The unmasking of the masks
We have normalized the covering of the face
What we once looked on in horror,
What Islamic women covered to our chagrin,
(and resulting political/legal responses in Europe)
Not so long ago,
Is now our norm.
The facial cues we used to rely upon in our social intercourse,
The curve of the mouth’s edges,
The cheek muscles pulled back in a smile a grin or a growl,
Those subtle emotional cues,
Now are hidden.
We only have the eyes now,
And their limited expression
Peeking above the KN95 barrier,
To discern any response to our verbal challenges.
Persona, mask, personality,
These we were taught
Were only the external manifestation of the soul..
Masking the inner light that was kept from view.
Herr Rabbiner Professor Freud gave us a darker version,
Of forces beneath the surface that needed suppression,
The Id, the naked ape inside,
Despite the genteel middle-class Viennese gemutlichkeit
That persona was the projected image of our better selves
What we would like others to see, not the real darker self.
Now fully masked,
We interact with one another
Unable to decipher the cues that once alerted us
To the response of the other.
Unable to see a flicker, a smile, a tersing of the lips in anger
Unable to respond in kind.
How will this affect our connections, our relationships?
How will we know when she returns a naughty look?
Left only with a wink, and a unilateral eyebrow rise?
Without the impish smile that usually accompanies the warmth of the gaze?
It is as if we need to begin again.
Like infants,
Gazing at divine mother’s eyes at the breast
Where it all begins,
And the toddler reads nonverbally, mother’s approval or otherwise, in her face, her smile
And the infant learns to obey her facial expression with such precision.
(I will never forget my earliest memory circa 1954
my father’s glare
In shul as a toddler on Yom Kippur
during Kedusha
As he stared me down to stop interrupting his piety.
His lips were tight, and his eyes burned deep into me.)
We will have to relearn new skills
To see only in the eyes
Everything we need
To read another’s soul,
To seek approval or disavow reproof
To discern betrayal or intuit a sly cunning
To see warmth and love
Or hatred and jealousy.
How to learn this?
Impossible with our aging neurons.
We will leave that to the young
Who will now have that advantage over us,
Seeing what we cannot
Behind the mask
