FACES & FATES

I'm thinking of all the faces in the world. Well, at least in my world. Family, neighbors, co-workers, leaders, villains and heroes. They say, like snowflakes, no two faces are exactly alike. Each life therein an unrepeatable act.

Faces can be examined physiologically. Better still, psychologically. Better still, spiritually. After our hearts, our faces are perhaps our greatest works of art. The eyes and mouth, the lines and folds, they are the composite of our living. Which is why young faces still remain so very clean and smooth.

Older faces display all that has happened along the way. The joys and successes. The fears and sorrows. To look closely is to see and sense a Rorschach test coming into clear view. A Renaissance portrait emerging from its canvass directly into your soul. All of which is why it's hard not to stare sometimes.

On commuter trains. In buses. In planes. Across restaurants. I know some dear ones who take such staring as an intrusion or a sneer. Maybe. More likely people are simply drawn to interesting faces. And -- when as old as me -- prompted to address them. A hello, a nice-day, a my-how-happy-you-seem. To date -- not a single grumph or slap Perchance because even pretty faces may be lonely people.

Tallying up the score, this has included such loneliness as: A pair of cops on a lunch break...a passenger thumbing mindlessly through a magazine....a mother carrying her infant....a waitress struggling with her orders. I put it to you: Are any of these any less warmed by a friendly greeting than you? I didn't think so!

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And accompanying these faces, these fates...

How is it one wonders that scores of unknown but headlined faces have somehow converged upon your own small world? Within precisely 4.5 mile of this keypad there have occurred at least four singular events: America's worst domestic air crash (at O'Hare Field)...John Gacy's home and body-burial site for America's worst mass murderer....the hotel where O.J. Simpson got rid his gloves the night after his wife was murdered in Los Angeles ....and now Illinois's tenth and potentially richest casino.

You get the feeling in this world of faces, their fates sometime come right to your own front door.