The one behind the mask

I got dressed up in my complete cat costume before walking over to Lynn's party last night, because I figured I'd look like less of an idiot walking around with a tail if I had the mask on too. So I'm walking across the courtyard, very self-conscious of if people are thinking I'm strange or juvenile to be walking around as a cat. I'm usually anxious over how people are seeing me, and it's only been exacerbated by my education classes and their emphasis on how you're presenting yourself. So I'm starting to feel ridiculous and then I realize--even if they see me, they don't know who I am.

I can see why the Venetians love Carnival. The anonymity of wearing a mask is quite a powerful experience. I wanted to go prowl around town, be outrageous, show off... but by then I had crossed the courtyard, so I figured I'd better go into the party, which was small but fun, and where I learned that British sailors had better be careful around Genevieve. ;)

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Most recently read: The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt, by Patricia MacLachlan. I picked it up from the children's section at the Williamsburg Library Book Sale (much inferior to Bethlehem's in terms of the book selection, but great for videos--I got The Birdcage for $1!) on Sunday, thinking that it would be a Christmas present for Rachel, but I fell in love with it and don't want to give it up. (Sorry, Rach! You'll get something else wonderful!) Minna's family is really strange: her mother's a writer and never asks her normal questions like "How was your day?" Instead, she gets questions like "What is the quality of beauty?" She longs for a normal family, maybe one like Lucas's, the cute new viola player at the conservatory with a gorgeous vibratto (and no, that's not a euphamism). The usual sequence of growing up and coming to terms with life events happen, but it's the language and wordplay that makes this such a wonderful and lyrical book:

Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A different one. A better one. McGrew knows this too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

This was the passage that convinced me to take the book home, and it was well worth it.

Books read this month: 12
Books read this year: 92