I’m one of those people who for years felt uncomfortable smiling, due to disliking the contours of my face. My open smile looks like the Joker with indigestion. I have an added problem: two large, crooked front incisors that have an inverse ‘v’ gap between them. Ugly front teeth need to stay hidden. So why didn’t I have the teeth straightened as a teenager?
In my hometown, Epsom, my N.H.S. dentist was a woman born of a Victorian gothic novel. She took delight in extracting teeth with the largest needles and smallest amount of anaesthetic. So traumatic was some of my experiences of her wrenching out lingering milk teeth, that I dreaded returning to her. I made one last trembling trip around the age of thirteen. The devil dentist told me, with a fiery glint in her eye, that numerous teeth would have to be yanked out and a face-hugging metal brace would have to be applied - while I slept and... at school! I never returned to her dental practise and I didn’t go to any other dentist until my twenties. By then, I just accepted that I was an adult who rarely smiled. Jump forward fifteen or so years and I am in a bar in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong, with my best friend David. I’m chatting to the wife of one of his friends. She asks my opinion about toddlers and learning Chinese, two things I know little about. Perhaps it was the late-night, the sub-tropical heat or the alcohol, but I must have been relaxed...and smiling. This triggered her to tell me that she liked my teeth. My teeth? Yes, the big gaping gap in my teeth means luck in this part of the world. You have lucky teeth! With this revelation ringing in my soul, Dave insisted I send him frequent pictures of me smiling. With his training and my wife’s loving encouragement, the corners slowly lifted. I learned to smile. My open smile still looks like the Joker with acid reflux, but I am not ashamed of my alphabetical teeth anymore. They spell part of who I am, my luck, my story.
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In my 40’s, learning to like olives and opera as entropy outruns denial: grey hair wildfires, odd aches and slower healing scars; the sad acceleration of days and months noticed with well chosen wine.
And I finally understand still life art. For years I wondered what the fuss was: tumbling bouquets of flowers in vases, bulbous fruit and plump vegetables on plates, dead fish and game flopped over furniture, draping cloth, sunlight glasses and porcelain, the occasional skull thrown in for macabre measure. I never questioned the artist’s prerogative: the mastering of form, perspective and colour, the bringing to life something that is still, movement out of light and shape out of solidness. The poetry of creating something out of nothing, art out of emptiness. But why do people care when they can admire epic landscapes, romantic impressions, life-like portraits, or get mad about modern art? Then, one day - Still Life With Flowers by Jan Davidsz. de Heem - a beautiful, blooming defence against time, a victory against the hyperactive decay of life. I stare at it, entranced by the scent. Monet’s The Peach Glass hinted in orange glassiness that some deeper sense compelled the artist to freeze in a frame the mundane, the momentary, preventing it’s fading, its betrayal. Beloved Vincent’s with his sunflowers holding onto the light, yellowing our minds as his darkens. I saw that the stillness is the moment before loss, before the flowers drop and die, the fruit rots, the light of the day is lost and the shining surface of that house-hold object goes back to being forgotten. The dead animals on platters and the strangely included skulls? The artist’s ironic reminders, cues for humility. So we stare at the paintings and wish Dorian Grey could whisper into the art and age it, the brushstrokes bending to time, the frame folding into its own decay while we remain forever youthful observers. The final lesson is in intonation. The skill is not in stillness, not in what is held, but in movement, what is given. I need to say the phrase differently: there’s still life. Looking at the art, the living, breathing art. Despite the entropy, there’s still life. Thanks, Lizzie Mueller, for the still life postcards.. |
AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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