False Face, False Life

Observations:

1) For all of my life, I've been considered "not quite like anyone else," and this might be caused by my refusal (or perhaps inability) to put on a happy face when I feel grief.

2) Yet here on the margins of Canada, we have many people, like me, who never seem able to wear that mask. Perhaps our visibility is part of a traditional Canadian sadness that has not yet been corporatized and marketized out of sight. After all, we spend half the year in a deep freeze, with short days and long nights, in a country that hides any number of seasonal stings behind a calm white wall. We have social space, then, to frown when life creeps up on us.