Face theatre

As if by force of habit, the dance begins; the show takes flight; and the shadow boxing commences. We wake and soon we make the faces we make to face the faces we face. We give them personalities and stories to tell. We teach them to disguise unease with relative ease; and to camouflage disdain with smirks. We assign them behaviours that can lie, honestly. We decorate them with strong pretences erect bold defences, and paper over cracks and empty spaces. We dress their expressions in finely tailored suits of pantomimes; they become those street performers we used to avoid. Now, like us, they are actors playing staged roles they were born to play well. It's a slow tango of sparring boxers, a dance with schizophrenic precision. In time, we slowly lose track of the many faces we forge to face the faces we face; especially those we make to replace the faces we hide from the world. But, does it really matter in the end if we are already them and they us? Those faceless characters we create but can no longer distinguish. Which are the real faces, the genuine fakes we embrace on this grand stage, this kabuki theatre of faces? Perhaps, there is always time to slow down, recalibrate, to find bits of our disoriented selves even among the faces we give faces to face the faces we face.