The beginning of this month I went to a childhood friend's wedding, where I remet someone I once knew, and hadn't seen in many years. He's someone smart and kind, and whom I respect very much, and he told me I should blog. "I think you'd be good at it," he said. "You're very funny and you've got the kind of wit that could have a following."
I don't know about that. I do know that whenever I try to be witty it falls flat, and that I am quite often funny when I don't mean to be, or if I do, much funnier than I thought I was. I also know that I love to write, enjoy writing regularly, and have a somewhat... peculiar view of the world. It's not excessively odd. In fact, it's downright mundane, but I seem to notice the oddest things in a sort of visual priority that just doesn't register with other people, and I never know when or why or how- frankly, because I don't live in anyone's head but my own, and I've lived with me all my life.
There are burned-out LEDs in the green light of a particular intersection facing a particular direction, for example. They form a smiley face. :) "It's okay, Mom," I told her, talking about my father. "The light's green, and it's happy to see you."
Anyway, I'm not going to try to be funny, or witty, or excessively thoughtful. I am going to make a passing attempt at being interesting, and I am going to be honest, and it is my goal to update this blog once a week, every week, for an entire year. I don't know what day, and I think it'll be hard. My shift keeps changing. We'll see.
Periodically I am going to repost something from one of my other blogs online. This is a blatant cop-out to meet my goals, but I do promise that anything I repost is, at the very least, of interest to me.
As for the title, I style myself a princess. My father calls me "princess," and, on rare occasions, my mother. (What my mother calls me will be a different entry.) All of my uncles, both of my grandparents, both of my aunts, and one family friend all call me "princess" as well, and have very nearly all my life. It's my name, and what's funny is that it actually is my name: my given name is derived from the Greek for "crown," and can be translated literally as "queen" or "princess."
Princesses are kept women in every sense. There isn't a one who isn't, and they are not, taken alone, all that important. They're pretty and people like to have them around the holidays, but stuff a brace of princes into any royal family and the princess suddenly becomes superfluous. They're not Queens, they don't rule, they have no power and influence of their own, instead using connections, friendships, and privy knowledge to their advantage (and intelligence, assuming she has any). Princesses are not sought for in and of themselves: they are sought for their connections to bigger and better things. Nobody wants the princess, really. They want the King's ear, the Queen's favor, to be the King, to have access to the Kingdom and the keys. A princess as heir waits in the wings to take over as an insurance policy. They're bargained and barter, pieces to move politics with. They're rewards to the worthy, cement to unions, marital anchors in political takeover, sacrifices to the gods, treasures to be kept in reserve, in the tower, in the family. Princesses are deferred to, watched over, cared for, displayed on special occasions and used for the pretty tools and political pets they are. Any power a princess has is not hers: it is given to her to use on someone else's behalf, her father's, her brother's, her husband's. They manage and guide, they charm and care for, they bow their heads in obedience, they accept the grace of their due. They are chatelaines and chattel, masters of men and slaves to their positions. They are spoiled. They are kept.
It can be argued both ways regarding me and "spoiled." I am certainly female, definitely honored, and absolutely a lady... on alternate Thursdays. I am gracious and kind and I pick my nose in public. I can weld, change a tire, make a pot, knit a mitten (but not a sweater), and lately I've been contemplating trapping rabbits in my neighbor's lawn and eating them... just because I miss French food. A good woman can do whatever she has to, and I am a good woman. I'm practical, I'm capable, and while there's a lot I'm not good at and can't do for myself, I am not helpless. I don't need to be taken care of.
And yet I am owned. Not by my family, a group of people who alternately make demands on my time and fight the rest of themselves off from impinging on me, but by the contents of my head. I am arguably my own keeper, which is depressing, because as sugar mommas go I have very shallow pockets. One of those contents, the stories who keep me, is a dragon. Dragons keep princesses, and by definition anything living kept by a dragon is a princess. I am a princess, and I am kept.
Every princess is a kept woman.
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