Pic and a Word Challenge #188: Neutral Mask

Today celebrates my friend Miralem. You recently gave me a task: to translate an article about the neutral mask.

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This is what I think about it.

Neutral mask
  
I understand
how it can be useful
to remove yourself
and wear the neutral mask
as a pedagogical tool
but please never wear it as a friend
no matter how sis and I used to joke
that we were in your group
as if you were our therapist.
I like your reactions,
natural, spontaneous,
human.
I like your enthusiasm,
joy, humour, you-ness.
Remove this
and only the mask remains.
Never let this happen.
The world needs more you,
not more neutrality. 

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You also sent me this poem and it wasn’t even my birthday.

This happened just after Joey commented under this post that “the first 5-6 captions read like a poem” and I replied that I “live in the crack between poetry and prose, left and right brain, reality and fiction”. You hadn’t seen this before sending me the poem. I told you that you were worse than Google.

It feels so good to be known well. Poetry and prose are the only two lovers that I’m happy to have fight over me.

We live far now but we still get together when possible. For my recent birthday you came over with the best possible chocolate (dark with cherries) and the most beautiful greeting card, among others. I’ll take photos of it sooner or later. I’ll put it in the tree.

Here are some together moments since your previous birthday. And that pizza will be repeated sooner or later because it’s yum!

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  When I came home for the summer, the first thing you did was take me on a walk to the field with my sister.

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  And to the neighbourhood where you used to live and now you live again.

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  It’s always strange to come back and try to fit in.

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  Fifty percent off! Let’s go surfing!

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  Reunited with your friend.

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  One week later we went to the city.

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  It was really nice.

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  You went well with the architecture.

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  Not that I’m counting, but this is your second. 😀

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  The Dragon Bridge. One of the most famous Ljubljana attractions.

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  Then you took me to the exhibition of puppets, masks and posters by your puppetry mentor Eka Vogelnik.

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  Here you observe the puppet depicting her daughter.

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  For the end of the day we had cakes at the SEM Café. Look at the sparrow.

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  One month later was Eka’s daughter’s turn: Brina had a PicniConcert up the Ljubljana Castle. You brought watermelon.

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  Here you are with Brina. It was lovely!

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  After the concert we had to test some real Neapolitan pizza in Verace. We’ll be back!

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  The evening ended with a drink at Tobačna.

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  The last photo I took was in October. Looking good with sis. There will be more together times.

Your name means Master of the World and once you gave it to me to play with. Remain happy you and thank you for the world. Cin cin!

Oh! We are not together on any of the photos! Let’s fix that:

So long, it was so long ago. (Your diploma, not mine.)

In response to Patrick Jennings’ Pic and a Word Challenge #188: Mask