This morning I was looking at the people on my crowded blue line train. Typically, I have my face in a book and barely notice the mass of humanity orbiting around me. But this morning I watched faces - and pictured their unsmiling, dreary mouths kissing. We all put on our train faces every morning, but these faces do not represent us. Inside we're kissing. We're hugging. We're fucking.
We love our briefcases and our smart phones and our free newspapers, but these are merely accessories for the costumes and masks we wear every day. Occasionally, kissing happens on the train or metro stations and strangely it seems foreign and out of place, like a soldier wearing a clown wig in the jungle. But we're so used to maintaining that wall of conformity, that facade of neutrality that we lie to ourselves. None of us wanted to be robots when we grew up, but that's the costume we wear on a daily basis.
When Al Jourgensen of Ministry sang "Everyday (is Halloween)" he wasn't talking about the freaks and punks and oddly dressed people in our society - he was talking about The Normals. The people who hide behind suits and haircuts who deny themselves the freedom of identity. We are not couches. We are not frappacinos. We are not iPhones. We are husbands and lovers and artists and dreamers. I am going out of my way to find these qualities in every person I see.
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