The Canvas I Carry

I've long looked upon the face as an art piece. It can say so many things to different people. Faces are fascinating to me. I could spend hours gazing at people. The longer you look at someone, the more you see. There's a moment where a face clicks differently - I've looked at the whole face, the features, seen the angles from which they may not work well together, seen the beauty, and then suddenly, it's all there, layered together, each version hovering over the other.

I love when it clicks. I love when I can see the beauty and the strangeness concurrently. It's like knowing your friends well enough that you can love them yet also not like things about them; it just comes together - it finally make sense. After I had my first daughter, I would look at her face, seeing her as an infant, as a grandmother, as a young woman - all of those faces there, together, melding into one Gus truth, of which I was only literally witnessing the infancy.

When I was in high school, someone tried to put me down by telling me I was on the pretty sign of plain. Little did she know I'm a head case, and I went home that day and sat in front of the mirror, inspecting my face for angles and expressions that would be not pretty, not ugly, but literally plain. I found them, then looked for the ugly, looked for the beauty. And once I found them, I could see it all together, and I started to search for that level of intimate familiarity in others.

In a way I've always been both insecure and very sure about my face. For a long time I was ready to take any criticism of myself and make it my perspective. That exercise, where I found the flaws for myself and learned how they were also points of beauty, made me more resilient. Yes, I was raised to be strong in the face of people questioning my birthmark. But if not for that awful girl, I'd never have been prepared for the boyfriend who took issue with the creases in my lips, who only told me about the ugly and the plain he saw within me.

I'm always interested to hear what people think when they see, what they see when they look. Today I posted a shot where it's all in the eye of the beholder - do you focus on the eyes (the source of beauty in most faces, to me), or do you see the frizzy hair, chubby cheeks, the dark smudges under my eyes? Is the birthmark complimentary color, or a horrid disfigurement? It's all in where you put the focus, and I thank that stupid girl for teaching me a wonderful life lesson.