the many faces

Last week, under doc’s order, I stayed put at home. Self-treatment from a severe case of poison ivy infection.

I watched La Piscine, True Confessions and The Great Gatsby: Alain Delon, Robert DeNiro/Duvall, and Robert Redford. All the leading men.

Handsome and iconic men.

Must be a case of desperate self-projection, since I could hardly bear looking at myself (after a night of toss and turn, itching and scratching).

I imagined myself being loved by Cher (as in Mask) or courted by William Hurt (as in Children of a lesser god).

In short, I turn obstacle into an opportunity for empathy training.

BTW, of late, there have been 100 million folks leaving their homes to seek refuge and safety elsewhere, while 30,000 Ukrainians are returning each day to their wrecked villages after three months away.

Poison ivy perhaps is the least of their concerns.

Baking soda baths, oatmeal baths. Cortisone to Claritin.

Self-treating and sensitive skin. How about a hardened heart? How can one self-treat a heart of winter?.

Out of the three flicks, only True Confessions offered us a realistic ending: a burial plot reserved for its parish priest, albeit disgraced and recycled through the system. Justice and mercy. Meanwhile, Alain Delon got away with his crime of passion (or humiliation), while our war hero, the Great Gatsby, shot and sank to the bottom of the pool (by God, they broke his glasses – at all those parties- and didn’t even send flowers to his funeral).

Life. In all of its ugliness.

Poison Ivy for birds, not human.

Yet it’s human who both blesses and curses his fellow men. Putin survived an assassination attempt. Biden promises off-the-cuff to defend Taiwan and its semi-conductor fabs.

And on and on. Today’s politics grieves me beyond what I currently suffer; it makes my skin crawl. “Poison” Biden said, and now I understood what he meant by calling Theory of Replacement by that.

Summer is arriving. And let me leave you with Gatsby’s last line: ” summer is almost over, makes you feel like grabbing it and pulling it back”. I don’t know about yours but my summer at the beach or by the pool will be fabulous, with baby-lotion and cortisone, sun-tan and sunscreen lotion, just in case.

Once burned twice shy. Just ask residents and shoppers of Buffalo’s Tops’ market. (or as of this edit, another 19 school children did not even live to grab hold of this summer).

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Or how your face looks. For this week, I continue to self-project, dreamily onto the silver screen, I step into their roles, live their lives, often times, loneliness while battling their own potion of love (#9), tormented by their own poison and terminated by their own pistol.

Those many faces I mentioned? They are for keeps.