Fleeting Faces

A couple days ago, I ran by a figure sitting on her stoop and was momentarily terrified. I could not figure out how her head was positioned, and so what I took for her face appeared deformed, like that of a monster. I stared and stared trying to locate her features until I ran right past her and the monster became human. Just an old woman with her head twisted sideways away from me, leaning on one hand. Phew.

A couple days ago, I attended a lecture at the Kimmel Center featuring Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs-- minimalist artists of the post-modern age. Lucinda held herself gracefully, was slender as a paper doll it seemed. Her veins stood out prominently, snaking down her long, thin, wrinkled arms and ended in large, beautiful hands with long, thin fingers that gestured elegantly in the air as she spoke. Her permanently knit eyebrows gave her face a hawkish look that was softened, however, by her gentle smile. Whenever she looked toward her right, in Philip's direction, half of her hawkish face was cast in shadow, the other half lit by stage light. I took a mental picture. In hearing a reference to her "silent pieces", she amended the term, saying they weren't quite silent as you could hear the pitter-patter of the dancer's feet on the stage. I loved that.