Paul Siemsen – I met a man in my dreams last night. Our eyes did not meet, nor did we exchange names or words. Yet, the encounter was of such a personal nature it must be said we met. At the very least it must be said that I met him.
Our meeting occurred in a public place, an outdoor plaza, on a back-to-back pair of benches, solidly overbuilt of wood in the manner of 1950s church pews and train station benches, well used but still wearing a patinated amber finish. This man was sitting on the opposite side of the double bench, on the end to my right, when I approached and sat behind him on the near side. My sitting was offset from him by a shoulder width. He wore a dark blue suit that conveyed more casual dignity than business, and he sat comfortably, with his left elbow and arm resting on the shared bench backs, as he gazed to his fore and slightly left.
My back was to him, but with a slight turning to my own left, I could see his left arm closely and found myself examining the weave of his suit fabric. There were two colors of thread in the fabric, but they were not woven in a usual warp and woof manner. They were woven in such a way as to render narrow rows, each row being a series of alternating rectangles — dark but vibrant blue, alternating with a darker blue almost black. I lightly pinched a fold of his arm fabric and brought my eyes closer to what I held.
The wearer remained either incognizant or indifferent to my activity as he continued gazing to his fore. Each row of alternating blue rectangles was much, much less than an eight of an inch wide and was tightly touching its neighboring rows up and down the length of his arm. Again, these rows didn’t seem to relate to each other in a normal warp and woof manner with cross threads connecting them. Rather, the rows were related more like rows of tightly set type, each row having no more structural connection to its neighbors than simple proximity.
The alternating color rectangles in each row gave the impression of infinitely long barcodes of thick, dark blue rectangles of varying widths set on a field of the darker blue. Even closer examination revealed the rectangles had very subtle shapes to them, and they had subtle — implied, really — connections to each other. They were actually letters of type, sans serif letters with very strong, perfectly vertical strokes — extra bold condensed — again, with the horizontal connecting strokes being so thin as to be visually implied.
The first letters I recognized were those of the man’s name, though this knowledge came intuitively and not by foreknowledge or communication. Obviously this suit was woven especially for its wearer. As I scanned the lines of rectangular forms in the vicinity of his name, it was immediately clear they were all letters and they told the story of the man’s life. All he had ever done, and all he would ever do — and these deeds were significant — all these were running the lengths of his arms, the rise of his torso, the width of his breast pocket band, and the angles of his lapels.
He was wearing his life story as the fabric of his suit.
The suit did not have the character of being born of ego or pride — the letters were far too minuscule in dimension to serve such a purpose — to the casual glance, this fabric was like any other. Rather, this suit had the air of being a gift, a natural but matter-of-fact bestowment and record of an extraordinary life. It fit the man perfectly and he wore it with comfortable grace, indifferent to its remarkable nuance. I contemplated whether this man and his suit were unique, or perhaps universal. Or, beautifully and paradoxically, both.
Paul Siemsen is a Contributing Writer for Shift Frequency
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