The Face, Part 12 and Final

Face terms, but let’s face it, I will not be able to think of all of them:

Visage, countenance, kisser, mug, pan, dead pan.

We also have other phrases or expressions where face appears in one or the other of its uses. That is, as noun or verb. Let’s get Facebook out of the way early. That term/entity became part of our face vocabulary in 2004.

Then there are

• in your face
• blue in the face, as in "You can talk until you're blue in the face, but he'll never budge."
• lose face
• about face
• face the music, which has little to do with music and much to do with being strong enough to take responsibility for something you've done.
• save face
• pull a face, as in "You'd better not pull that kind of a face, young lady."
• face up to it
• face the facts
• right to his face
• on the face of it
• a straight face, as in "How could you tell such a lie and keep a straight face?"
• face cards
• face to face
  
• face value
• why the long face? as in what the bar tender said to the horse that came into the bar; and other more legitimate uses.
• faceless
  
• a face in the crowd
  
• get out of my face, as in "Get out of my face."

Go ahead. Use them in sentences. Or if I left some out, you send them to me.

Oh. Yeah. I forgot to mention the lines and wrinkles a face is susceptible to. As in my face. Here’s what they say about the soul. It’s old.

The Face, Part 11

Ever had a facial?

The Face, Part 10

#4

And then there is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I have to mention it because its theme is the face/soul connection. You may remember that Dorian Gray had an uncommonly beautiful face, and he sold his soul to keep it that way.

No matter what he did, how corrupt or evil he became throughout his life, no matter how his soul withered, nothing showed on his face. It retained its purity and beauty. It was the picture that carried the marks and scars that such a life produces. The ending is dramatic, unforgettable. Remember?

And is there not a connection between the face and the soul? Between how we appear—especially in the face—and who we really are?

Of course there is.

And what is makeup for? Obviously, it is to cover what we don’t want seen, those things that mar the face, lest the viewer misjudge our soul. Could be that we make the face up to be presentable to others, to put on our best face so that our soul will look good, too. Because we know that people perceive us, regard us, rate us, value us, at first, at least, at face value.

Think of face lifts and other face fixes, like botox injections and lip enhancement. All so that the face may look good, look right, look beautiful. These practices may also say something about the soul of the people who buy them. I do not know.

But you know very well that you feel confident when you look good, and that means your face more than any other part of your body. This sentence does not advocate anything; it does not suggest you get your face peeled or its lines eradicated and filled with botox. (By the way, there's a reason it's called botox--it is highly toxic.) No, I'm exploring ideas, just writing an essay here, which means I am attempting to understand something. In this case, the face.

The Face, Part 9

#3

As for Alyce, her soul remains beautiful and unaffected by the marks on her face. Qualifier: You can't really see the marks unless a) you know they are there; b) you're looking hard for them. Perhaps that is reason enough. Or perhaps she just has a great soul. I know her face is a jewel, and her soul shines, and I mean shines, out from her face. Sure, I'm her mother, but you'd say so too if you saw her.

And you can. Go there and look at the picture of her.

http://fromwonderlandtohinterland.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/two-things/

The Face, Part 8

#2

I have just watched Christine pull the mask from the face of the Phantom of the Opera, the 1943 version, starring Claude Rains as the Phantom. My parents took me to see that movie in 1946 or perhaps 1947. We were away from home staying in a house I did not know.

That night I woke in the dark house and saw the phantom in his high hat watching my sleep, his cape held open as he made ready to swoop into my room and take me away to his home in the sewer. I could hardly breathe and dared not move, so great was my fear, but I knew my only safety lay sleeping in the next bedroom. Finally, I slid my feet to the floor and ran to my parents' room, shaking and sobbing out my fears as my mother gathered me into her bed.

Next morning she showed me the phantom by daylight. He was outside my bedroom door, no mistaking that, but was not real. His cape was the dark wood partition between the living and dining rooms, his hat the grooved post that reached the ceiling. No need to be afraid of that or of the dark, she assured me.

But the fear I felt from that movie has stayed in my memory. And that face, scarred and burned, destroyed by the acid that was thrown at it, has also stayed in memory all my life. I was actually afraid to see it again these 60-some years later.

But now that I have seen it again, I can say quite easily that by today’s horror standards, that face is nothing.

And, by the way, Claude Rains insisted that the ugliness, the scarring, be tempered until it looked frightening but not overwhelmingly so. He did not want to be labeled as a horror actor. Still, it was horror enough, or so I thought as a child.

But that is not the point.

The point, and the attempt to answer the questions, has to do with this: Considering that the Phantom seemed a decent person--and a gifted musician--before the acid was thrown in his face and became a murderer after, you might conclude that destroying his face destroyed him and his soul. It can’t be that simple, of course, but there has to be some connection.

I'm not sure what the writer or movie maker wanted us to think. Perhaps that there are reasons behind what murderous people do. Perhaps that there truly is a connection between how we look and what we allow ourselves to do. But not all criminals are ugly, you know.

By the way, I have been to the Paris Opera House, where the story takes place, but not to the sewers beneath.

The Face, Part 7

Enough of that. Here’s a question: Is a scarred face still a jewel? And another: How do facial scars affect the soul?

Consider the following:

#1

Did you read Autobiography of A Face, by Lucy Grealy? I did. Sometime in the late 1990s. It's the story of Lucy's cancer of the jaw, the surgeries to cut away the cancer, the accompanying destruction of her face, and the surgeries to remake the face into one its owner could look at and show to others. For a long time she wore a scarf over part of her face.

It's a sad story, of struggle and pain and endurance that lasted from age nine until her death, but a compelling one.

Here's a quote from her older sister, Suellen Grealy. "Lucy's life became harder, with endless reconstructive surgeries, frustration at her inability to recreate the crystalline beauty of Autobiography, and a loneliness she attributed to being 'ugly'."

Think that over.

By the way, Lucy Grealy died in 2002 from an "accidental" overdose of heroin. She was addicted to it, had earlier become addicted to OxyContin after overcoming her addiction to codeine. Because of the pain of/from her face.

I cannot evaluate her soul, of course.