Discarded Masks of Creativity

I have a lot of time for walks these days. I was unfortunately laid off late last year due to the pandemic and, well, so have a lot of others. This means a lot of other competition on the job market; a lot of lost souls wandering my residential neighbourhood as well. I don’t always see these vagabonds, these shadows in the night. But the marking is always there. Well, masking might be the better word.

I started walking a lot more in the winter, soon after my industry went belly up. I live in a major city in Canada, so that means snow every once and awhile and then slush and dirty remnants of white. This was when I really started to notice the COVID droppings all over the place. Most were paper affairs, destroyed by the dampness all around. I was fascinated by this human need to claim territory with the very thing that was there to protect ourselves and others. Did they just rip the masks off before getting into their cars? Did they throw them on the ground dramatically or lightly release them, allowing them to float in the air?

I often found them near the edges of sidewalks or tucked away by the curb. Black ends would point out of a small snowbank. The unmistakable white straps would rustle within a cold breeze. This was winter so when I was feeling like a concerned enough citizen, I would pick up the discarded coverings and throw them out at the closest garbage can. The issue with this was that it was a populous neighbourhood by one of the major streets, so finding any kind of waste bins could be a challenge.

But this is not a piece to tell you that I sometimes do overgrown boy-scout activities and receive praise for that. I mean, you could honour my commitment to saving the oceans and sea life by tipping below, but that sounds like the topic for another one of Vocal’s challenges.

No, what got my attention were the pieces of refuse that could be salvaged. I think I first started to notice the cloth face shields amongst the paper ones due to some bright colours and intricate designs. I, myself, have many masks that I DO NOT just throw away and wear for protection and to look super cool. I’ve got a bunch of Mario ones and a Scorpion and Sub-Zero set. I have a Batman logo and the ‘Official Spaceballs’ mask. I have a very special one that my mother made for me where used fabric from my Grandmother’s old tea towels. She embroidered my name into the face side and it was extra-special as the rags bore the St John’s Ambulance logo; an organization that my Grandma was very active with as a volunteer, from World War II to her 75th year.

I don’t know if these reusable masks had the same meaning to those that were discarding them or losing them but seeing them, slowly being covered by a fresh, AM dusting, was heartbreaking. So much to my partner’s chagrin, I started rescuing dirty face coverings.

Of course, this was happening during a pandemic, and the mix of possible germs from COVID and from the outside elements made this a somewhat unsanitary hobby. I was as safe as I could be when grabbing these fabric treasures. I always wore my gloves and then carried around Ziploc bags to trap the masks, germs and all, in. From there, I’d come home, take off and wipe down my gloves, then wash my hands thoroughly, then completely wash the masks with a bar of specialty laundry soap, set them aside to dry, and then wash my hands even more diligently than the first time. From there, I’d put the masks in with a load of either darks or colours depending on the design, and I would set the machine to a ‘sanitary’ cycle. I’d hang the masks to dry and then check to see what kind of shape they were in. Sometimes if they were super mucked up or had like lipstick stains (surprisingly I only found this twice), I’d do a more thorough scrub with the special bar soap and then use a very powerful stain remover with two liquids that you needed to combine on the fabric and then immediately throw in the wash. Often that would work but some were just so mistreated that the black stains on the inner lining would never come off.

I should clarify right now that my growing collection was not to wear. I already had enough fashionable face covers to get me through weeks upon weeks. The strangers’ masks were more of a rescue effort, I suppose. I didn’t know what I was doing at first. Maybe I grabbed the first one because it had the Raptor’s logo on it (even though I’m not that much of a basketball fan). I just knew I couldn’t leave these often intricately made pieces of art just to be slowly destroyed by the elements. It wasn’t until months later, I got a bolt of inspiration.

I kept my treasure trove in a canvas bag: a sac of masks. After my partner questioned my sanity for the nth time, I figured I had to do something with them. If I saw most of my finds as the expression of some sewists hard labour. Maybe they put their blood and sweat into these designs. More likely, they were forced to pivot with their skills and start making masks to appease the Gods of Capitalism. Still, through my rose-tinted glasses and to make my many, many, many walks more engaging, they were small, sometimes buried art pieces, in an ever-growing outdoor exhibit. So I thought that they needed to treated like paintings or rare books and be put behind glass.

The thought of filling my already crowded house with frames filled with masks pinned down like a taxonomist’s collection of insects didn’t fill me with excitement. I was (and still am) going through my old collectible cards I had bought an exorbitant amount of clear sheets for three-hole binders. I realized that it would be super cool to flip through my master collection. I could put small notes and poems and micro-stories next to these pieces of human resistance (and resistance to that resistance, perhaps) to bring life to these once discarded items. I might not know the actual stories behind their owners or creators or anyone in between, but I had stories of my own masks and I had a good imagination.

You might be wondering where the ‘craft’ part of my tale is. How do scissors factor into this? Do I sneakily cut masks off people and then run off with the booty? Do I hold people up at scissor-point and demand what’s around their mouth while I, conveniently, have a mask to conceal my identity?

The answer is pretty simple; as you probably noticed with my cleaning routine of my finds, I wanted to bring these masks back to their former glory, no matter how bad the damage from snow, ice, rain, footsteps, tires, or the darkest sins of the soul of mankind. Maybe that’s a bit too dramatic.

Most of the recoveries were in good shape. Sure, a number of them were stained beyond treatment; we don’t have the technology to rebuild/rewash them. But, there were a few that were torn or tattered. A few I had to literally free from a block of ice by chipping away at it. Some I would pull from their frozen prison and threads would remain trapped on the icy road.

Some had threads sticking out from all sides. The scissors came in handy to trim away the imperfections or to perform surgery. Some masks were just beyond saving but one side was usually salvageable. If I could find two damage face shields with opposite ends in decent shape, I could combine those to make a Franken Mask-onster!

So this is my weird side-craft now while I look for new work or kickstart my own business or pursue my writing career. I have binders full of women… and men… and children’s masks. Some are boring solid colours. There are a lot of black ones, sometimes with the company on a small tag on the side. Some of them (especially the kiddie ones) have fun stuff like gummy bears, or dinosaurs, or a bear nose. Maybe the whole thing is childish within itself? Maybe I truly have gone mad with a pandemic on one hand and too much time in the other.

But maybe there will be a day in the future where I’ll show my hypothetical kids (or, more realistically, nieces and nephews) my binders full of family memories and perhaps one with memes. Who knows: the way we take pictures and save images these days is weird… But, there will be a dusty booklet in the corner. They’ll ask me about it and I’ll say, “well kids, let me tell you about the time that we all had to stay indoors to save the entire race and so, so, so, so many people couldn’t even do that. Well, here are their masks; that’s all that remains of them… probably.”