Hold it, hold it...
Harry Clerval is just another donkay, though we might say he has above average cut on his teeth. But do you have any idea what the term above average means within an academie that stretches back to the dawn of creation? Nevertheless, there are of course thousands of acadamie members who think that the end-all of dinner discussions is how donKay has changed with time. At 1430 we often prefer the topic “oh yo, check that shit out.” Anyway here’s Harry, eighteen-hundred-whateva.
I woke this morning and went into the sitting room to take a few rays of the sun. There I saw that my wife at some moment unbeknownst to me had changed the portrait displayed in the small frame we brought back from the Photograph-artist. We had sat for several and left his studio with three, all of which are kept within the same glass and pewter, though only one rests on top, face to the world. Our initial choice for this representative was the most neutral of the photos.
Then later, under the admitted influence of brandy, I had snuck into the sitting room and changed it for one where the incline of our heads somehow suggests an amorous air so thickly that I know Minnie was half ashamed to display even to our sitting room public. That image held sway until yesterday. Today the image that has replaced it, in my mind, is even less fit for the eyes of others. You see, our Photo-artist, being an artist as such, with his long bony hands and cigarette as a constant eleventh digit, with the skull-like face whose eyes fix on an object with a strange mix of unchecked interest and deathly apathy, had induced us to give a little shout in the moment of his taking a picture. The shout was to be a cry of joy at our recent matrimony, but of course when sitting for a photograph one is obliged to hold the same position for a long moment, so that spontaneity which is the handmaiden of joy must necessarily perish. In that elongated moment I felt as one must having just stepped off a precipice, and supressed the most acute desire to look down only by treating my face as a collection of flexed muscles.
The resultant Photograph brought out a laugh in Minnie and myself when we first saw its exposure, and in what I must call a fit of bravery I insisted that we purchase it along with the other two. Because, though joy may have been its impulse, looking at the thing now as I write, the most generous interpretation I might give it, (and this was perhaps what I felt in the initial moment when its truth struck me) was that we are both secretly expressing that inner awe at having (to use an americanism) 'tied the knot' at such a stage in our lives, with I still a petty clerk indebted to my firm and she a hand barely fit for sewing. It seems to me then appropriate that this photo rest beneath the others, just as this emotion rests beneath the surface of our happy marriage, acknowledged yet rightfully suppressed.
I cannot then help but wonder why my wife has placed it there. And if I might go further into the realm of the psychologist, and hazard an interpretation of the image, I would say that the look on the face of my wife has retained a greater degree of life, of flexibility, of humour. My face, perhaps owing to the rougher construction of the male physiognomy, looks positively like a mask, its heavy lines obscuring anything that might be called a gesture, robbing the eyes of that glimmer that usually signifies a soul. Indeed I have already made this commentary to my wife, I think perhaps the day after we returned from the studio. She flatly denied what I said about my face, and said I was handsome, and kissed me, and moved things along so speedily I found I could not insist on the argument. But then again I showed it to Landry, and he seemed to agree with me, (though with such discomfort that I had the feeling he might have been nodding only to pass from the subject, it perhaps being a trifle too intimate to myself and Minnie.) So here I am at last, alone with the photograph, paper and pen in the sitting room. And here I find I must thank the Academy for allowing me to submit: It is, as ever, an honor to be before your visage, which I can imagine benevolent because invisible.
I woke this morning and went into the sitting room to take a few rays of the sun. There I saw that my wife at some moment unbeknownst to me had changed the portrait displayed in the small frame we brought back from the Photograph-artist. We had sat for several and left his studio with three, all of which are kept within the same glass and pewter, though only one rests on top, face to the world. Our initial choice for this representative was the most neutral of the photos.
Then later, under the admitted influence of brandy, I had snuck into the sitting room and changed it for one where the incline of our heads somehow suggests an amorous air so thickly that I know Minnie was half ashamed to display even to our sitting room public. That image held sway until yesterday. Today the image that has replaced it, in my mind, is even less fit for the eyes of others. You see, our Photo-artist, being an artist as such, with his long bony hands and cigarette as a constant eleventh digit, with the skull-like face whose eyes fix on an object with a strange mix of unchecked interest and deathly apathy, had induced us to give a little shout in the moment of his taking a picture. The shout was to be a cry of joy at our recent matrimony, but of course when sitting for a photograph one is obliged to hold the same position for a long moment, so that spontaneity which is the handmaiden of joy must necessarily perish. In that elongated moment I felt as one must having just stepped off a precipice, and supressed the most acute desire to look down only by treating my face as a collection of flexed muscles.
The resultant Photograph brought out a laugh in Minnie and myself when we first saw its exposure, and in what I must call a fit of bravery I insisted that we purchase it along with the other two. Because, though joy may have been its impulse, looking at the thing now as I write, the most generous interpretation I might give it, (and this was perhaps what I felt in the initial moment when its truth struck me) was that we are both secretly expressing that inner awe at having (to use an americanism) 'tied the knot' at such a stage in our lives, with I still a petty clerk indebted to my firm and she a hand barely fit for sewing. It seems to me then appropriate that this photo rest beneath the others, just as this emotion rests beneath the surface of our happy marriage, acknowledged yet rightfully suppressed.
I cannot then help but wonder why my wife has placed it there. And if I might go further into the realm of the psychologist, and hazard an interpretation of the image, I would say that the look on the face of my wife has retained a greater degree of life, of flexibility, of humour. My face, perhaps owing to the rougher construction of the male physiognomy, looks positively like a mask, its heavy lines obscuring anything that might be called a gesture, robbing the eyes of that glimmer that usually signifies a soul. Indeed I have already made this commentary to my wife, I think perhaps the day after we returned from the studio. She flatly denied what I said about my face, and said I was handsome, and kissed me, and moved things along so speedily I found I could not insist on the argument. But then again I showed it to Landry, and he seemed to agree with me, (though with such discomfort that I had the feeling he might have been nodding only to pass from the subject, it perhaps being a trifle too intimate to myself and Minnie.) So here I am at last, alone with the photograph, paper and pen in the sitting room. And here I find I must thank the Academy for allowing me to submit: It is, as ever, an honor to be before your visage, which I can imagine benevolent because invisible.
posted by M.N.V.L. Local 1430 at 12:52 PM
<< Home