-deaf dog and me
one recent morning, our habitual walk
became, compared to the usual ten
minutes of mundanity, a gauntlet of
omens. One: another dog, the size of a
woman's shoe, nosing open a front door
and shooting under a cruising school
bus as his owner yelled no, leaving a
dark patch on the street. Two: on the
sidewalk three snails in parallel forma
tion, with one shell smashed and frag ments clinging to a wet, wrecked body
but still moving, still drawing a pearly wake. Three: a kit rabbit dead on the
backyard flagstone path, and a moist
lingering shadow on the slate after.
This was clearly different. However, if
the world was speaking (the Latin roots
of "omen" link to both mouth and ear),
a perhaps arrogant assumption, what
was it saying? What was I supposed to
notice? Mortality, or the persistent graf
fiti of life, the marks it leaves?
My feet on concrete, I note, leave
nothing: however, I remember.
Nevertheless, I'm kidding myself, because memory seems an isolated peak,
decorated with shreds of handwoven
rope that once were bridges, now flap
ping like prayer flags. Birds whirl around
it in wind. Around the peak spreads an
infinitude of other peaks, each shim
mering with birds. I wonder whether
this perception is a map, or melodrama,
as I blink at the screen on which these
marks appear, behind my reflected face.
During a Stanley Cup playoff game,
with time running out and the score
tied, I watch two kids in $500 first-row
seats turn away from a puck scrum
directly in front of them, so they can be
on TV, on the Jumbotron, smiling and
jumping. They'd appeared bored in
the second they were onscreen before
realizing it, slumped and lost in home
jerseys big as collapsed tents. As the
camera cuts away they slide back into
indifference. The Google Lunar-X Prize offers $20
million to the first makers of a private space vehicle capable of 1) landing on the moon and sending a daughter craft
a minimum 1/2 kilometer from the
landing site to film in hi-def the mother
vehicle and a 360-degree view of the
landing area; and 2) then beaming those
images along with a predetermined
cache of email messages and YouTube
clips back to earth, for posting on
YouTube.
Excite the membrane, when the
sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety In a wilderness of mirrors
—T. S. Eliot
For the first time in human history
more people live in urban than rural
areas, according to the United Nations.
The majority of people no longer (and haven't for a long time) mark their
passage in crops, or livestock, or land
scape, or in the making of things to eat
or wear or use or worship or trade or
sell. And, at home and out in the world,
signs of life derive more and more
commonly from electronic screens.
We now look, to answer questions—
beginning with the fundamental one
addressed by mirrors, whether water or
Assyrian polished metal or Sony flat
screen: who am I? And the inevitable
follow up: what am I doing here?
The majority of the population has
traditionally sought security from the
more troubling answers to these ques
tions inside the bulwark of religion. However, according to Art Spiegelman,
author of Maus and In the Shadow of No
Towers, "when the monumental—like
two 110-story towers that were meant to
last as long as the Pyramids—becomes
ephemeral, the ephemeral, one's daily
life, the passing moment, takes on a
more monumental quality."
Twitter billboards across its site "What Are You Doing?," a metaphysical ques tion masquerading as a slogan. A user
responds by "tweeting," like a prosaic
version of birdsong broadcasting short
bursts of dailiness at the world.
However, users find in the collective
notes a kind of radar, one that identifies
contours of lives based on their reflected
intersections with other lives. Is this at
last a response to Willy Loman's wife: is
attention finally being paid? Twitter
grew 752 percent in 2008. A probability cloud of users forms a numinous entity,
invisible but ever-present, summoned by
attention, which is a kind of prayer. And
while only 28 percent of Americans now
attend church weekly, according to a Pew
Foundation study, 71 percent have a
belief in God that is "absolutely certain."
And you're a
Prima ballerina On a spring afternoon
Change on into
The wolfman Howling at the moon
—New York Dolls
Research has shown that subjects
tested in a room with a mirror work
harder, are more helpful, and are less
inclined to cheat. However, studies also
indicate that the presence of a mirror
increases the willingness of subjects to
stereotype others, and decreases objective
judgment and clarity in the processing of
information gleaned from mirrors.
Another response, sparked by
contemporary life, the omnipresence of
electronic "mirrors" and the new gravity
of ephemerality, is a kind of personality disorder. This dysfunction combines
narcissism with disconnection.
Australian psychologists reported, in the
middle of a catastrophic drought,
Fall 2010 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 3
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increased levels of "sadness" among resi
dents, as the familiar land around them
became deformed by dessication. One
side effect of climate change may be
increased depression, as people will
increasingly be cut off and dislocated from the landscapes and neighborhoods they know best, those of memory—of
the past, whether childhood or the
previous season—as these are irretriev
ably altered or destroyed.
