Avatars provide opportunity for us to create a desirable representation of ourselves, served by images beyond (but including) the representation of photography. My avatar is not me, and so hides me while revealing the me I wish it to reveal. But then that "mask" is apparently layered with another mask (questions about which I often respond to with "What mask?"). The mask's identity then hides itself by ostensibly and paradoxically being simultaneously arrogant in form (hints of Hanuman) and devolved in form (that of a generic mass of lesser primate). My avatar represents both a desire to hide, a defensive hubris born of insecurity, a contradictory desire for both differentiation and a lack of same, a self-contempt that acknowledges the drive of my base instincts, and a my wish to be seen as a Fool. All the while it is a post-modern metareference to the idea of avatars themselves, and also of our Selves, that we are masks within masks.
Mostly though my avatar is just a really cool picture a fellow MobileReader created for me.
Cheers,
Your Humble Fool, to you Kings and Queens of Men