The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

FtL Lead: Kinda like High School...

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I don't really know what Twitter is, and I do not have a single Blogspot. Are they liver-coloured?

I want to keep up with all the trends, I really do, but it's exhausting. Aside from providing instant information to the masses, the internet also serves to stroke the egos of the faceless. Anyone can put their life out there, now, and anyone who wants to can read about it. What happens then, if you are someone who doesn't have a huge following, is that your ego takes another hit, leaves you feeling as though you've failed at yet another social medium, and you start editing, you start looking for pictures to attach which might be deemed interesting, you start quoting song lyrics in the hope of reeling in a fan of whichever group you've chosen to highlight. You lurk in other people's blogs in order to learn intimate details of their life which you'd never know if their blog didn't exist, and you try to find something in common which can help establish a connection. As it is much simpler to avoid someone you don't want to know if you see them walking across the street, or that you can avoid taking their call with caller I.D on the phone, the internet makes it a little bit more difficult. Someone you only barely recognize adds you as a friend on Facebook and a sense of decency pushes you to accept them. Someone goes on and on about how much they love your blog and out of a sense of fairness you read theirs in order to reciprocate. What I like about Writing.com is that I have no idea how many 'favourite' lists I'm on, or who is interested in knowing me. It leaves all the questions suspended above me, and let's me make my own reality.

I have sixty friends on Facebook. I opened the account when the younger crowd at work convinced me I should do it (peer pressure never goes away). Of the sixty, I regularly or semi-regularly communicate with about three. That's right, three. I play 'Wordscraper' with my friend A. daily, and I send messages back and forth to my sister K. and my friend Kim. The rest of them added me because they saw I was on it and they wanted to up their numbers, I think. Oh, sure, I get the odd email about how much he/she misses me, but it never goes beyond that. I have very few relatives on it, which actually makes me a little bit sad. Of everyone, I'd like to know the people I'm related to better. I usually wish people happy birthday if I see the date in time, and I often read the articles posted by some of the more intellectual Facebookers because I am always interested in learning about what interests them. I get annoyed when people update their status to include very personal details of some kind of drama because it feels like they're fishing for attention. Like, the other day, this girl I went to school with decided to update her status by stating that 'I don't know why Cathy is so full of b.s. I now know why she's so drunk all the time, though. How do you live with yourself?'. Now, while I found it amusing, given that I know the Cathy she was raging at is her older sister, a girl who used to get into trouble quite regularly in her teen years, I also found it pathetic that this girl felt the need to announce to everyone that her sister and she were in the middle of some kind of infantile tit for tat. As I don't have her sister as a Facebook friend, I have no idea if there was a response of any kind, but I'm guessing it caused some spectator drool for all their collective audience. Then, my own sister updated her status a few weeks ago to slyly let everyone know that she had been in the hospital. Of course, there was a flood of 'are you okay' all over her page, which is of course what she'd wanted, but they were from people she hasn't seen in fifteen years, people whose lives no longer include her. Ex-boyfriends, former bff's, wives of the guys her husband plays hockey with. Why do they need to know about such personal things, I wonder? When I have something major to report, I tend to send private emails to the people who actually matter to me, and vice versa. Of course, I also write about it in here, with the intention of letting absolute strangers in on the details. I admit, there is a bit of hypocrisy there.

I thought about what femmedragon asked when she raised the question 'Who do you blog for?'. The reflexive answer is, of course, myself. The thing is, though, that I don't know that this is necessarily true, anymore. When I re-read my old pen and ink journals, I am embarrassed by the slack writing, the juvenila, if you will. Now when I write, I try to be more descriptive, I dig deeper and try to find the truth, rather than skimming the surface and recording my unrefined feelings and interpretations because I know others appreciate the effort. I don't think I write to entertain, not really, and I don't agonize over what my leading entry in this contest will be any more than I would thinking about how to impress people by being confrontational or writing in a style that is different from what comes naturally. I suppose I write how I think, but as she mentioned, it is different than how I speak. I feel like the people who read me actually know me better than the people who physically speak with me do. I am not afraid of the expressions here, the condescending looks, the eye-rolling which I'm sure I evoke on occasion. I sometimes wonder if I offend people with my statements, but the nice thing is that people tend to think before they respond here, which lends to intelligent and respectful repartee. I almost always come away from a disagreement with a renewed view of the original topic. If I don't agree, then I don't sweat it. It isn't going to affect me in the long run, not really.

If I'm honest, I will admit to writing in a way which I think a handful of you will appreciate. I want to write words you want to read because I respect the way you write. I might even admire some of you, and as such, I believe I am obligated to treat each of you with the same care and respect that you do me. I would never expect people to read me if I had nothing to say which made sense. I wouldn't expect anyone to come to this journal if I filled it with mediocre fodder. Though my subject matter is often boring, I at least try to make it interesting by finding meaning in everything. I also feel like my opinion is just as valid as anyone else's out there, and that sometimes I've even been right.

Because Caroline inspired me with one of her FtL responses, I went into M's office the other day and pulled a book out of his bookcase. It was 'The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath'. I bought it for him years ago, but I don't think he actually read it. I suspect he felt it was too personal, like it wasn't meant for mass exposure, but I do not share this view. I think anyone who writes does so with the intention of being read. Maybe she intended to burn the journals later on in life, but I think she would done this before her suicide if she were truly concerned of her secrets being exposed. Maybe it was a trail of breadcrumbs for the wanderer to get to the heart of what made her tick. Maybe it was her blood in ink. Whatever the case, I was curious, so I asked if I could borrow it. He smiled and told me that any book of his is a book of mine, that I never have to ask. Sylvia is one of his two favourite poets. The other one, appropriately, is Ted Hughes. I know very little about either one, but I am eager to learn.

I started reading and I instantly felt flattened. It was not a sense of sadness in the loss of a young life. It was not because I felt the writing was bleak. What took me down was the beautiful, elegant composition. I finished the first few pages and had to remind myself that the person who wrote this was a mere eighteen-years-old. I am nowhere near as good as this now, and my eighteen-year-old words embarrass me to the point of wanting to destroy my journals. I do not want people to see how badly I wrote. I do not want them to see the silly things which mattered to me, how lazy I was in describing them. Here are 674 pages of gold standard, and I, a lowly wannabe, have the audacity to read them. I am amazed and horrified with every page, only able to take small bites at a time for fear of making myself sick with envy and humiliation. The thing is, though, that she didn't seem to know how great she was; a common affliction of the delicate genius. I've yet to read anyone else who comes close to the kind of eloquence this woman was capable of at such a young age. I am impressed by the honesty of her words, the details she shared, something I never did when I wrote in my teenaged diary. I was always too afraid of people reading it. I suppose she was braver than I am.

I don't understand her poetry that well, though I would love to. Maybe someone should start a forum about her work? Maybe select a poem each month for all the participants to discuss and critique? Caroline? Aaron? Would that not be interesting, actual discussion and education on a site which often only serves as a kind of vanity press? This is merely a suggestion. I'd do it myself if I thought I had any idea how to initiate intelligent discussion about work which clearly transcends all others. Imagine it: a forum with the goal of education and appreciation. Novel.

In high school, I thought I knew everything.