This braiding of narcissism and disconnection with the anonymity exac
erbated by the latter can create a malig nant insecurity sparking troubling and sometimes destructive behaviors at
every level up to and including the
national. It is omnipotence and impo
tence, altruism and sadism: carrot
mobbing and Megan Meier's MySpace hoax-related suicide, the "Cool
Britannia" that is a model for cultural
diversity and the England that contains more public surveillance cameras than
any country in the world. It is
voyeurism, and blindness.
In a study titled "Mirror, Mirror on
the Wall: Enhancement in Self
Identification," subjects identified
images of themselves among a sample of
faces much faster when their likenesses
were made more attractive. However,
when identifying strangers, subjects
spotted unenhanced faces quickest.
The Portuguese modernist writer
Fernando Pessoa wrote under seventy two different names, which he called
"heteronyms." These heteronyms were
not pseudonyms, but characters he
inhabited, or that inhabited him: he called them "personalities."
"We think, therefore we are," Pessoa
wrote in his Book of Disquiet. The
heteronyms, according to Octavio Paz,
"are literary invention and a psycholog ical necessity but something more. In a certain way they are what Pessoa might have been or would have liked to be; in another, more profound sense, what he
did not want to be: a personality."
Immortality has no room
for a self or an I
I read the above chalked on a pedes trian bridge over a highway, on either
end of which was a concrete ramp
spiraling like a snail shell. The writing was at my feet and there was a lot more
of it, but smeared and blurred by shoes
and strollers and bike tires, except for I
long for union with a thing I cannot
Not far from my house someone wrote don't
panic in the wet concrete of a sidewalk.
name or offer. Then there was rain, and
the concrete was blank the following
morning. Following the asphalt paths connected by this bridge brings you to other writing, such as ATAK ATAK
ATAK, from a New York graffiti writer,
and Money for Metal, a billboard for a
scrap dealer.
The Portuguese say Fernando Pessoa
embodies something inchoate and
Portuguese, which they link to the word
saudade. The word can be translated as
"homesickness," but offers shadings of
something more, something like a para dise lost.
In spring 2003 in Baghdad's Fardus
Square, Iraqi civilians and American
military forces toppled a statue of
Saddam Hussein. On the same site Iraqi artists later raised a new sculpture, which
they told reporters was a tribute to
liberty and freedom. It is a family group: mother, father and child. The oldest
known word with a meaning of liberty comes from Iraq, from the Sumerian
verb ama-gi, which literally meant "going home to mother," according to historian
David Hackett Fischer.
According to Fischer, the English word "freedom," comes from the same
Indo-European root as "friend,"
meaning "dear" or "beloved [...] a connection to other free people by bonds of kinship or affection." Liberty (libertas in Latin) and freedom both meant life unlike a slave. "But liberty meant privileges of independence; freedom referred to rights of
belonging."
Spheres roll, cubes stay put: now there
One two three four five Are two philosophies:
Here we go round the mouth wet of hounds:
What I choose
Is youse
Baby —A. R. Ammons
My eleven-year-old daughter's teacher
assigned a report about family history
focused on an object or a tradition,
something connecting the family over time and through shared memory. "Do
we have any of those?" she asked, with
an eyebrow raised?
We have few ties in our extended
family beyond genes. Our friable history crumbles when examined, being a dry mix of the Great Depression, alienation
and separation, rural poverty and alco
holism. The only ballast I have slowing my
extended family's drift through the world is a large 19th-century illustrated
King James Bible, its intaglioed cover almost half-an-inch thick. The book was a gift, presented according to the hand
writing on a florid dedicatory page by Stephen Blanton to his wife Ella on
January 18, 1894. My mother's father
was a Blanton.
Although created to be an inter
active medium, with pages for
inscribing—names and events and
notes, and sleeves for inserting silhouettes or photographs—the book is not a mirror of family history. Someone wrote a handful of
19th century birth and death dates,
and added some early 20th century
information, but then the writing
stops. A couple of faded photographs and even a tintype slip from pages, but without names.
