Heroes Not Zombies

This always makes me smile, and wonder. It’s a sculpture of a human head and it’s built into the wall of a house, just above the door. I came across it in a beautiful, old village in the South of France.

I don’t know anything of the history of this but it sure gets me wondering…..who is this supposed to represent? Was it the person who lived here when the house was built? Was it someone famous or important from the village? Or was it created as a representation of a mythical person….a god, an angel, or….well, I’m never going to know.

The fact that I’m never going to know partly bugs me. I have had insatiable curiosity as a major personality characteristic since I was a young boy. So there is a frustration there. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t bother me, because it means I can engage with it, as I find it, clear of any complications from its past.

We do that all the time. There are works of art, buildings, geographical features which make an impact on us every time we encounter them. Some of those impacts are layered with story, personal stories as well as those from history. But there are others where we come upon them with a “beginners mind” – where we can open our hearts and our attention and just note what arises.

Taking this second approach, I start with the expression on this face. At first glance this person looks sad. Their eyes seem somewhat downcast, gazing to the side and down towards some point on the ground a few metres away perhaps. Along with the gaze, the mouth seems a touch downturned too, the lips just slightly parted, conveying a kind of displeasure or even disgust to me. They don’t seem very happy. And I think, well, no wonder, really, look how this vine has grown up over their face. They seem somewhat neglected.

But the next thing I notice is their fine features. This is quite a beautiful face. Maybe that curl of the lips is more the beginning of a smile, than an expression of weary displeasure? Then I notice the string of pearls on the person’s forehead and I realise this is a more sophisticated, perhaps more noble a person than I had first thought. Look at their hair, and what’s that on their head? A hat? Is there a bird on their hat?? I think I’ve convinced myself now that there is a small bird sitting amongst the person’s curls, right at the edge of their hat.

So, now I return to the vine, which has been allowed to grow naturally I think, to find its own way….or did someone train it up around the head? It looks natural to me. And so when I bring the bird into the picture with the vine, this face takes on an appearance of an Earth Goddess now. Is that a step too far?

Well, what would it be like to see the almost smiling (I’m pretty much convinced now that this is an incipient smile on their lips, not an expression of displeasure after all), face of an Earth goddess, welcoming you home every time you walked up to your front door?

Here’s my final thought on this……whoever carved this face literally set an expression in stone. It doesn’t change any more…even if my impression of it changes. My granny used to say “Be careful the wind doesn’t change!” if I ever showed an unhappy, grumpy or fed up face. She said that if the wind changes then your expression would be fixed forever. Strange old saying that…..because the wind changes a lot! But behind it was some teaching that your habits of expression could come to shape the way the world sees you, and the way you see the world.

I don’t really see anything in a fixed way any more. I think everything constantly changes. And I think that, every one of us brings our memories and our imaginations to engage with the present moment, whatever it holds, making each and every day unique….unique for me, and unique for you.