In a message dated 16/06/2004 01:37:43 GMT Standard Time, janstr@xxxxxxx
writes:
Hi Allen, you wrote:
>Might it be that the ontically political is lived/run by the nobody
>who waits within us all to make his mark?
What/who do you mean with: "the nobody who waits within us all" ?
yours,
Jan
Jud:
Maybe Allen means when he gets old and people treat him like a an ontic and
ontological nobody — as if he wasn't there? Perhaps the old Allen of
'Christmas Yet to Come' is biding his time Marley-like within the middle-aged Nunc
Allen, waiting to cast his Sein-net of wrinkles upon the present Allen's
frame like some triumphant malevolent chronological retiarius?
The old women inside young women are netted early on, and then become
nobodies — they wander about in their wrinkly fatness or thinness on the pavements
of our cities, and not a soul notices them. They become transparent
unpersons.
This is not normally so with old men, [I speak with authority.] Old men
never become unpersons — they are always somehow considered potentially
interesting, and so are buttonholed and engaged, because men [it is supposed] lead
more interesting lives, and have a tale to tell, from which something may or may
not be learned — to save us the trouble or latent boredom of experiencing it
ourselves?
Now I will tell you of a strange procedure that I sometimes practice. It
probably flows from my one-time constant working on women's faces, [as a Beauty
Therapist].
I have created a neologism to describe the activity - I call it
'physiognomological — morphing!' [watch your false teeth when you try to say that] The
word is from the Greek language as you know - 'morph' means 'shape' in
English. Yes, yes, I KNOW that Coclès, like others before and after him, tried to
create a science out of something each of us does from time to time: judge a
person by his or her facial characteristics. Physiognomists like Coclès are
wont to say things such as "people with snub noses [Socrates?] are vain,
untruthful, unstable, unfaithful and seducers." The snub-nosed of the world tend
to snub their noses at such pseudoscientific drivel. I am NOT INTERESTED in
the character of what the person looked like in the past — but what he or she
looked like physically.
What happens is this. It could happen anywhere. In a restaurant — in a shop
— on a bus or train. I may be gazing at a photograph of somebody.
I might perchance be sitting in my car waiting for the traffic lights to
change. A red car pulls up in the lane next to mine. My window is wound down.
I look casually to my right at the passenger in the front seat of the red
coloured car next to mine. It is an old man, but it could just as easily be a
woman]. In my mind's eye, I begin to restructure the face to make it appear
youthful again.
With my eyes, I use the fingers of my mind to smooth the jowls upward in
order to reveal the chin-line once more. I eliminate the puffiness beneath
the eyes and eradicate the wrinkles that radiate from the mouth and across the
forehead. If the subject is a man, I repopulate his head with strong young
hairs, and pull forward the hairline to its former youthful position. In my
fantasy, the eyes of the occupant of the red car become sparkling and youthful
once more, and the lips are full and plump displaying white, strong teeth
between.
In all this illusory restructuring, I am careful to remain faithful to the
basic bone structure and physiognomy.
Although in a daydream, like a sculptor remodelling a head, I do not alter
the basic matrix. So vivid is my imagination that I am able to spool back the
ravages of the years in fast-reverse on the countenance of my subject.
There, magically, within seconds, a young Allen sits in place of the old in the
car alongside mine. Then suddenly the traffic lights turn to green. My foot
hits the accelerator. Leaving behind the other vehicle with the passenger,
my car surges forward. My reverie is over.
Just visible in my rear view mirror I see peering over the top of the
dashboard of the car behind, an old Allen gazing myopically at the traffic. A
nodding head restored to it's correct age once more, topped with snowy-white hair
set on hunched, slight shoulders.
MAKE HASTE! THE BIRD OF YOUTH HAS BUT A LITTLE WAY TO FLUTTER - AND IT IS
ALREADY ON THE WING!
Cheers,
Jud
Nullius in Verba
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
(http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm)
JUD EVANS - XVANS XPERIENTIALISM
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