I suggested this bible for my daughter's class project. I'd glanced at it
before but only at the ceremonial
sections, disappointed at the terse and
haphazard record. Still no surprises with
more thorough scrutiny, until we came
to the final blank pages, the pink-tan paper mottled as old skin. And there was writing I had missed, in pencil and blue ink. The paper's discoloring showed through the ink, like sand under seawater. On the lower right of the
inside back cover, the last stop before
exiting, in small, careful, printed pencil was a stoic single sentence. "I have 25
days before going to the Pacific": under
lined, but faintly, as if the writer wanted
emphasis but was leery of expressing emotion that demonstratively. In a
4 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW FaM 2oio
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hastier, larger, ink slant, is 7/20/45, followed by a cursive signature:
Albert Perry Black. This was my maternal great cousin on a small farm
in Bamberg, South Carolina. He says
now, at 90, "Everybody was in the same
boat. I just wanted to add my name to
things." The American plan for the invasion of
Japan following Germany's surrender in
May of 1945 projected it would take until November of 1946 to bring the
Japanese to the idea of surrender, and
would cost 1 million American casual
ties. Marines assigned to the first five
planned assault waves were told that
most of them would be killed. The Allies
had, by July 10, 1945, begun the official
pre-landing naval and aerial bombard
ment of the Japanese coast. The inva
sion was code-named "Operation
Olympic." And then on August 6 and August 9
came Little Boy and Fat Man, secrets
descending on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to almost stop history; to shatter
mirrors with more force than the four
arrows shot from the Middle Ages on
Sept. 11,2001. It was in this latter year that the
Pentagon unveiled a new recruiting
campaign organized around the slogan
"An Army of One."
Kazuma Hayashi, 41, a Buddhist priest without a temple of his own, said he
founded a company, Obohsan.com
(obohsan means priest), three years ago
in a Tokyo suburb. The company
dispatches freelance Buddhist priests to
funerals and other services, cutting out
funeral homes and other middlemen.
Prices, which are at least a third lower
than the average, are listed clearly on
the company's Web site. A 10 percent
discount is available for members."We
even give out receipts," Mr. Hayashi
said. —New York Times
Chinese artist Cao Guo-Qiang, who
worked on the opening and closing
ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, makes art using gunpowder and pigments and controlled explo
sions. (A set of his gunpowder drawings sold for $9.5 million in November 2007
in Shanghai.) Not far from my house
someone wrote don't panic in the wet
concrete of an old sidewalk.
In late spring 2006, a small band of
people, including children and pet monkeys, walked onto a highway from
rain forest in Colombia near the
Ecuadoran border. According to news
reports these turned out to be the
remaining members of a tribe of
hunter-gatherers, the Nukak.
Before that, for perhaps a millen
nium, the Nukak roamed a roadless
patch of Amazon half the size of New
Jersey, until they ran into other forest
people that the Nukak called "green
Nukak." These strangers said, according
to the Nukak, this is not a safe place for
you any more: leave. Government offi
cials translated this as a moment of
charity from camouflage-wearing coca
mafiosi or FARC guerrillas. The Nukak had only single names,
didn't plant, and didn't fight. One knew
un poco Espanol, and spoke for the rest
when they arrived. Asked if they worried what would happen to them,
the one who understood said, "The
'future': what's that?"
What did they like in the new world?
For a breast-feeding mother it was nice
to be still: she said when you walk in the
jungle your feet hurt a lot. They arrived
not knowing money, property,
Colombia. Planes, they asked; do they walk on invisible roads?
Now they lie in hammocks, wait for
food, wear pants, walk to town to watch
other people. What would the Nukak
have replied if asked in the forest, who
are you? What are you doing?
Another sidewalk near my house
now is newly poured and blocked off,
but within two hours someone's marked
it: 2010 IvddAH. And there are foot
prints.
Walking the dog today, distracted and
not watching her, I felt a tug on the leash
and turned to see a single jaw snap and
her dragging a fledgling by the head, a
house wren. I barked her name and she
dropped her catch on the sidewalk. It
landed supine, perfectly balanced on the
beak tip, wings spread, eyes half closed.
From the nib of beak tip poured a glossy,
steady writing, a red epic of attachment
and loss and the eternal answer flickering
behind all mirrors, from Shakespeare to
Facebook. I moved the wren to grass.
The blood, when I went back in the
afternoon, was black. And the day after,
gone.
NORTH OMERICAN REVIEW
mum
FESTIVAL
2 December 2010
Thursday • 6-9 pm
James and Meryl Norton
Hearst Center for the Arts
Cedar Falls, Iowa
Speakers
Grant Tracey Vince Gotera
Kim Groninga Anne M. Drolet
J. D. Schraffenberger
Craft Talks
"The Art of Narrative Telling"
"Getting Published"
"Writing Creative Nonfiction"
"Writing the 15-Minute Poem"
"James Hearst and the NAR"
"Greatest Hits"
. . . and more!
$10 tickets may be purchased from our online store at
http://www.northamerican review.org/writing-festival
Really I began the day not with a man's wish: May this day he
different, hut with the birds' wish: May this day be the same day, the day of my life
—Randall Jarrell
Biking today beside the city's river I
saw ahead an odd shape sticking up next
to the path from among the piled boul
ders and concrete waste forming the bank
along one stretch. It turned out to be a
thin beige wooden door, about the size
of a sailboat cabin hatch, propped there
by someone. Set into it was a mirror;
reflecting, as I passed, the sky.
Fa|) 2010 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 5
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