The false shadow seems to enjoy ‘Face-Journey: The Nation’s Largest Private Collection of Photo Stand-ins.’ It gravitates toward the stand-in shadows, brushes against them like some happy cat. It stretches as I walk, to linger and sniff out their absent faces. Sometimes it seems to hold their hands, but I can’t be sure. It’s most active in my peripheries and, hopefully, in the peripheries of others.
I don’t totally trust it, the new shadow. I trust it less the longer I carry it with me. It’s like an idiot friend, who may do something stupid at a moment’s notice. I wonder if it doesn’t miss being a more general sort of darkness, if it isn’t better suited for a closet or the back of a drawer.
‘Face-Journey’ has graciously set up mirrors in front of each stand-in, catering to the lone visitor. I try out several, a mermaid, an astronaut, an Abbot posing with a faceless Costello, before growing too self-conscious to continue. I sit on a bench instead and pretend to look at my phone, spying on the reflection of the shadow and finding that they, the shadow and its reflection, seem to be as tenuously connected as the shadow and I.
This trip has been plagued by tenuous connections, by places that are not destinations in and of themselves. The wayside is, by definition, only the distractions on the path to something more meaningful, but if the Wayside Park Rangers believe the path has a direction, a backwards and a forwards, then it must be leading away from something.
And to something else.
Shitholes is written about the wayside. It is the modern equivalent of the pirate’s treasure map, with the map’s viewer on one end and a non-descript ‘X’ on the other. All of its details are used up on the hurdles in between, penned in riddles as to be hurdles themselves. If I am headed for the destination, and that’s certainly what I imply to anybody who asks, then I can’t rely on Autumn by the Wayside to describe it.
I know what the Wayside Rangers want- they want to keep the path safe, to preserve its natural state. I can’t say the same for the strangers. They seem to destroy haphazardly, the same way the author writes, but I don’t think either is totally devoid of purpose. A man once warned me that the Stranger was moving backwards on the path.
And if the Stranger knows the way back, maybe he can tell me the way forward.
‘‘Face-Journey: The Nation’s Largest Private Collection of Photo Stand-ins’ is a mouthful and an utter waste of time. A photo stand-in can only ever be an extension of the attraction it was made for, offering a posing opportunity tailored to the moment. A child visiting an aquarium might lend its smiling face to the body of a fish, for instance. A teen visiting an ice cream factory may pose screaming with the body of a cow, an ironic reference to the horrors of factory farming. ‘Face-Journey’ strips these flimsy cut-outs of their context and piles them into nonsensical exhibits, where families proceed to take pictures anyway, pictures they will no doubt look back upon and say ‘Where was this? Was this at that lobster restaurant?’
The sole redeeming quality of ‘Face-Journey’ is its mascot, a photo stand-in made animate and three-dimensional through the magic of costumes and cheap labor. This furry, faceless being lumbers about the property, scaring children and posing absurdly with the actual photo stand-ins. ‘Facey,’ as it’s called, may as well be the mascot for the Wayside itself, representing a niche few enjoy, taken to an extreme few are comfortable with.’
-traveler
