the dream-face with no mouth

Gately's fever-guilt dreams up the theme's own icon: a bound figure with no nose and no mouth, just blank skin where speech would be, who nonetheless sees everything — sees right around the blindfold — and stares back, blinking, unreachable and unappeasable. It is a face built for total non-communication, all silent witness and no mouth, a mirror of the mute giant dreaming it: someone present and watching to whom nothing can be said and from whom nothing can be answered. [sweep — beyond-catalog]