Princess Pea

No one is working or talking or laughing. People aren’t even at their desks. People are drifting up and down the isles blankly. Small, silent huddles are forming around computers with live streaming video.

All of my customers are based in NYC. Only one has called me today. I couldn’t believe that he called. He said that the city was in chaos and didn’t know how he would get home but they were telling everyone that they had to go. He said that he wanted to make sure that he placed an order since he didn’t know when he would be allowed to return to his office. He couldn’t e-mail me. His Internet access was down.

I was worried about Jose since he has friends there. I called him at work. He’s worried. I’ll go over to his apartment after I get off work and we can watch the news together.

princesapea: I'm actually fasting now
princesapea: but I'm allowing myself to eat vegetables and fruit
princesapea: and tea
princesapea: but no oil or spice on the vegetables
Faustus: wow, what’s your goal?
princesapea: detoxification
princesapea: a preliminary fast
Faustus: in anticipation of...
princesapea: if I can do this for a week
princesapea: then I try the banana fast
princesapea: and that's supposed to be even more detoxifying
princesapea: but you need to do preliminary cleansing first
Faustus: feeling toxic?
princesapea: yes
Faustus: in what way, if you don’t mind me being so nosy?
princesapea: I don't know, it's hard to define
princesapea: just feeling impure
Faustus: what does "purity" feel like?
princesapea: I don't know
princesapea: freedom from guilt?
princesapea: getting rid of the sticky feeling that comes with regret?
Faustus: so it not just a physical/somatic feeling in your flesh, its a sort of mental/spiritual deficiency as well?
princesapea: yes
Faustus: regret? What have you to regret?
princesapea: lots of things
princesapea: I'm no saint
Faustus: true enough, but much closer to mother Theresa than Adolph Hitler on the global scale of benevolence, to be sure
princesapea: I don't want the measure of my goodness to be relative to my potential for evil
princesapea: in other words, I don't want to justify bad behavior by saying, well, I could be a lot worse, I could be like that
princesapea: I just feel like if I could believe that I'm a good person that I would actually be a good person
princesapea: if I could see it, other people would see it and then it would be true
Faustus: What sort of "bad behavior" are we talking about?
princesapea: that's inconsequential
Faustus: The fact remains you’re not satisfied with the level of "good" you do? SO do you have concrete standards for what constitutes "good"?
princesapea: yes and no
princesapea: it's more of a I’ll-know-it-when-I-feel-it kind of thing
Faustus: Hmm. How will you know when you get there?
princesapea: maybe I won’t
princesapea: it's like searching for a thing and you don't know what it looks like or if you'll even recognize it if you find it but you have to search none the less
Faustus: Do you think this is the best way to succeed?
princesapea: it's the only way I know how
princesapea: like what my yoga teacher says, practice and everything is coming
Faustus: I’ve got a book for you...don’t worry, its not preachy, or even declarative. Its a sort of travel log about a man looking not necessarily for all the answers, but HOW to look for the answers. Called Meetings with Remarkable Men by GI Gurdjeiff

he says that he thinks that I'm crazy because I have an online diary
that this is indicative of some kind of mental instabililty
mental instability, I love that expression
like my head is a table with a broken table leg, precarious, ready to topple over at any moment
and everything sitting on the table shatters all over the floor

Faustus: mmmhmm. say, do you have access to headphones there? I finally found that song (well, actually, spoken word) that I wanted you to hear
Faustus: Ostensibly, its about anorexia, but is a beautiful piece on spirituality via asceticism
Faustus: http://pocketphilosopher.org/Holy.mp3

Glenn: weird
Glenn: starvation is sacred
Glenn: that's totally cool. he's right. it's you

princesapea: Are you going to class tonight?
Glenn: yes
Glenn: I keep saying yes but not showing up. Why would you trust any answer I give?
princesapea: I'm not real bright
princesapea: poor memory function
princesapea: I forget these things
Glenn: flat learning curve.
princesapea: limited ability to convert short term memory to long term memory due to easy distractibility by shiny objects
Glenn: natural blonde
princesapea: I'm not stupid, I'm just not paying attention

slackerphotog: what post did you remove from princess pea?
princesapea: cheerleader fetish
princesapea: everyone thought I was slamming lawyer guy
princesapea: and I wasn't
princesapea: so I took it down
princesapea: I was slamming myself for being insecure about his fantasy
princesapea: everyone has fantasies
princesapea: that's normal
princesapea: like my rock climber fetish
princesapea: mmmmmmm, rock climbers
princesapea: so yummy
princesapea: lithe, athletic, strong hands
princesapea: balanced
slackerphotog: hm
princesapea: sorry
princesapea: getting carried away

I’ve been questioning why I’m keeping this blog and whether or not I should continue. I started this blog primarily because I wanted to write and needed an outlet. Writing about my own life seemed like the easiest way to write; it required no research and the informal blog writing style reduced the need for extensive editing of my work. In short, because I wanted to write and I’m lazy. Maybe I thought that were other people like me out there who would read my blog and feel comforted by it. Or maybe a reader would gain a better understanding of someone in his or her life who was like me. Or maybe I just wanted to entertain people. Maybe I just wrote because I liked the idea of people reading something that I wrote. Look. I made this. Maybe this has just been about my ego.

In my very first post I wrote that I was striving for Truth, striving for something authentic. Have I accomplished this? I write about being angry or sad or frustrated far more often than being happy because it seems more interesting. Because blogs that describe how great a person’s life are bore me. Perhaps it’s indicative of the limitations of my own writing that I am reluctant to write about that which makes me happy. If only I were a better writer, perhaps it wouldn’t seem so cloying. Maybe I just wrote about the subjects I thought that people were the mostly likely to find interesting. Maybe that’s why I choose to describe the things that I don’t like about myself. Writing about the things I love about myself seemed not only arrogant but also tedious.

And the whole Princess Pea premise, this character that I’ve created which is at the same time me and not me has begun to make me uneasy. Is it right for me to champion the part of my personality that has brought me more criticism from my friends and family than any other? At the same time, it is my over sensitivity that I feel makes me see, hear and feel more intensely; it is my muse and my demon.

But I’m most troubled because I feel that very few people understand what I’m writing about. I took down a recent post because the feedback I was receiving about it indicated that the readers were completely missing my point. I’m writing about my life. Not anyone else’s. I only write about other people to illustrate something about me or about my beliefs. When it comes to my blog it really is all about me. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s my blog.

I don’t think that I’m going to abandon the project entirely, but I do think that I’m going to begin to question why I choose to write about some subjects and not others, some people and not others, some feelings and not others. I obviously can’t write about everything in my life so how will I choose what makes the cut? What is revealed and what hidden? And should I even bother?

Maybe I should stop wasting my time with this blog and work on something else. I’ve always wanted to write a novel for young adults. Maybe it’s time to abandon this project and start another one. It’s been over a year. Perhaps it’s time to move on.