masks
I have been wearing a bandana over my nose and mouth since yesterday. Not permanently - mostly just when outside - this is because I walk everywhere, and the wind-chill factor when walking between my house and anywhere else in town is about 8 (on a scale of 1-10). So to prevent my face from being scoured off by gale force winds I wear the bandana.
I realise I look a little odd, but people don’t stare at you in the street if you hook a scarf up over your face. The problem when I do that is that my glasses fog up, when I wear the bandana they don’t, because it’s thin and the heat passes through instead of being trapped like in the scarf.
I’ve taken to wearing it into college (since much of my walking is between college and home) and I receive odd looks and the occasional comment (after all, it’s not windy inside) but as it happens I like the feeling I get when I wear it and I have discovered something…
By creating a barrier, by covering my face, I cover my humanity. And in doing so; I lose my humanity and become a cipher. I lose myself, but I become whatever they want to see, they treat me exactly as they would if I was nobody that looked like somebody - a human-shaped nothing.
It’s interesting, it’s liberating, they talk to the mask, and for the first time I’m aware of the mask, it’s not the mask that looks like me, it’s an actual mask, and people don’t know how to react when they see the same thing everyday in a million different ways!
I think I’ll keep on wearing my mask on the outside of my face and see what happens.
plum x