It used to annoy me (in boyhood) when people would tell me I looked like my mom. How could that even be?! She's a woman! And I am--patently!--Macho Man!
As I got older (wiser, wiser!), I realized what people were talking about. They were not (I firmly believe) looking at ... those ... parts but at certain facial features. Our noses, I realize, are very similar. Our eyes. I'm definitely her son.
Throughout my life I very consciously tried at times to look like certain people--or affect manners and other behavior that (I hoped) would cause people to say:"You look a lot like Superman." Or "Yogi Berra." Or "Bob Cousy." Or "Jim Bowie." I remember, when I was in my late 30s, that someone told me I somewhat resembled Burt Reynolds. I resolutely decided there was no irony in the voice that spoke those blessed words.
As we get older, of course, we all start to kind of implode--our bodies establishing for a certainty that entropy is a fact. Was it poet Wallace Stevens who coined the phrase "final dwarf" to characterize old age.
[Pause while I Google.]
Yep, it's in his poem "The Dwarf," a poem about the exact thing I'm talking about. As I recall, I learned about this poem in a late story by Henry Roth, "Final Dwarf." It's about an old guy.
Anyway, I'm writing about this today because of what happened yesterday. Up at Seidman Cancer Center, following a CT scan, the technician marked my chest and ribs with a marker (duh) to indicate where the radiation treatments will focus. Now, there are several little crosses on my chest, and I realized this morning, as I examined them in the mirror (a household adornment I've tried to avoid in my later years), that the marks made me look a little like some kind of satanist--or cult figure of some sort.
That's not really a look I've ever tried to cultivate. But here I am in my latter years--no longer resembling Superman or Jim Bowie--looking like the final dwarf of a satanist. That's comforting.
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