Human Faces Fake Us, and We Frown

In the course of a day, a person's face may take on and inhabit a million different shapes and configurations of expressions. Each combination expressing an equal number of feelings, ideas, reactions, personal characteristics, idiosyncrasies - all personal and unique to the person: the twist of a lip, the angle of an eyebrow, the opening of the lips, the openness of eyes, the tendency to smile or not smile, to sigh, laugh, grimace, or simply stare in a certain direction when bored. Each person we know, because of their features and the way they express and use them (or are used by their expressions), is unique because of their face. Most of the time.

But there's something different about a person's face, when they eat. They somehow lose themselves, their regular expression, all expressiveness, when they tear into a burrito, a sandwich, a potato, a banana. All animation, personality, uniqueness, individuality, all mannerisms, shapes, and usual features that make this person recognizable and that express this person's personality fades away and is replaced with the pure animal face. They resemble more a dog as it gnashes at its bowl of food. The eyes are closed or half closed, looking nowhere, the mind fully absorbed with the most automatic and instinctual of acts - an act begun in the womb through the umbilical chord and replaced with the mouth the first moment the baby latches its mouth onto a nipple. Peaceful, certain, serious. The human adult bites at food with perfect confidence without thought or cognition, just action. At these moments it's pure survival. The automatic animal survival face.

A person's face also gets this instinctual look during sex, when the usual looks of smiles, seriousness, sadness, or concern all fade away eventually during the act of forincation. The eyes may partially close or close all the way, showing a certain sameness, a look that transcends the individual and connects the species: the look of work, or pleasure in work, of being worked on/upon, the look of satiation, of being filled up: the most natural of acts, and perhaps the most unoriginal. The unoriginal procreation face

In death the face falls, stretches, lightens, and all fullness of person and individuality just a shadow, a poor imprint of that person's life and soul and personality and all we knew about them, a mere hint of what they were. The skin sags, despite the best efforts of the mortician to give some sense of the person. This face is barely a face; biologically it is, but it's already fading, quickly decaying, for good. This face is sad to us and expressionless, only a reminder of the person we knew. It's just skin and some bones underneath. The blood is all gone, all life, all color. The face is no longer a face. The face is there but the person is gone. It is no longer a face.

Normal Reality Theatre in a Dream

This dream was about being at a house, with a few people, many of which I did not know but it was all casual and everyone seemed to know everyone. Felt like it was close to the beach. Laid back. A girl was there, and she wasn't beautiful in the traditional sense, but she was nice, and perhaps pretty in her own way. I felt an attraction to her, but another man, a real man looking man, was also interested in her and was trying to charm her. A few times when I was near her we had put our arms around each other casually. I felt as though, this could be my girlfriend.

Then, the man was explaining that he was part of a theatre group and his particular type of theatre was to enact real, every day type activities in public, just normal activities you might see anyone do, but to act, to do it intentionally as drama - to fake it. So, we are all out side, it is somewhat dark, and we are in front of an apartment complex. I sit across the street and watch, and he and a few other guys are dressed as garbage men or movers, something like collectors, and they are all talking and pretending to collect stuff, as if that was really their job, but they were acting. Behind me to my right I noticed two guys, smallish, dressed as mime in black clothes and whiteface, and they look gay, as if they are a couple. I look at one guy and he does a motion like he's zipping his mouth shut and locking his mouth with an imaginary key.

I turn back to watch the Reality Drama and a lady on my left, in front of whose house I am sitting on the curb, lets out her dog, a big brown dog, and everyone freezes, scared of the dog.

We are back in the house and the girl, she's lying on the floor and I am looking at her and she becomes more and more beautiful. He hair has a slight frizz and curl to it, he cheeks are white with red flush, and she looks at me.