It is truly an amazing thing, the personas we portray. We all seem to be lost in a masquerade sometimes, putting up a front for everyone to see. Sometimes we are funny and other times we call for sympathy, but mostly we don a day to day mask that may not really be us.

I find that this blog, at least for me is the closest I come to being unmasked. Or should I say that I let my masks show more than I do in my daily life. I think that a lot of us bloggers are like that. In order to write what we write, some of us must bare who we are in ways that are unexpected, even to us.

A mask slips and we show that we are sensitive and emotional, something that co-workers, friends or even family may not know. Another costume falls and we show that we have a level of kink that we would not willingly show the outside world.

For me I know that some of this comes out in the short stories that I write, and more so in the erotica of late. Maybe this is revealing too much of myself, but I know, and only after I write it, that these words are me and if I harbor secret fantasies and longings they tend to reveal themselves though these creative words. In my longer stories I tend to reveal my ideology and these are much deeper and more scandalous (sometimes) than the fantasies that I pen.

Then there is the aspect of creating an illusion for ourselves through the writing. We do this by portraying ourselves as what we would ideally like to be. It is not the hard truth or reality, but is the divine truth of our longed for self image. And in this way, creating the illusion for the blog, we get to experience the allusion of the illusion. We revel in it, we accept the kudos, we pontificate from it, but when we leave the blog we ultimately are who we are. And being who we really are is the greatest illusion of all, for it is so perfect that we may even delude ourselves that this person, me, is who I want to be.

The illusions are many, the humorist, the intellectual, the physical, the spiritual, the metaphysical, the transcendental, and the list goes on. We are lost in a world of illusions, and there are zones here in blogland that are more shrouded in the illusions, and there are some that are less. For me, I hope that my blog is a representation of me as a less “intentionally” clouded place.

“We all have out illusions, far be it for me to take away yours.”
--- Mok to Angel, “Rock & Rule”, 1978, Nelvana Productions

This Masquerade,
By George Benson & Leon Russell

Are we really happy with this lonely game we play
Looking for words to say
Searching but not finding understanding anyway
We’re lost in this masquerade

We could just start over
but it’s oh so hard to do
When you’re lost in a masquerade