Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother or father were born.

Koan meditations, #2.

My original face. My face. My eyes, pools of water in the face of God. My nose breathing in air of creation. My brow, furrowed in the land of long ago. My lips pursed together or open in the words of devotion.

No good or evil — why do you ask this? Why must I not think of good or evil? Am I good? Evil? How am I to not think of something when I’m told not to think of it. I feel my evil, my delight in being bad, being the rebel Devil, the sick delight of blowing up the world. Counting the dead bodies on the TV — how big can the number go? But my heart does not connect with abstract — what is my original need? Is that the same as my face?

What if I live in a Hall of a Thousand Faces? If I don’t know my true face? Who am I? What are the masks that you wish me to take off?

I’m afraid to undo this mask lest you see the horrible truth about me. I’m afraid to show you the blackness of my soul. I’m — taken out again into the world and it’s just me — we’ve only just started.

You realize one does not just find one’s original face — I feel inadequate, bad at this task. I’m afraid I will have no face at all. Inspiration? I feel uninspired. I think too much. I can’t think of my original face!

Shakespeare was trained in the rhetoric of other points of view. How does one drop into a character? I want versus I understand. Seeking to understand. How do you show me your face? My wife said I was weak and brought abuse upon myself — was my original face the face of the vanquished slave?

Why do I yearn to dominate another? I want to sink into our masculinity and femininity. I was the least masculine man she had been with — did she want more? Is she drawn to maturity or strength or desires domination?

Sometimes my face is a puppy dog or a young boy. I want love and cuddles and taking care of and not to confront the world.

Sometimes my face is the warrior with hard cock and piercing eyes. Sometimes I want to punish and hurt, sometimes I want to conquer and explore. I don’t know the boundaries or when I’m falling into outer space.

I need love, there’s a certain emptiness in space, an emptying out of ego and self identity, yet this is me — this broken body and these actions. I made these connections, this secret life.

What is my secret face? Everybody lies and everyone has his secrets — secret shames of sex — that tendril digging deep into your — telling me I have to obey/deny, learn these things, follow these rules.

Telling you you’re wrong.

I yearn to put on other faces, other lives, other worlds. This is — to write, to find a way in because my mind seems incapable of finding a true path of forming words organically, that are not the manufactured requirements of narrative.

Mazin says narrative is a lie — the narratives we tell in story of who is good and who is evil. Your original face? That is a narrative too and the requirement is to tell the story without good or evil, right? That is, without moral or point. The point is the question. What is the question?

What is your true and original face? What can you tell from a face? How do you know what is a mask?

“Show me your original face.”

“It’s a good face, honest, a bit sad.”

“Where does the sadness come from?”

“I lost my twin at sea.”

In Shakespeare, people are constantly being lost at sea. The seas are dangerous. They bring you to this land and when you land, gender first, but all, becomes uncertain — there are masks and costumes and no one is as they appear.

Everything is an amusing lie, a subterfuge for innocent and heartful purpose.

So what clothes do I wear? Am I the duke in secret? A woman dressed as a man? Do I think I am a man and actually woman? Is Kate lying or honest when she bends the knee to Petruccio?

Are you lying when you say I love you? Isn’t it hard to be honest? Too cruel? Am I protecting you or myself with my lies?

Here then, I take off the mask and unveil the monster. The disguise the monster wears — or angels? The disguise angels wear to live in the world. You were always an angel and you hid it badly.

“Angels and monsters? I told you not to think of good and evil.” But that is all we do, categorize peoples and ideas and actions into one or the other. Always we come back to heaven and hell. For Jean d’Arc, the world was alive with gods and goddesses in the trees, the animals. What mythologies live in our hearts? How are we to escape or subvert these stories that are so sure of themselves? What does it take for the spy to question her actions? What if the world is not at all as it seems?