To Wear the Mask

(Francois Barraud)

The Monday after a "full" weekend is the punishment we get for wanting to live.  I guess.  There have always been such Mondays in my life.  It is a Western invention, I think, but the rest of the world is catching up.  The world runs on Industry.  

So here's the report.  Summer weather has come, the nights not cooling as they had, the humidity rising with the heat.  The sky is not quite as blue.  I filled up my gas tank from rock bottom empty yesterday and spent over seventy dollars.  $70.00.  The numbers are more eye-catching.  That is a preview of the coming summer prices.  The NCAA Finals will be played tonight by two corporate teams.  They are the industrial/military powers of college basketball.  It is not what one hoped for.  We'd rather see some scrappy bunch of kids win like in the movies, but that is not the reality of the thing.  The boys who play tonight are the ones who signed on in some long forgotten youth.  They are professionals.  

I went to a mall yesterday in search of shoes.  My Chuck's have blown out, the seams just falling apart. This was not the mall with Bloomingdales and Tiffany and Louis Vuitton, et. al.  This one had Sears and Penneys and all the kitschy smaller chains.  I walked into Dillards and passed through the pastiche of "a little bit for everybody, nothing for anybody" displays.  I was hit with vertigo and began to sweat. Not metaphorically but truly.  I walked by a middle-aged couple who were "shopping."  I guessed that is what they were doing, just meandering about, "shopping."  I imagined them sitting at home in their tract housing bored on a Sunday afternoon having eaten pancakes and waffles and bacon.  

"You want to do anything today?"  

"Let's go shopping."  

I found the shoe department.  There were hundreds of shoes, but no Chuck Taylors.  An entire mall lay ahead of me if I wanted to search.  Luckily, the exit door was just a couple aisles away.  

I'll never do that again.  But I can't quit thinking that those people vote.  It matters not if I go to the mall or don't.  I live in their world.  They will spend their days opining about what happened the night of the Martin/Zimmerman fiasco.  They will attempt through their knowledge of popular culture to solve the crime.  

I want to wear the mask I use in so many pictures.  To hide.  To disguise.  To identify myself as something else.  Zorro.  The Lone Ranger.  Batman.  The Mask calls attention to our own strange ideals and brand of justice.  It identifies us.  We are "other."  No one knows our name.