Really wonderful!
-Peter Ciccariello
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 18:40:49 -0500
Subject: snap
I'm thinking of Rembrandt painting himself to right the disparity
between the young man and the old body he'd become--what the rest saw
that was invisible to him except on the canvas, which he hung, I would
guess, as a reminder. It doesn't pay to stray too far, leads to all
manner of bad decisions. But it didn't work: the brush at rest again he
remained the age he'd painted, so he did it again. And again. Tallying
up the account.
At the end of his life he painted his son's bride, with perhaps more
depth than she knew she possessed, and a heartbreaking beauty. An old
man's wisdom and an old man's longing. And the young women parade past
still like presents wrapped in gaudy ribbons that one's forbidden to
disturb.
The son he had loved and the bride he had loved died a year after him.
Spared at least that sorrow.
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