Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

The Mask and the Void

What is a face but a mask obscuring all that lies within? The eyes are the portal to the soul they say, but how little they reveal. All our expressions are pantomimes, grinning and frowning as we think the occasion demands. But is it us there for all to see? We act as if it is so; how could we not? On that other road lies mistrust and madness, the loss of self. Yet, can we ever really say we know someone, know what is in their minds? Oh, they tell us true, so they say, but we all know how words obscure as much as they reveal.  

Do we have a secret self that no one can share, that is ours alone? Those thoughts that echo through the caverns of our minds, do we keep them hidden? I think, therefore I am and so forth. A solitary existence upon which no one can intrude. But are we ever truly alone? Even when we have sealed ourselves away, monks upon a fast, our thoughts are shaped in words and images, by all we have seen and done and who we have been with. We are mimics, all things to all people, as needs must. After all, what are we, in the end, without them?  

An absence, a yawning void. That is what is at our centre and we spend our frantic, furious days trying to give it some shape and meaning. But the only meaning to be found is each other, all of us, together.