The Painted Mask That Won Twice · Week 44
By Luca Bonafede · November 1, 2026 ·
A lot can happen in a week.
It was a busy week. As I always do, I tried to squeeze as many things as possible into every day, and as always, some of them got lost somewhere in the middle. That is simply part of the deal. When you hold that much at once, something slips through your fingers, and what remains is whatever you were really paying attention to.
For me, that was the evenings, cold in the way only a Québec evening in late October manages to be, and still the best part of the day. Over all of it hung a full moon, so pretty.
Halloween came on Friday, and with it an old friend: a painted mask.
In 2016, I wore a professionally done painted mask, and it won me a competition. It stayed in my memory for ten years. This year, I decided it deserved a second appearance, so I convinced my very young classmate to copy it. She did amazingly. And I won again!
I like that more than I expected. Ten years apart, a different pair of hands, a different version of me underneath, and the same result.
Then I partied again, and I spent some really good time. I usually say that I have no idea where I am going, and I mean it as a welcome: I love surprises, and Life keeps delivering them, taking me to places I could not even have imagined until they actually happen. This was one of those places, and it is one I cannot disclose on social media.
Earlier in the week, I played a trivia night for the first time since 2017, which means my general knowledge had been waiting a very long time for its moment. My team didn’t win, but we won one of the four rounds, and the topic was foreign languages. I felt pretty proud about that, and not because of the French. Through the years I have studied so many languages, in so many small ways, and somehow something remained.
And from above, I have drone footage of the Château Frontenac in Vieux-Québec, among the most photographed hotels in the world. Look at it. Isn’t that amazing?
The four weeks of super intensive French ended this week too, and I will remember the people far more than the grammar. A month ago, I arrived here as a stranger. This week, I had great people to say goodbye to. That is the nature of a place where so many people come and go: for every hello, a goodbye is already on its way.
Everything in this week was either a return or a departure: the mask after ten years, the moon at full, the people who arrived and the people who left.
Pirandello would have recognized the scene. In One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, published in 1926, he describes a man who discovers that he is one person to himself, a different person to everyone who looks at him, and perhaps no one at all. We change masks all day without noticing. The painted one at least has the honesty to be visible. In a place where people come and go, I was a new version of myself to everyone I met, and each of them was true. Perhaps Life is less about finding the face underneath than about wearing each one with full attention, and putting it down without regret when the music stops.
And when the music starts again, this week it was “’Cause You Are Young” by C.C. Catch (1986). I found it with great vibes, and mostly as a reminder to keep people in your Life who make you feel alive and, somehow, young. Age does not count. Some people in their twenties or early thirties have clearly given up on Life, and that does not mean they have to party or push the way I do. But there is so much in Life that I find it hard to comprehend how some people are just spectators in their own. This song brings back that 80s feeling of unlimited youth and love for Life, and I wanted to carry it into the week.
I broke so many of my rules this week... but another week worth living nevertheless!
A lot can happen in a week.
Thank you, and ciao for now.
Luca Bonafede
Quebéc City, QC, Canada 🇨🇦
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