For instance, I never realized how many
faces there are. There are lots of people but
still more faces, for everyone has several.
There are people who wear a face for years,
of course it wears out, gets dirty, cracks
in the folds, stretches like a glove one has
worn on a journey. Those are thrifty, simple
people: they don’t change it, they don’t even
have it cleaned. It’s good enough, they
maintain, and who can convince them
otherwise? The question does arise, since
they have several faces, what do they do
with the others? They keep them in reserve.
Their children will get to wear them.
But it also happens that their dogs wear
them when they go out. And why not?
Face is face.

Have I said it already?
I am learning to see.
Yes, I’m beginning.
It is still going badly.
But I want to make use of my time.

Other people put on their faces with
uncanny rapidity, one after the other, and
wear them out. At first it seems to them as if
they have them forever, but they are barely
forty and this one is already the last. That
of course has its tragic side. They are not
used to take care of faces, they run through
the last one in a week, there are holes in it,
in many places it is as thin as paper, and
then slowly what’s underneath emerges, the
not-face, and they walk around with that.