Unknown Faces

Humans. We walk around passing millions of people, our eyes taking in a thousand faces each day but our brains only comprehending a handful. So many faces that are different but belong to the same species. As many stories as there are beauties.

            Isn’t it sad? That we miss out on all of that and we are only able to recall a grey mass of people whose faces are darkened with an icon of a question mark?  I believe it’s one of the saddest aspects of humanity that we lack the capacity to appreciate the people around us. To connect with them on levels that we could once again feel fulfilled and at one with the universe. A sensation of completeness that we can’t even remember. But instead, we stay alone and lonely, everyone doing their own individual thing, where you are the center of your own life, and you will never be complete because you’ll stay depressed. Depressed because you can’t connect, depressed because you can’t find the truth and essence of your life.

            In my experience, I watched friends being unaware of each other as one of their friends grew more silent until they finally disappeared. A person who wasn’t able to connect. But then, in the same group, there are the people whose bold smiles never touches their eyes, as all the love they receive from others hollows them out slowly. I think humans don’t connect because of  the unknown, the part we don’t know about others. And you’re true essence can only be revealed at your deathbed, while alive, as humans, we will always have a void of feeling incomplete because we can’t see the truth around us, can’t connect with the people around us, as we don’t understand our function and fear others judgments of us. 

            So many people. So many stories. Why don’t we sit down and listen to the stories that people have to tell us—instead of watching Netflix—to hear the stories that actually take place in reality and not in our fictional world? So many stories that could be inspiring for our own ambition, motivation and life.

            There is so much we could know, but so little that we do.

            My personal hobby is to sit in a café to do what people don’t do anymore if not at a screen: to watch. I look at my surroundings I watch how people move, how they talk, how they laugh. I watch more television by doing so. I read more by reading their faces. I watched a group of youngsters, where one girl was shy, lost in a group that she calls her friends. I saw the young couple, that believes they’ll be in love forever, as they were lost in each other’s worlds, consumed. I saw an old woman walking through the glass doors.

            This was my cue. When I looked at her face, I found something that I needed for my drawings: a story to tell.  I pulled out my block and pencil and started drawing. Quick strokes to get the general shape of her head and hair as she ordered a coffee. She smiled making her wrinkles visible to me. By the deep wrinkles surrounding her eyes and mouth, I could see the happy life she must have led. Hands that looked old, her nails painted over to cover up the frailness underneath. Her—

            “What are you doing?” a girl’s voice snapped at me, her sudden proximity startling. I looked up and recognized the girl. She was one of the regulars with her usual cappuccino to-go in her hands; she was looking down at me. She was around my age and always dressed in black, but not in an emo way—more like a girl who fell out of a Grunge Tumblr Girl Aesthetic picture. Her fingers and wrists were decorated with jewellery, her eyes covered in round black shades while her lips quirked slightly at me. I remembered her. She sat down, “What are you doing?”

            “Nothing.” I replied, almost sounding defensive.

            She raised her eyebrows at me. “Sure. Are you a stalker or something?”

            “Technically, no,” I answered. “Theoretically, yes...I’m an artist.”

            “Is that your excuse?” she asked.

            I didn’t say anything. She just looked at me through her shades.

            “So, what? You stalk people and draw them?”

            I shrugged. Because yeah, that’s exactly what I do.

            She leaned forward looking at my block. She nodded raising her eye brows, impressed. “So, you draw faces, huh?”

            I nodded.

            “Only faces?” She asked.

            I nodded.

            “Why?”

            The question took me slightly off-guard because nobody ever asked me why. Nobody really understood why I sit here.

            “Better have a good reason to be a creep, otherwise it’s not worth it and someone should ban you from here,” she teased.

            “I like the stories that their faces tell.”

            “Stories?”

            “Yes, every scar, every wrinkle tells a story, but so do their expressions and emotions... I find it fascinating, and I want to capture it.” I explained.

            “So, you read faces?”

            “Basically. People often don’t see the people they’re surrounded by.” I continued, “Even the people that are right in front of them.”

            Judging by the way she pressed her lips together, she understood exactly what I was talking about. She knew how it felt to be unknown. She probably knew best how to create the lie and bury the truth she called herself.

            “Can you change that?” she quietly asked me.

            “No.” I chuckled. “Not for humanity at least, but for myself.”

            “What do you see?”

            “I see stories.”

            “When you look at me what do you see?”

            I hesitated to answer.

            “Do you know who I am?”

            “I don´t know anyone. I can only grasp a hint of a story, a sense of history and their personality, but I don’t know.”

            “You’re a dreamer then.”

            “I am an observer. I am an outsider looking in.”

            She shook her head, “You’re a creep that has no life, you mean.”

            I looked at her, surprised by her bluntness.

            She laughed at my expression, amused by my discomfort. I could see her smile, and she seemed happy and lovely, but without her eyes I couldn’t tell if this was real. Judging by the way she behaved, I guessed that she was either incredibly bored or kind of intrigued by me. I didn’t know.

