Masquerade

I'm wearing a mask. Normally, that would be a metaphor, but, in fact, today, I *am* wearing a mask. It's a beautiful handmade papier-mache deal with a large headress of feathers that I picked up from a local mask-maker this afternoon. I've got a Mardi Gras party in a couple of weeks, and I learned a long time ago that a mask only truly becomes yours after you've inhabited it for a while. So I'm making this baby mine.

The thing I love about a mask is how it allows you to be someone else and totally "misbehave" if you want to. And when there are a lot of people wearing masks in a single place, something wonderful -- something a little crazy -- tends to happen. People forget who they are for a little while, and they cut loose with a unique kind of energy. This was my experience year after year at Mardi Gras down in the Quarter. I'd put on a mask, drink a Hurricane and be dancing down the street, shaking a can full of oyster shells, with a krewe in no time.

Here in mid-winter, I feel a strong urge to cut loose. As do a lot of people around me, apparently. So we're having a masquerade.

And this is a strange thing: GF tells me she has a mask phobia. Mainly, it's the idea of wearing a mask that gives her fits (so she just won't do that), but she admits she's not sure how she'll react to having a houseful of people in disguise. I guess we'll just load her up with Xanax and bourbon and hope she lives through the night. It's hardly the best way to desensitize someone to a phobia, but *everyone* should be able to do Mardi Gras. Even if it requires Big Pharma to the rescue.