An ancient photo just floated out of the internet:
The face in the photo bears a curious expression—there’s a sardonic twinkle in the eyes and a Mona-Lisa-like suggestion of a smile. It hints that the person in the photo knows something, something that might be embarrassing to the photographer, and is savoring it.
It’s evident that he’s wearing a mask.
How do I know that it’s a mask? He’s a fifteen-year-old virgin, living in the first year of JFK’s presidency, and has entirely too much greasy kid stuff in his hair.
What could he possibly know about anything?
Viet Nam is only beginning to appear in the news—and not even on the front page. It might be 1961, but everything we think of as “the sixties” is part of an unknowable future. His neighbors have not yet been infected with the paranoia-driven urge to build back-yard bomb shelters. A President, and some Presidential hopefuls, will fall to assassin’s bullets. His country will become embroiled in several unfinished, and unfinishable, wars—away and at home.
The Pill, Roe v. Wade, psychedelics—and penicillin—have not yet created the kind of sexual revolution that even his fevered adolescent imagination could never contemplate. He is innocent of all of that—and virtually everything else.
What could he possibly know about anything?
He dreams of becoming an artist, but doesn’t know that he will wear—and abandon—several artistic hats: painter, photographer, illustrator, designer, art director, gallery manager, board member of a non-profit arts council.
He hasn’t even learned that almost everything in the arts is non-profit.
He has not yet read the thousands of books that will shape his thoughts. He has not met the brilliant and talented individuals who will influence his life. He has not found —and lost—love. He has not yet made countless bad decisions—or failed to make good decisions, through foolish procrastination—that will haunt him.
He will, someday, become a writer—but he has yet to receive his first rejection slip.
What could he possibly know about anything?
And yet there is that enigmatic smirk. I begin to suspect that he’s looking at me, more than six decades into his future, and wondering why I’m still wearing a mask.
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The rest of the story? The photo is of me when I was 15... I was just surprised by the "knowing" expression on that face, because—as an old man—I'm not sure of anything anymore!
That's why I write; to figure out what I think—and what, if anything—it means.
The rest of the story it’s sort of a tease