Duality April 22, 2013

 

 

The silent weekend doesn’t surprise me.

She often doesn’t post poetry until Monday, and with her Facebook page closed to me, I can’t tell what conflicts are going on behind the scenes.

Her front page only conveys what she wants outsiders to see.

Her poetry suggests a shattered romance. It hard to tell how this effects daily life, since she appears capable of carrying on several existences simultaneously, two aspects of her public persona she can control, putting up or taking down messages she want to get out or retract.

To my knowledge, she has removed only a few poems from her poetry blog, where as her Facebook page – the personal one --  front and interior are always a work in progress, something she edits frequently, apparently in reaction to what others have to say, sometimes simply yanking back what appears to be a much too spontaneous reaction to something someone else might have posted.

Not having access to her inner sanctum, I am forced to rely on those things she wishes people to see, and this again is like Einstein’s idea of figuring out how a watch works by listening to it tick. And yet, her projections have some value when it comes to current events.

When dealing with her in the past, I always got the feeling that what she showed me was largely an act, a well-crafted narrative she adapted to each new situation, but never varying from the basic premise. Early on, she was “cubie,” who needed me to mentor her (when in fact she is a far better writer than I am and much more savvy when it comes to covering her beat that she pretended.) This was a variation from other previous jobs where she came in as a rookie in order to ingratiate herself with each boss on the rising rungs of her ladder to success, and something, she apparently needed only to modify slightly when it came to dealing those who replaced me on the ladder in our office.

This is not to say that she is totally insincere. She is simply relying on a well-established structure that has worked for her in the past, something to brace her again the uncertainty of a new work environment. After a year of reading and analyzing her poetry, I’ve come to understand how insecure she really is, and how, she is scared to expose her real feelings, acting out a part that she knows others will accept. All of this fell apart apparently recently when she found true love and have the whole house of cards fall in on her.

Looking back, I realize jus how wrong I handled everything with her, and how my reactions last year must have puzzled her. She usually has a handle of people and can predict how they are going to react to her act, and I didn’t follow the script.

This has to do with my own insecurities, which I won’t go into here.

As time went on, I learned to separate the put on personality (if that’s what it is) from the real self she rarely exposes, except in her poetry (and even then as she put it in a poetic slam at me – the poem is not the poet and so there is a limited amount of even that which can be taken on face value.)

She is very cryptic even in poetry, disguising her true meaning in complex metaphors so as to protect herself, aiming these at people clever enough to figure it out.

At first, I thought she did this because someone was looking over her shoulder (RR or some other political manipulator) and she could not afford to communicate more openly. As time goes on, I realize she is doing this to protect herself, she doesn’t want everybody to know her inner most feelings, though she also is desperate for someone to know. Those who get it, fine, those who don’t, too bad.

Her posting of photos of herself are also part of her need to control her image in the minds of those who have access, painting herself in particular moods such as sexy, happy, or competent.

Her last group of photos changed the mood of her page from dark Van Gogh like world where a man and woman cuddle to a picture of her cuddling a dog (most likely at her father’s house where she spent the weekend.) There is also a photo of her looking over her shoulder, a photo cropped out from a group shot with a message claiming there is love in that group, when sources in town hall claim the opposite may be true. She also posted a fortune that said she is destined to serve the public, trying to convince whomever is looking at the page that she is content with her lot in life, when as we all know, she is rarely content at remaining a cog in the wheel, and wants to be the person with her hand on the lever. She is stuck on a sinking ship and she knows it, she just doesn’t know yet how to get off, and is hiding her panic behind these images. She will bolt to some new career before the ship sinks, but it will be a rough ride for her until she does.

With all this said, the removal of the Wizard of Oz photo from her Facebook front page has been scratching my head as to its significance.

Was it a reaction to something I posted? Or am I once again reading into this something that isn’t there?

 

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