Dotted lines

I've taken to placing my face on the windowsill while I play backgammon on the internet. I've tried it a number of way, pointing the face left along the alley or, for a moment, 80 degrees up. Sometimes I stand there behind it.

(In the words of Alfred Hitchcock, "First I did it [insert himself into his own films] because I couldn't afford to hire anyone else, then because it brought good luck, finally because everyone expected me to.")

Over there, the face has it pretty good, perpendicular to the alley, porous to the wind. Every once in a while a jet takes off, a family piles into their minivan.

(If I were a Hitchcock film, I'd include the hotel parking lot for sure.)

Then I'll pull it down and change it, push on the chin, rub across the forehead--anything to avoid its resting pose: a down-turned mouth, a long face.