there’s thought and no thought
paleness and bloom and bustle
and pleasure and gloom
A Character by William Wordsworth, 1800.
I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There’s thought and no thought, and there’s paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
There’s weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;
Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain
Could pierce through a temper that’s soft to disease,
Would be rational peace—a philosopher’s ease.
There’s indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds,
And attention full ten times as much as there needs;
Pride where there’s no envy, there’s so much of joy;
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.
There’s freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she’s there,
There’s virtue, the title it surely may claim,
Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.
This picture from nature may seem to depart,
Yet the Man would at once run away with your heart;
And I for five centuries right gladly would be
Such an odd such a kind happy creature as he.
As printed in The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth, 1770-1850 Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1904.
I was walking through the Mall of Georgia a few years ago and this young woman came out of a store and told me she had something to show me.
I was with some time on my hands so I went along and she had me sit in a chair and held a mirror in front of me and asked wouldn’t I want to look 10 years youngers.
It was funny as she had asked me to take my glasses off and I had to ask her to hold the mirror in front of my nose so I could see myself.
That was how I always saw myself without glasses.
If I wanted to look at myself in a mirror and if I took my glasses I became an impressionistic painting.
Old man in mall could have been the title of the painting.
Either that way or as an extreme closeup so I no idea really of what I look like without glasses.
I looked at myself in the mirror and said to the young woman that I was pretty much at home with my age and my face so no, I didn’t want to look 10 years younger.
She screwed up her face like no one had every told her what to do if someone said no or that they were at home with their face.
But she played a good game and asked if I wanted to see what I would look like.
I shrugged having nothing better to do.
She picked up a tube and squeezed a dab of this cream onto her finger and the she rubbed that stuff all around my right eye.
She said to wait and all the wrinkles would be gone so we waited and she kept looking at my face.
The stuff burned a little bit and I said I wasn’t that thrilled with the process, especially when she got a little more and rubbed it under my eye.
She stood back and grabbed the mirror for me to see myself and again I couldn’t see without my glasses.
“Sir”, she said, “almost all your wrinkles are gone.”
Then she look hard at under my eye.
“Except for this one here, I don’t get it,” she said.
Oh that, I said.
“That’s not a wrinkle. That’s a scar.“
She jumped back and looked at me.
“A scar?”
“Really?”
“Really.“
That took even more off her game but she came back and tried to tell me how much better I looked but I wasn’t buying it.
Especially something at $300 a tube and wore off in a couple of hours.
But I quoted the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that when a person gets old, they get the face they deserve.
She thought about that and looked at me and look at my scar and kind shook her head.
“You really aren’t interested are you?” she asked.
And we chatted for a few minutes.
She was a recent immigrant from Russia and she loved America and Americans and now she had met someone who was a little bit different.
But she had other people to grab out of the mall and I had to be some where and I got up andI was walking out of the store when she called me back.
“Sir“, she said, holding out the tube of stuff and pointing at my other eye.
“Don’t you at least want to match?”
I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
No Haiku For You 