SHADES OF TRUTH
17 February 2012
It’s one of those New York winter days with brisk air and a strong sun that has many of those who are walking in the face of it unzipping their winter coats, the light democratically merciless, illuminating every wart and wrinkle along with the perfect peach fuzz of youth.
I once walked down a mid-town block and thought I saw the wound of every backlit soul coming in the opposite direction, as if the shadow revealed more than the sun. I saw the weariness and sorrow, the failed endeavor, worry and rejection, futility and furrowed doubt and the terrible loneliness and longed to touch each person who passed, as if I could, like the angels in “Wings Of Desire,” put a caring hand where X marked the spot.
There are times when the proverbial sea of humanity makes me weep; in those moments when I am aware of how we’re all out here day after day simply doing the best we can.
We went to the theatre last night to see “Other Desert Cities,” a play by Jon Robin Baitz about family and politics and the lies we all tell with, what we convince ourselves, the best of intentions. Lies: the bullets that ricochet not off walls, but people, grazing, piercing and killing in their relentless, never-ending journeys. Do lies ever die? Even after exposure? I like to think I don’t tell lies anymore and even before the words are on the page I know that’s a lie. It’s not just the whoppers that do damage, it’s all those little white one’s that erode the soul. Many of them begin with “I can’t…” when the truth actually begins with “I don’t want to….”
There is a blatancy to honesty that carries a different kind of consequence than does a blatant lie. Is it always all right to be brutally honest? If I tell you “I can’t make our dinner date tonight because I’m sick,” is it any less disappointing than saying “I don’t want to go out tonight because I’m exhausted.” Or how about, “I don’t want to go to dinner with you tonight because I want to stay home and watch Downton Abbey and eat a carton of ice-cream.”
Does the truth hurt? And if so, is the hurt as damaging as the wound of a lie?
About 10 years ago, when I still thought I looked pretty good, and not just for my age, I was in London visiting a dear friend. Her daughter, then 4, decided she wanted to draw my portrait. I was most flattered. She told me where to sit and then, crayon poised above paper, looked me over and said, “I’m going to do it with the wrinkles.” Her mother was mortified and I’ll be honest, at first my vanity was a bit scuffed. But then I thought, wow, she sees me and she wants the all of me.
So I took a good look today at all those sunlit faces streaming past me and the truth is they were all scintillating: the old, the young, the in-betweens; the puckered mouth, a mane of golden hair, the baby stubble fighting for space among the adolescent pimples; the fallen jowls and Botox-ed brow. Someone laughed and the tongue glistened like a creature from the deep. And yes, there were a few brows I would have liked to caress.
Back home, I put the groceries away, do the laundry and lie on the couch in a patch of sunlight. I think about the sin of omission, which so easily slides into the space between a lie and the truth. And I feel the discomfort of not knowing if, in my case, something I have withheld from a loved one for years “with the best of intentions,” is kind or cowardly. Is it ever too late to tell the truth?
The sun has left the couch and I am once again in shadow.
Photo by Maggie