Caricatures, Vermeer, and Friendships

People call me a Romantic. Part of it might be because I enjoy taking long walks uphill to watch a sunset. It could also be due to my reading Rupert Brooke's poetry while sipping Earl Grey tea and listening to Chopin. The fact that my close friends call me The Disney Princess doesn't help my status. Neither does my sentimental habit of saving every memorable card, text, facebook message, and letter I have received since first grade in a great big red bin, complete with an organized tagging and bagging system. Perhaps I should also mention that sometimes, near midnight when the streets are quiet, I sneak down to the local library's garden plot and then walk home in the moonlight with my arms full of flowers. 

It's plain to see why people are so quick to slap the Romantic label on me. I have a friend who never ceases to point out my romantic nature. I could be sighing about how terrible my day has been, or express frustration about life choices that need to be made, but she chooses to focus on how whimsical it was of me to "put those flowers in that vase" or how my hairstyle is "so romantic, so you." Sometimes I wonder if she really sees me. Much of the time, I believe all she sees is the sign that she has mentally strapped to my forehead. It reads: Whimsical, Sappy Romantic. 

Is that really all I am? I like to believe that there is more to me, that there is a whole person writing this blog, not only a silly little girl who likes flowers and wears her hair in a French braid. I haven't been whimsical or happy-go-lucky every day of my life. I cried when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. I cried when someone I loved let me down because I hated myself for being dependent on them. I cried when my dogs were both shot, not only because they died, but because I knew what gun it was, how the sun was dappling the jungle around them, and exactly what they must have looked like before the quick squeeze of the trigger. These are the times when having a good imagination is a dreadful curse: the worst moments of my life are relived and made ten times as painful because I see them in slow motion.

I'm also not always the most ladylike individual. In high school, I was known to kill cockroaches and spiders with my bare hands, blithely shaking the guts off before continuing with my pizza. It was also not uncommon for me to enjoy disposing of bats with a tennis racket. Hitting said bat into a ceiling fan was even better. I also believe that dumpster diving, the kind that requires a headlamp, grungy jeans, and dirty sneakers, is something I would do every weekend if I could. 

Granted, my friend may not know all of that about me, but the way she views me is often not as a real person, but as a caricature. One feature, one aspect of my personality, is so focused on that it diminishes the other parts, which are just as important. I realized recently that I do this too. I look at people and I have a caricature of them in my mind. I forget that there is more to them than what I see or observe. In my mind, they may just be that man I always pass on the street: The Man In The Truck. Or the woman I make a skinny-sugar free-vanilla-hazelnut-double-shot-breve-latte for in the cafe becomes: Complicated Order Woman.  I may even start to think of my housemate as The Girl Who Likes The Color Orange. That man I pass on the street, though, has a full life brimming with details like a job he works hard at,  a wife he adores, and a church he faithfully attends every week. The woman with that very specific latte has kids who are all growing up under her tender care in a house with a worn out welcome mat, and that one particular pie that only their mother makes properly. My housemate may like orange, but she also has a hedgehog, the ability to make strangers feel welcome, and a love for good books. They are all anything but caricatures, yet I often see them as such in my mind.

Caricatures are, of course, drawings made by artists who frequently do not know their subject very well. That's why it's fun. The subject sees themselves through someone else's eyes for a moment and can laugh at what the artist has chosen to make prominent. The artist is supposed to do this. They are, after all, making small work of art that may or may not be true to life. Likewise, when I am passing someone on the street, I may see them as a caricature, yet this cannot be helped because I do not have an intimate knowledge of them.

Imagine, though, if someone asked a real painter to do a portrait of them. I once read the book, The Girl With The Pearl Earring. The story is told from the perspective of Griet, a housemaid who works for the famous Dutch painter Vermeer. For many months, she studies the way he paints his subjects. This part of the book was fascinating to read because Vermeer spends a great deal of time doing one thing with his portrait subjects: watching them. He makes them sit one way, then another, in this light, with this foot on that side of the chair, and on and on. As he paints, there are only block colors at first, then a shading and deepening of hues. At one point, Vermeer paints a woman's dress black, and Griet is confused because the dress is a dark blue, a color she knows he possesses. Then, the next day, Vermeer takes light blue paints and  over the black, making the rippling folds of the dress vibrant and clear. At every point, he makes a specific decision regarding the direction of the portrait because he has been observing his subject so carefully. To produce a caricature after so much study would be unthinkable.

This, I think, is why I am so frustrated with my friend. I expect her to see me as a fully formed portrait, to remember all the memories we have made together, and to know, figuratively speaking, how my lines are shaded. Then I ask myself, do I see her that way? More often than not, she has become a caricature, too, like the people I pass by on the street. I know that I will never fully know all those people. It would be impossible. Still, I can choose to respect them, and start seeing them as Real People With Lives. And when I look at my friend I mentally intone, "You are not a caricature. You are a Vermeer, full of shades both peaceful and turbulent, lines subdued and passionate. Now, what detail will I learn today?"