An Observer From Proxima Centauri
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
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| Andrea |
In the early 70s I discovered a way to make
my high school students open up on personal opinions on life. I told them that
they were from another planet in a far away star called Proxima Centauri and
that they had been sent (they were rendered invisible) to observe people on
earth.
Once that was made clear they would answer
questions such as, “What is sex?” or “How did these people live from day to
day?” an even such more personal questions, “What did the younger ones think of
something they called school?”
I don’t think they ever caught on. But then
I am not sure.
Of late I have observed that in the age of
pornography people seem to be much more conservative (repressed?) on their
views on sex and how we depict humans in photographs. There seems to be
tendency to try to render the portraits, particularly of women, as asexual
beings. If I am not expressing that quite correctly this might do, that the
taker of the photograph should snap the pictures without any thought on
sexuality.
It sort of reminds me of that 10th
Commandment:
You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his
ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
— Exodus 20:17
My Roman Catholic upbringing made me feel
guilty even when I happened to look at a girl “that way” as I was told that it
was just as bad. The thought was the same as the action.
Not too long ago I was watching one of my
favourite violinists from the VSO. I was close enough that I did not need my
binoculars. I went up to the front of the orchestra to chat with one of the
cellists who did confess to me that he too was distracted by our violinist but
could not say anything as it might be seen as some form of sexual harassment.
In Spanish we have a lovely word piropo
that comes from the Greek via the Latin ( Del lat. pyrōpus, y
este del gr. πυρωπός). The word means to compliment but with the exact purpose of saying
something brief and poetic to a woman about her looks. If you are good at it you would seldom get slapped.
In Mexico, particularly in small towns
there was a custom (probably nonexistent now) where young people would
congregate on every Sunday on the main square (zócalo). The young men might walk around the
square clockwise while the young women would do so in the opposite direction. Smiles
would be flashed or perhaps meek stares. The more adventurous young men might
whisper piropos. On Easter Sunday, I remember in Veracruz the youth would have hollow eggs
filled with confetti which they might break and throw at the girl of their
dreams.
Now you
might be served by a lawyer and sued.
As a 71
year-old man I know feel that my students could counter and play my game my
way. I am now that spy from outer space watching mankind in the sly.
As an
example I am placing here two contact sheets (there were more) of a beautiful woman
called Andrea. She was a mess of scars. She had a single mastectomy, two
caesareans on an appendix operation. Because I took the pictures some years ago
I was not in a 21st century mode of brutal honesty so no scars show.
Andrea
lay on my psychiatric couch which was covered by a white sheet. I hovered around
and took my pictures.
I look
at them and I can imagine my students asking, “Mr. Hayward, were you thinking about
sex when you took them? Were you trying to make your pictures erotic?” As
students in the 70s they would not have asked, “Mr. Hayward, are you shooting
with respect? Are you depersonalizing her? Are you depicting her as a sexual
object and not as a person?”
All I
can tell you is that my answers would be confusing and I would stammer a lot
and not say much. But I still think these pictures are lovely and when I took
them I was plainly aware that I was a man with plumbing that worked and that
she was an attractive woman with a lovely body. Can anything more be said?
