masks, pt. ii

I always thought the conceit of a masquerade, that we are in some way disguising who we are, was absurd. Most people who know me could identify me from the shape of my chin, the color of my eyes, the way I smile or don't smile, my voice, the way I carry myself; at best, it protects us from being identified by strangers. It grants the illusion of anonymity, not anonymity itself. Or perhaps that's the point. Perhaps, so long as the masquerade continues, we have ensured that strangers will remain strangers, that when we stand unmasked in the cold light of morning no one will be look at us and ask "isn't that" or "didn't she". But when the moon is bright and the stars are out the dawn is a distant threat, a phantom to haunt our morning selves. Plenty of time to dance.

Without the benefit of masks, I can always tell you from your sister by the way you carry yourselves: she cannot hide her confidence, her defiance, no matter how she tries. Even when you're pretending that you are her, there's a tentativeness there, like you are afraid that your passing will disturb the tranquility of the world. You are, I have always felt, a creature of silence.

When I saw you, I was certain you were her. You thought it was the mask, I think, that my powers of perceiving you were diminished by your disguise--the way you smirked at me when I called you by her name, playfully chided me for paying so little attention. I wanted to protest, to tell you that I had paid attention to little else this evening, that your dress and your hair and the roses and the mask were so elegant, so beautiful, I could scarcely think about anything else. But I tripped over my tongue and you just laughed and I fell in love all over again.

You asked me to dance. I would have thought that was unthinkable, before, but here you had become someone else entirely. For my entire life until this moment I had been in perfect control of my life, but here you led and I followed, lost and dazed and happier than I had been in countless years. And as the festival wound down and we sat on the roof, we talked, or rather, you talked, and I did my best to listen when all I could think about is the way your lips moved, the way your voice sounded.

I think you were talking about masks. You said something like, "I'm so glad that we sometimes have this chance, to take off the masks and be who we really are." I was too enthralled and had had too much wine for the words to really take root then and there, but the seed was planted. And when dawn finally did come (I didn't realize I had even fallen asleep, but you were still there, your arms around me, watching the sun rise) you seemed different. I could no longer think of you as a tremulous creature hiding in the wake of your sister, and you could finally see through the air I projected of perfect calm and perfect control.

It seemed so wonderful at the time, to be privileged to this secret world. I had forgotten, momentarily, how dangerous the truth can be.

masks, pt. i

One summer when I was a kid, the wildfires drove everyone out of our hometown. It felt so sudden: one day everything was fine, I was out playing in the fields of sagebrush and tumbleweeds with my friends, and then I came home and my father made me put on a mask and my mother thrust a bag of my things into my arms. "We have to leave," she told me, and we did. We drove for what seemed an eternity (all trips last forever when you're a child), stopping at the occasional rest area on the way out.

My memory of the trip, as childhood memories often are, is hazy, a series of images and feelings: everyone wearing masks at the rest area; the sky filled with smoke; a sickly sun shining through the haze; my eyes burning; my parents chastising me when I fidgeted with the mask. We stayed at a motel in a town I don't remember, somewhere that was supposed to be safe from the fires for the time being--I remember that very clearly, my father on the phone with someone, saying in hushed tones, "We're safe here for the time being."

That night when they had both gone to sleep, I stole the room key and went outside without the mask on and just walked around--some foolish gesture of defiance, I suppose, or maybe just restlessness and a longing to still be spending my summer under the sky. I could feel the smoke in the air almost immediately, making my lungs hurt and my breathing shallow.

We drove on from there, further from the smoke, until we stopped seeing people in masks and the sun shone bright and clear, and the confusion and uncertainty faded into a dull tedium. But that sensation of not being able to trust the air stuck with me long after the smoke had cleared.

a prelude for april (scenes from a pandemic pt. iv)

I'm pretty sure I had plans for April's theme, but like so many things this past month, it's gone now. It's cold out there--cold like a normal Seattle winter, which isn't that cold, and is still warm enough that the leaves are starting to come in on the trees and the flowers are in bloom. There are even tulips at the courthouse. Spring is a time of vibrant colors, of life, and that's no less true when there is no one there to witness it. Those tulips still exist even if there aren't many people left at the courthouse, even if the usual spread of office workers eating their lunch on the steps, admiring the fountains and the flower arrangements. The color isn't there for us. So many people will miss the spring, sealed away in their homes--it's a small tragedy in the grand scheme of things, but it is one worth marking.

It's interesting how quickly the city is finding a sense of normal in all of this. In some ways we're still struggling, of course, but in others . . . this is how life is now. It won't last forever, but it could very well last for a very long time, and damned if we aren't determined to find a way to get by, to make it easy, or at least smooth. Within the past week, the data in Washington state has been promising. The growth of the disease seems to no longer be exponential; it's far from over, but it is comforting, at least, to think that all of this is working.

This month's theme is masks. Unlike the indifferent beauty of spring, masks, literal and figurative, are something which exist for us. There are masks which protect, masks which conceal, masks which keep us warm. And on some of them you can doodle a little angry face with a sharpie if you want. I am trying very hard to retain a sense of a schedule right now, but it is proving to be something of a challenge.