Mask of Sanity

The masks. I am haunted by the masks. Only in the night do the masks dance their devilish waltz to my torment. In the darkness, the mask slips. Unmasked. The illusion of sanity aborts. All that remains is an abyss. And I am hurtled into a maelstrom of nothingness.

The masks hang in the entry hall of his house. A house which was also once my house, but was, from the very beginning, always his house. While living in his house, I was permitted a minor role in the farce of which he was the impresario. His collection of masks heralded the entry into his interior. These masks were of symbolic importance to him. An importance he could never quite articulate. My intuition told me that this was some hyper-intellectual posing. On one hand, the masks in the entry referenced his academic refinement. A witty allusion to deconstructionist theory. On the other hand, the masks in the entry were a warning. Beware! All who enter the inner sanctum shall be deconstructed.

The mask. The post-modern subject as a construct existing only through repeated displacements onto mask after mask. His masks projecting some histrionic imitation of human sentiment which filled all the available space in our collaborative emotional life with utter substance-less-ness. In some macabre twist, I know that he knows that his interior self is nothing but a yawning gap of vacant-ness. In the entry way of his house, his collection of masks proclaim to all who enter that he merely wears the mask of sanity.