The Face

The face is a remarkable tapestry of incredible intimacy. Animating each and every countenance is an unspoken story of tremendous love, struggle, and perseverance. When a face is covered, you realize how much there is to miss. Nothing you experience ever leaves you, the face serving as an indelible record of your dreams and despair, hopes and heartbreak. The eyes alone convey too much. You cannot hold the gaze of another for terribly long before feeling the unmistakable vulnerability of your own life. Likewise the lips, present as seductive enigmas before even a word is spoken, contain a poised delicacy for language, and, even more so for making love with that which is other, with the miracle of what lays bare before you at the dawn of each new day. Kiss the sky and fall in love with the mystery of being. Kiss the face of the earth and be filled with gratitude for all that is, before you ever breathed a single breath. Kiss the face of the unknown and be changed forever.

Character comes through in the countenance. Who you are cannot be hidden with any masquerade, no matter how prepared or practiced the covering. Ethos exudes, without any help or hindrance, broken beauty seeping through your pores, winding its way out through the unintended artistry of age and lines laced with the history of your presence. Your face is your autobiography Oscar Wilde noticed, the aesthetics of your appearance, beyond conventional beauty, tied to the alchemy of your soul. When you present yourself to others simply, honestly, and directly, ready for engagement to another, you open yourself to the promise of a foreign universe, a cosmos containing innumerable gifts never before seen or heard. Facing another you remember, you are not alone.

Feel the face, feel its features, rest your hands and fingertips gently there. Notice again what lies beneath, a memento mori that never leaves you.