Masks

     Masks serve many purposes. When I was a child, in elementary school, I wanted to mask my face with my hair, but my parents kept making me pin it back. They knew it wasn't good for me to try to hide myself, that I needed to learn not to be afraid to let people see my face, which would tell them who I was.

    Though a mask always hides the face, its purpose is not always to prevent knowing who is behind the mask. A bank robber will wear one to prevent recognition, but a skier wears a knitted ski-mask for protection from the harsh elements. A Halloween trick-or-treater wears a mask simply as a part of the costume. These days we wear masks not to hide our identities or protect our faces, but to protect each other. Wearing a mask to protect you gives me a pleasant sense of fellowship and caring for my fellow-beings.

   People (grocery store clerks, barristers for drive-through coffee) tell me they like my mask. "Cute mask!" they'll say. I made it from some South African fabric my friend Maren brought back from that country, lime green with tiny zebras. I like it that my mask, a symbol of such dark and difficult times, can bring a smile to someone's face. I can't see it, but I can hear it in the voice and see it in the eyes.

    I'm not much of a collector, but I do have a small collection of masks, displayed above the bookcase in my library.

    I bought the mask on the far left—the gold-faced woman with a mass of black hair—

years ago in Denmark, or maybe Sweden. I wore it one year as part of a Hallowe'en costume: the gold-sparkly woman's face with a large bush of black hair, dark red lips, and black-lined eyes, along with red high-heel shoes, a black leather mini-skirt, a gold lame blouse, and a red feather boa. It wasn't hard to step into character in a costume like that! 

    The next mask in the collection is a leather face my nephew brought me from his trip to Haiti. It is the kind of mask that is the likeness of a face rather than the covering for a face. Such leather masks are a craft in Haiti. I don't know anything about their origins or purpose, only that this one is beautiful.

   Next to the Haitian mask is a Venetian mask, made of papier maché, gold paint, glitter, and decorative braid, given me by a friend when we were in Verona to see Aida. In the heyday of old Venice, masks were used to disguise identities, giving people anonymity in their amours and shady business dealings. The concealing of identity in daily life gave license to all sorts of moral decadence. Underhanded transactions went undetected. Promiscuity was rampant. Gambling went on day and night. Society grew more and more decadent, until finally masks were banned. Today tourists buy these beautiful, bejeweled masks not to wear but to hang on the wall as art. Stripped of their original nefarious context, the masks are mute reminders of what happens to a society when it becomes masked for reasons of anonymity, not for reasons of protection.

   I bought the half-face mask that hangs next in line at the Oregon Country Fair from a booth of puppeteers from Takilma, Oregon. Like the gold-faced woman, it is meant to be worn. I wore it at the Country Fair, not so much to disguise myself—I had neither amorous intentions nor cheating tricks up my sleeve—but to enter the spirit of the festival. Masks are good for that.

    The next three are more accurately faces than masks. All are ceramic: a sun-face; an Elizabethan tragedy-mask a student gave me; and another sun-face. These faces match the large ceramic face that was my mother's and now hangs in the center of my custom-built bookcase.

 

    Maybe in a few years, I'll hang my South African zebra-fabric mask on the wall as a historical object, too, a reminder of yet another reason we might wear a mask. I'll be glad to relegate it to history.