He is a porcelain doll writ large, too tall for grace and yet, it is all he possesses in every gesture and every motion.  Even the way he eats cake is graceful, when the length of his limbs says it shouldn’t be anything but awkward.  He carries the refined features and low brow of the German or Dutch, and sits in the common modern repose – face over laptop – but his bend is different.  Perhaps it is the ghost of a smile that plays upon his perfect mouth as though his face could split open into laughter at any moment.  Perhaps it is nothing more than that strange sense of “other” we pretend doesn’t exist, but is betrayed by our constant fascination.  I let myself imagine that he is blissfully unaware of his outer beauty, so that when and if he ever looks up at another person, the smile he will surely gift will be innocent, for it is too tragic to think that such physical perfection corrupts the soul.

With love,

He moves through the light and sound of his efficient machine, pulling levers here, pushing buttons there, trusting the process, a business acumen akin to faith.  He presents a mystery I don’t care to unravel, but now sitting across from me there is talk, and then there are the words between lines, unspoken but heard like thunderclaps.  We chatter about things pulled from the air to fill the space, idly taking inventory of possibilities.

He shifts, always moving, not just in body, but in mind.  Emotions and attention flicker and I wonder where the line is between his confidence and his fears. He would hate to know how he morphs so easily into awkward.  It would help him to know that awkward isn’t so bad. It is the awkward in all of us that endears us to others, wrapping tiny fragile tendrils around hearts.  It is the juice and gristle of compassion.  The very ground of tenderness.  The places we are all afraid to go.

I listen, watch, am perplexed and amused, but unmoved.  What he says means little since I am aware that it means little.  Instead I study the landscape of his face, for it is a curiosity to me, the bodies that our minds inhabit, and how the perception of the “who” is influenced by the “what”.  Peripherally I am aware of his collar because of its close proximity to his neck.  Some little corner of my mind collects the possibility of his scent, measures the pulse, and calculates the arc of electricity I would find if I touched my face there to breathe him in.  For it is in these crooks, these vulnerable joinings of this bone to that, softened by flesh, that we find the most extraordinary thing – the pulse of mortality.

Photo: The Searing Sound of Light – Ian Duncan Anderson (courtesy of)

He is homeless, his address written into the deep lines of his face.  We stand face to face over the opening of a trash barrel.  I throw away a package wrapping, he digs through looking for scraps to cobble together a meal, or for redeemable cans for change.  There are band-aids all over his face.  He pays me no mind as I glance at him, wondering what broke him.  He is the kind of man I think of when people smugly say, “That which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.

This man is the living, whispered argument to that quote.   The man we ignore so we can continue to believe the lie.

Should I give him a dollar?  Or would he only be insulted?  Or worse, would his wet eyes make contact with mine in gratitude?

Artwork by Crowsong

With love,

P.S. Challenge, write your own word portrait, tips are here.  Leave a comment with a link to your post.

She is sweet faced and dimpled, smiling gently at everyone in general, and no one in particular.  Kindness spreads from her like angel wings.  The glint in her eye is apple pie, and picket fences, and rosy-pink babies dressed in organic cotton.  It is hand-knit mittens, woolen socks, and comfortable shoes. It is coordinated decor, neat stacks, and pure-bred puppies.  It is intelligence focused humbly in one virtuous direction.

She will make her way through life one tiny, careful choice at a time, measuring each decision by a delicate code of balance that is nearly unconscious, for she has been loved well, and raised wisely.  She will listen before speaking, look before leaping, but perhaps unnecessary when decisions come easy to one who has been raised without doubt. Everything will progress as it should.  She will be made wife, and mother, and balance a steady, slow progressing career in between.  Fulfillment is not a question in the vocabulary of her psyche.  It is already here, and there is more to come.  Temporary plagues of inconsequential insecurities only serve to wrap support more snugly round her shoulders.

She is, in a word, unmarked.

With love,

P.S. If you would like to write your own word portrait, tips are here.

A writing meme in November?  You might wonder if this is just a happy coincidence since it’s day 4 of NabloPoMo and you’re a l r e a d y banging your head against the desk and asking the writing gods WHY, WHY, WHY.  No Internet, this is not a coincidence.  I just can’t help myself from helping a blogger out.  You’re welcome.

Here’s how it works.  Write a short “word portrait” of someone you know (or don’t know), post it on your blog, and leave a comment here.   And don’t forget to say “Walla!” when you’re done.  Because it’s satisfying, that’s why.

These “portraits” are word paintings of a person, a short description, but much more than that.  The way I write mine varies somewhat, and you can see examples here, and here, and here.  Aaaand, there’s more in the sidebar under “Portraits”.

Sometimes they are written about someone close to me, sometimes they are written about someone I know only a little, and sometimes they are written about someone I saw in passing.

Since I don’t have a conscious method, I can’t give you an exact formula to write your own portrait, but for what it’s worth, here are some tips (this is the part where I give away magic secrets):

1. Don’t necessarily “look” for someone to write about.  In other words, don’t try too hard.
2. Don’t try to think of the most interesting person you know, or try to find the most interesting person in the room.  Start with whoever is right in front of you.
3. Take your brain like a Halloween candy bucket, and empty it out  (eeeeewww Mom!  Someone gave us brains in our bucket!).  Now, with your emptified mind, just observe and experience this person.  If they are familiar to you, empty your mind anyway, because trust me, there’s always more to “see”.
4. As you begin to have thoughts, DON’T WRITE THEM DOWN YET!  This is important.  This is like when you’re listening to someone talk, and one and a half sentences in you’re not listening to them anymore because you’re already thinking about what you’re going to say.  Yeah, this is bad, and you’re probably missing a whole lot of stuff.  You need to get out of your own head so that you can “receive”.
5. Spend a good 10 – 15 minutes just quietly observing.  Let the thoughts bubble softly.  You should start to notice that certain sentences or words are starting to re-occur or get “louder”.  These are what you want to write down first.
6. Now you’re ready to write.  Start with those words or sentences that were re-occuring or louder, and then flesh the portrait out from there.
7. Like a portrait, you are not looking to capture every detail of a whole life, but just one moment, one impression.

Wait.  That sort of looked like a conscious method, didn’t it?  Well, take it all with a grain of salt.  Write for you, and do it as it works for you.  Any advice I give is only to help you if you’re stuck…by all means, don’t let it squash your creativity if you suddenly find yourself going in a WHOLE other direction.

I don’t know when I officially started writing  “portraits”, but I’ve always done them in my head.  I think that’s how you know you might be a writer.  When there are chapters and vignettes being written in your head on a more or less constant basis, and at some point, if you don’t start writing it down and getting it out of your head, all those words threaten to clog up the entire workings and land you in a padded room with only crayons for company.

That’s it.  Post by midnight, and remember to comment with a link to your post so we can find it!

P.S. Yes, I re-used an image.  I’m way too tired for Google Images at this hour.  Will fix tomorrow.  Probably.  Not.

P.P.S. Never mind, I fixed that.  I’m not a perfectionist, shut up!  As a bonus for my original sloppiness, here’s a time lapse video of the current art being made.  (Artist Justin Simoni)