I decided to be handsome today.
As the morning sun drew across the water, at the spot on pond in the park with the best vantage point, I thought of all the idolized and idealized faces I saw on movie posters and magazines. I thought of the way the waitresses always look at Michael and the way the other angels look at each other when they ignore me at sunrise. I thought of the way humans perceive creation as esthetic perfection and degrees infinitely declining from it, and how they ignore the perfection of imperfection and the beauty in its ugly chaos.
That morning my face was smooth and square, my body was lean and straight and solid. My features were dark and flawless, striking, but pleasantly so. As people emerged from their homes I could see all those that looked like me walking with their shoulders and arms back and high, looking at everyone they passed directly in the eye, while the people who looked more like the previous me, were too busy to regard those around them as they seemed to use their eyes to walk, staring down at their stirring feet.
As I prepared my mimicry of Michael’s powerful shoulders and astounding grin, I noticed being noticed for the first time that I can recall. A woman ahead of me on the sidewalk was shuffling through the newspapers on a merchant’s newsstand. From a scowl at some disagreeable headline, her expression turned to me and halted in an immeasurably minute way. Every word of her body language was spoken so quietly as no one around us could perceive this interaction. My own inexperience in such situations might have had her subtlety blow past on the wind, but the novelty of appreciation had heightened this moment to the zenith of my own individuality. She was captivated by me. A warmth of achievement rose through me that I had felt maybe twice in my existence. I had her in my possession. As her eyes tightened and her smile ever so slightly drew up her face, I dropped my eyes.
I was scared. An immortal being... more feared than perhaps any in history... with only apparently pride at stake... flinched. Something buried in this new instinct, this amalgam of basic human drive and cutting edge materialism, shook my concentration enough to force a retreat. What was I sacred of? More so than my performance, more so than the stir of brief sexual dominance, and ever so far beyond the ultimate goal of my unblessed endeavor - my wager with Michael was now a fascination with this feeling of fear, this quell of intimidation. I tried to dig down into my thoughts and seek the seed.
I passed her and the monument of moments passed us both. I continued down the sidewalk, growing all the more congested with workers and servants of others and their clocks, trying to dwell within my moment of fear. The spark of intimidation or lust or pride or defeat or whatever it was that I felt that pushed my head and eyes down involuntarily was among the most intriguing in my memory and certainly at the centre of the whole point of my need to win our wager. The dwelling took me through the warmths of pride and the hollowness of regret and defeat. Whatever it was it was primal, and primal is a luxury, a designer drug to one of my kind.
The most elegantly designed stimulant to visit this tangible human world is the unknown, the challenge that was before me in her form. Though their biological dispositions toward convenience desensitizes them to the experience, the novelty of challenging something novel was still new to me. As an observer I believe it's common to seek categories and groups for those you examine, as well as what they exhibit. I observe this world more than any of my kind and I thought long ago my discoveries had been dwindled. A familiar feeling of disappointment and disgust crosses behind my eyes when it occurs to me how they all ignore it, or don't even feel it. I failed, but I'll know that novelty when it confronts me again.
His miraculous morning sun continued to beam down on my broad heroic shoulders through the skyscrapers and billboards. I conquered my way down the street trying to remember the feeling that beautiful woman’s eyes shot through me, at first ignoring those around me that found me lovely, keeping my thoughts wrapped around what made me stir and what men found beautiful in her. More and more the almost imperceiveable gestures of those sharing the sidewalk with me, who in days before would have not relented to an earlier me one inch of it, continually softened on their awareness of my presence. They seemed appreciative of me and offered me graciousness in looks of peace and pre-emptive diplomacy. Whether in a poor imitation of Michael’s of smile or a thinner glance of examination or dismissal, my regard meant something divine to those around me.
Superficial value and self-assurance grew inside me. I caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby store window and failed at first to recognize even the essence of me inside the face that had been mine for less than a day. I then started to notice how the organism of the city street in the morning sun moved biologically around and through and toward the gravity of the beautiful things. I could feel the motivations of those around me, pleased and disgusted with one another, as they choose their merchants, their storefronts, and the directions of minds and hearts based on all too tangible superficial quantities.
It struck me then like a gaze into my morning sun: an impenetrable strategy. I can be all that friendship, integrity, valor, humility and honor require, all I have to do is look the part. I think for the first time Michael is wrong: all that is can be sold. I think I'm going try to be beautiful to the eyes that behold me from now on. I think it's the generous thing to do.
Trust, favor, comradery, bravery, all that I need to fabricate in order to engage the life of this drifting soul, and turn him toward Michael’s and my creator’s redemption will bloom from beauty, the most fleeting element of all creation.
Thanks for reading. Until the next.
Patrick
