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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

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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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