            The grandma I’d started drawing left, to my dismay. I stared after her, closing my block knowing that that was it for today, an unfinished drawing of a woman I wasn’t able to fully capture. I hoped that she would come back soon so I could finish her story in my sketch and immortalize her in it. The girl was still watching me, shaking her head, still with a smirk dancing on her lips.

            “What do you want?” I asked. I was missing out on my surroundings, now I was a character in a story too. A story I didn’t want to participate in where a guy meets a girl, and now what?

            “You say you can read people...why don’t you tell me who you think I am?” she insisted, making me question her intention Did she have identity issues in which she believes no one sees her for who she is? Did she want someone to see the truth? Someone to hear her cry? To see her. I guessed that’s what her glasses were hiding.

            “Can’t tell with shades on.” I half-lied, already suspecting that she shared some kind of sadness or emptiness inside—which she was trying to hide—by the way she was questioning me. Almost like she was testing my credibility.

            She hesitated, but then pulled them off revealing her piercing green eyes. Eyes that were shining with sadness, but blunt with a numbness that was chilling. I could see her. I could see the sadness, while her face seemed to glow with youth and happiness. Her eyes… They were dark while her lips were pink.

            “What do you see?”

            “You’re a lie.” I said.

            Her eyes widened. “Excuse you?”

            “You’re a lie.” I repeated.

            She was silent. Anticipating me. “How do you do that? No one’s ever told me that.” She sounded more relieved than anything else, like she felt more alive and human now. Somebody saw. Funny how that’s the only thing that humans care about, that somebody sees and loves them just the way they are. Unique and imperfect and all.

            “Then nobody was looking.”

            “What if they were?”

            “Then they looked away.”

            “Why?”

            “Because that’s just how humans are,” I answered. My answers were short but they reached her anyway. She scared me in a way because she seemed so cool while her eyes betrayed a war. It’s funny to see the contrast of two versions of a person in one, and we never get close enough—look hard enough—to be able to see the person that was hiding inside. It’s like when I see a girl pretend to be stupid for a group of guys who think it’s cute and hilarious, but when you look into her blue eyes you see her intelligence and that she is putting on a show. Why? Because she believes that that’s what all the guys want, though it’s actually just what the insecure guys want. The ones who want to boost their ego, to prove to themselves that they’re smarter and they’re better. Second example right there, the cool kids, the bullies, the top dogs, every person that glows with power and is seemingly untouchable with an unspoken dominance over the rest, is also, just a façade, because if you look at the most confident people you often find the most insecure. Same goes with happy, the happiest people are often the ones that are sad or the ones that have experienced the saddest moments in their lives, knowing that life is fleeting. You can choose to drown in sorrow, or be happy with what you’ve got. People fool you, and their exterior is usually the one protective gutter that people get stuck in like flies. Everyone has something to hide. Vulnerability, cruelty or kindness. It makes them interesting. It makes them dangerous.

            She was still looking at me like there was something else to say, “Did you ever draw yourself?”

            I understood what she was asking really: Do you ever see yourself? Do you know who you are?

            “No.” I replied. But I wasn’t interesting, I was ordinary. I was simply a guy like anyone else. Maybe a freak if you consider my hobby and my behavior. I was an outcast and an outsider.

            She laughed sarcastically. “Right. And why is that?”

            “I see my face every day.”

            “You bored by it?” she asked and she shook her head at me disappointed. “You have a problem, you know that, right?”

            I frowned. “Do I?”

            She looked at me incredulous, “Fuck yes, you do. I mean, you know why you’re bored by yourself? Because you already know the answer to every question. You know your story and where you come from, you’re literally the only being that you know everything about. And you look around, draw people that you don’t know, whose stories you might not ever hear... because the truth is you like the mystery. You like that you can create other people’s stories.”

            I was silent, startled by this accusation.

            “You could be an interesting being too, you could study yourself and probably be able to write about yourself and your life in a whole book, and realize that we are complex beings who are paradoxically experiencing emotions and thoughts that make no sense. Like, you believe that you see the world, but the truth is you are not in touch with the reality that we all live in, because you don’t live. You just watch as your life rushes by and you’ll miss the train that might have been your railroad to heaven.” She stood up, her chair screeching on the floor as she put her glasses back on,

            “You know what I see? I see, a handsome young man who is wasting his remaining youth, because he too is sad and lonely like the rest of us, because when you are looking at all the people around you, you are also looking for your resolution that will never come. You said it yourself, you don’t know anyone. You’re fascinated with their faces? That’s nothing, wait until you actually know someone and feel like you can also read their soul. That’s what’s truly beautiful,” she said and, when she was about to walk away, I shouted after her.

            “Hey!”

            She turned around, “Yes?” Her lips stayed parted, as she waited for my response.

            “What’s your name?”

            Her lips tugged upwards slightly, “Millennia.” About to leave again, I worked up the courage to try again. To dig deeper.

            “Millenia,” I said, and she turned back around. “Care for a coffee?”

            She looked down at her still full to-go cup, but nodded with a laugh.