Faces are this week’s theme…or rather the lack of them. What can I say…I miss ’em. Eyes are great and everything, windows to the soul n all that but they’re not quite enough to go on. To me there is no such thing as an uninteresting face. If you look closely they all tell a story. Our entire lives are etched on our faces. Wearing masks means we are missing a mountain of unspoken communication that emanates from every encounter we have. It connects us in ways we are not even consciously aware of but it is happening constantly as we go about our day. I miss smiling. You can achieve a lot with a smile. It generates positivity and unity, two things we desperately need at the moment so it is somewhat a cruel irony that we are currently prevented from doing so because our faces are now mostly obscured from vision.
I went to college in Glasgow, where if you make eye contact with someone, you smile at each other. Standard practise. I personally thought this was a good policy so when I came back to London I continued with this approach but was rarely returned with anything other than a glance that indicated that they most likely thought I was basically a loon bin. This did not deter me and have continued regardless ever since. The ratio of return smiles in this city isn’t amazing tbh but very occasionally you get a proper smile back, a smile with no purpose other than itself and that is always a beautiful thing.
I even miss this hit and mostly miss attempt at facial interaction. I always found it a fun game. Like trying to make someone like you who you know really doesn’t. I wanna be able to smile at strangers again and have them not smile back. I miss them trying to work out if they know me or not. I miss watching them look over their shoulder in case it was in fact directed at someone behind them. I miss seeing their face twitch and contort as their brain can’t quite decide whether to commit to a return smile or not. This generally ends with the corners of the mouth going up but not quite bringing the rest of the face with it. But mostly I miss the looks of vague disgust as people are actually pissed off I have attempted to yank them out of their default hostile stay away from me misery mode. So rewarding.
We are clearly gonna have to mask up for quite a while longer sadly and it is unfortunately essential in this ongoing humans vs virus war (who’s winning? Kinda difficlut to call at this stage wouldn’t you say?) but I really yearn for the day when we don’t.