- Version 1982 Bernal Heights, San Francisco
“He looked over his face in the mirror, checking his shave by running his hand across his cheek, chin, and neck. Then he took out his toothbrush and buffed up that wide grin of his. In-between strokes he kept practicing his smile.”
Noel Sanderson from Highway Home
I have had a steady stream of agreeable different versions of me. I’ve got my favorite version, the bad old version and of course the current version.I don’t get around to doing much about keeping up with all my versions. I usually check the daily version in the mirror first thing in the morning. I try to check under the gentleness of incandescent light. The florescent version goes against my current high opinion of the manipulated contemporary version. Having to carry all this around and it is a heavy load isn’t much fun for those people who come along and wish to puncture my ongoing personal version of a balloon. Now, this inflated balloon is a masterpiece, a lifework, an ongoing effort organized by the very nature of the beast to do everything in its power to sustain a maximum effort to place lipstick upon this present moment’s version. And then to find out all this is in fact a myth, a hoax, that there is no there “there”. Turns out I’ve been unmasked, that this fixed constant version never even existed, instead there is only yet another version. I’ve been getting out under a shade tree in the afternoons taking out the old version and waxing and polishing it up. Doesn’t stay clean long, I flip the light on the next morning and there it is looking at me in the mirror.
