{"id":2377,"date":"2009-10-29T23:38:01","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T03:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2009-10-30T21:48:27","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T01:48:27","slug":"dimensions-of-a-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2009\/10\/29\/dimensions-of-a-face\/","title":{"rendered":"dimensions of a face"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>faces are not snowflakes<br \/>\nin every one a thousand lives<br \/>\n<em>He reminds me of so-and-so<\/em><br \/>\nyou say, and capture the essence of the idea.<\/p>\n<p>I have seen that one in a pulpit, on a bicycle in France, selling raffle tickets at the mall, untying his running shoes beside me at our lockers in high school, pinning back the ears of a heckler from the stage at a political rally in Toronto, serving tables at a deli in Montr\u00e9al, begging for a handout at the corner of Pitt and Second, drunkenly embarrassing his family at a riverside restaurant in Summerstown, on the cover of<!--more--> <em>Life<\/em> Magazine, holding his own opposite Humphrey Bogart in one of his crime dramas, giving the sermon in the nursing home&#8217;s little chapel today, reading the news on a grainy black-and-white television set in the commons room in my university residence&mdash;<br \/>\nyou have seen him too,<br \/>\nbut did you know him?<\/p>\n<p>It is the eyes, I think.<br \/>\nThe rest flashes layer on layer<br \/>\nflickering like a primitive cinema<br \/>\nflashcards with a thumb,<br \/>\nsketches on the corner of a page,<br \/>\nelectric flashes leaping neurons<br \/>\nganglia processing nano-charges,<br \/>\nlayering memory with dreams<br \/>\nand pseudo-dreams that trick us,<br \/>\nsparks of recognition flicker<br \/>\ntick by, talk by, walk by.<br \/>\n<em>Do I know you? Do you know me?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A detective knows more of this than I;<br \/>\nthere are just so many faces,<br \/>\nso many master prints of DNA,<br \/>\nso many masks in the costume store:<br \/>\nwe must go as this or that<br \/>\nand nothing more.<br \/>\nWhat does the mirror say,<br \/>\nand what does it mean?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>faces are not snowflakes in every one a thousand lives He reminds me of so-and-so you say, and capture the essence of the idea. I have seen that one in a pulpit, on a bicycle in France, selling raffle tickets &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/2009\/10\/29\/dimensions-of-a-face\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,7,3,416],"tags":[752,751,750,749],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lotus-eaters","category-mild-mannered-opinion","category-poetry","category-thoughts-below-ground","tag-clones","tag-identity","tag-individuality","tag-recognition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riverwriter.ca\/wordcurrents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}