Note: the space between the last and this has been spent in Vancouver - while my intention is to collect, sort, and polish the photos and words into a nice slimmish volume suitable for print, I would like to collect some of the smaller details here.
Facet
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology lists it as OF, Old French, and is tied to many homophones with a nice, pretty knot. Face (visage, countenance), in particular, but also stems from Facere ("to make") so, we see the face and we see the face that it makes.
F has his face, his own private face which he shares only with himself, and he also has one which he makes for others and before the mirror. What he sees and what others see can become confused at times, yet each variant is as true as the next and it can be said that each of these many facets shine with a dull glow or a blinding wattage depending on how the light strikes. A facet can dim or sparkle with a twist, and his face, like all faces, can perform these exact same maneuvers (at will, or involuntarily.) F has his face, his own private face, which he makes out of the fragments of his feelings: a heavy-lidded eye signifies sleepiness or disdain, a crooked smile or a gaping hole of a mouth signify two opposing thoughts yet are readily interchangeable for our friend F. He is a multi-faceted person, not two faced, but infinitely faced, and all of them are all of him.
A facet can be made or found, as a face can be made or found. The word is generally summed up as: a flat face on a geometric shape ("face" to be read free from any and all literal ties) and Merriam's provides an even more general portrait of the word: any of the definable aspects that make up a subject (as of contemplation) or an object (as of consideration.) The italics are mine, as this word strikes me as suspicious - in a way, this place is simply a collection of facets: attempts at defining aspects of a subject or object, and while at times I fear my "definitions" are not quite that, as some subjects tend to defy the definability of themselves. So, how about we strike that word and leave it as so: any of the aspects that make up a subject or an object. Things are things without any actual materialization: a face can certainly be comprised of kissable lips, despite the fact that they have not yet been kissed, or even have a set of wandering eyes even though the poor little orbs are sadly tethered.
A facet can be made or found: F sitting on a bench might notice a trampled flower and he might frown to himself. He turns the corners of his mouth downward creating a single sideways parentheses and though it might be an entirely involuntary gesture, the image projected gives away a whisper of his inside at the very instant he recognizes the small tragedy. The trampled flower, with its wilted pedals and broken stem were found by F's eyes which then transmitted the vibration among a series of threads connected to his brain and nervous system who subsequently and simultaneously provide his muscles with the memorized mutation which is commonly refered to as a "frown" and is meant to be read by any observer as "sadness". This facet of his face is found, perhaps, by a passer by who might mistake it for a larger tragedy. The passer by might be widely insensitive to the situation which F is presently in, and maybe would let out an audible trickle of laughter had he been closer and had the insight to know why that frown is smeared across that face. That found facet, for that particular passer by with that distinct and churlish sense of humanity coupled with the lack of any connection at all to the person he is observing from afar, would be interpretted as "dim" whereas a more sensitive person who is much closer to F (his mother, his sister, a coworker at the factory, a lady on the bus who overhears a conversation he has, anyone that has been within an inch of his imagination) might interpret it as blindingly bright. Proximity to the facet and the face must matter.
My own limited understanding of both Barthes and Jakobson is enough to inform me that I am standing on very structured ground here, and while I may delight with a flourish I would do a lot better by simply pointing to them and saying: "Go, now, read this!" This inexcusably poor attempt at explaining a smile is lost whereas their rigid paragraphs spell out, in ink, exactly how and why this all works; with brevity and, thank god, properly cited sources. Yes, the smile is read as a sentence and the relation among signs are twofold, and their essays on linguistics and literary theory provide conclusive proof (much more so than any of my obtuse and pale verbosity could capture) that we do live in a world of semiotics and anything, from F's smile to a column supporting a portico on a home can be read and, even more, a mythic signifier can indeed be extracted! We see it and we know it, just like we see the column and we know what it means (wealth, opulence, or even bad taste if it happens to be surrounded by dissimilar houses.)
So we can leave that to them and concern ourselves only with this facet, this bright every-colored crystalline facet, captured above on the 30th of October in the window of Samule's home, facing slightly east directly into the clouded rain. There were Juncos at the feeder happily nibbling at the seeds and even a few Bushtits, which Sam pointed out through his binoculars, playing among the branches of the main, unfocused tree seen in the mid ground of the photograph. What does this say about that? What does that say about this? The facets, those facets, despite the lack of light, were shining as brightly as if they had a flood lamp pointed directly at their many flat faces. Isn't that like a myth, how a thing can shine even on an overcast day? It is, gladly. The dazzling glint of clarity that burns on the face of that facet carries with it many powerful properties which have yet to be revealed, let alone collected. Yes, Samule explained that this crystal is more than a cut rock, is more than a gem hung in a window, and is even more than a symbolic floating diamond of brilliant brightness - it has secrets just as a person does and hides them twice as well. We will divulge them when we know them, and we will save them when we're through.
So much is hinged on that facet and how it is turned, to either accept or reject what little or abundant light it has within its reach and had it twisted slightly on its string we would have an entirely different face facing us. Twinkling and prismatic, like the tired face of a happy person just before slipping into sleep - content in his exhaustion as well as in the relief of that same exhaustion, a double delight. But on a bad day, or in his own bed - a different face, a different facet, a different world and a different myth.
