Julie Roth

So I'm watching a dear friend chop an onion, and I'm thinking I've never seen anything so expertly done. His hands hold the onion in place under the quick knife, and as if by some private magic they have created a state of perfect diced before my eyes. Then they lift the board and push the food into the pot. I'm thinking I have never seen such sure perfection.

I have felt this watching women fix their hair. They perform the complex sorcery without deliberation, casually sweeping brush through hair, drawing it precisely into a place I couldn't predict.

When the hands bring the hair to its final form, it is with the odd inevitability of a film run backwards.

It's as if each movement has become strangely disembodied, taking on a power of its own, like the mysterious gestures of a magician, or a priest. It casts a spell over me — something between deja vu and awe — and the whole scene seems to take place in slow motion.

Not unlike the feeling you get when you watch someone write, and you find yourself marveling at the strange consistency with which the pen is producing handwriting not your own. (When they're done, you almost want to say, "Betcha can't do that again!"-- which is to say, "Betcha can't write like that again, in your handwriting, consistently, without accidentally slipping into my handwriting when you lose your concentration.) You stare as if the hand itself is enchanted.

(I sometimes wonder if it's the same enchantment that urges my hand to caress the face of the stranger sitting next to me on the bus — my mind looking on in horror.)

There's something perfect about these moments, something concise and pure that makes them stand out. Images saved in a kind of mental amber, they become amulets with mysterious powers.

I'm sure it goes back to when you're a kid standing at your mother's elbow, watching her perform miraculous, daily feats, one after another, all day long, perfectly. Tying shoes is as miraculous as the clicking of ruby slippers to you. Setting the table, cutting out shapes, driving the car — all magic.

It is probably these images we see when we later gasp, "My whole life flashed before my eyes!" Cooking, tying, brushing, writing, touching. Not so terribly uncommon, but mystical nonetheless. Blessed.

(In which case is it denying the heavens to refrain from touching the stranger's face?)

Maybe not. You could say these images are just so much spaghetti sauce on the wall, splattered there by a seething and busy brain. It may linger there vividly long after the meal is forgotten, but only because it missed the sponge.

Not a very nice image to be faced with in a catastrophe, I admit. But then maybe that's why the people who can say, "My whole life passed before my eyes," survive to say it at all. It's the same principle as not being able to fall asleep knowing the kitchen is a mess.

Unless the splatter looks like the face of Jesus...

~Julie