Rex sine Terra: King without a land

I am a king. Yes a king.  Rex sine terra, or a king without a land, in the way that Medieval Spain had men with the title dux sine terra.  The title came with certain status and authority.  It made you a duke, gave you certain prestige and acknowledged your standing in society.  But it did not come with land.  It wasn't a landed title based on the holding of certain castles or estates.  It was a title without land.  You were a duke without land.  And in this way I am a king without land.

A castle means safety; an arrow readiness for battle; a lion dauntless courage.  Red signifies military strength and magnanimity; blue truth and loyalty; purple royal majesty; silver peace and sincerity.

Now this doesn't mean that you cannot have land, authority and power.  It just means your title doesn't guarantee it.  If you were a duke without land in Medieval Spain, you only controlled your household and whatever estates you owned before the title.  Duke just came along as a bonus.  As for me, I am a king, but I did not inherit a kingdom with this title.  I have no land of my own complete with subjects.  But this does not mean I do not have power.

First and most importantly I rule myself.  I have adopted the motto "qui vicit, qui se vicit", or he conquers who conquers himself.  I believe this to be true.  A great many things can be done with self-control and determination.  The sixteenth century poet and satirist, Pietro Aretino, had this to say about the subject of self rule: "I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."  In my personal experience self rule is not only the most important thing for personal growth, it is also what paves the way to other successes. 

Does this mean that everyone is a king?  Certainly not.  One must have at least a modicum of self-control to vie for the title.  If you sit down and think about it you may be surprised at how few of the people you know actually exhibit self-control and the ability to rule themselves.  Think especially of those bad decisions you try to persuade your friends not to make.  Are they motivated by fleeting desires and lack of self-control?

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to actually look at the definition of rule now.  According to the dictionary, to rule is defined thusly: to control or direct; exercise dominating power, authority, or influence over; govern: to rule the empire with severity.

If rule can be defined as just having influence over, and let's face it some kings barely had that, then I rule all sorts of things.  I rule not only myself but also all of my possessions.  Due to the fact that I believe technological devices are magic I cannot claim to control them, but I certainly have a dominating influence over them.  (Ok, at least on most days.)  You may recall my mad ideas about the workings of flash drives.  Well, I own two of them with their attendant cities of miniature scribes and I rule their actions and inhabitants.  As far as influence goes I can reasonably say I have influence over my family and friends.  Who doesn't?  So in a small way I rule them too.

Actually my friends are the reason I'm a king in the first place.  My senior year of university my friends helped me build a cardboard castle in my dorm room.  That is really a story all of its own but that is the reason I am king.  Every castle must have a king, right?  Why didn't I just name myself queen of the castle, being that I am in fact a woman?  Well, I'll get to that in a second.  However, living in a castle demanded a power structure.  I knighted my friends, gave them titles and power.  Even before I became a self-proclaimed king I settled quarrels between them to the best of my ability.  After I became a king I naturally waged wars against enemies who threatened peace in our kingdom.  I made royal declarations and of course conducted battles with foam swords and cardboard shields.  

So, why not a queen?  Think about the history of women and power.  If you think of truly powerful rulers you tend to think of men.  Alexander the Great, Caesar, Henry VIII, Genghis Khan, Napoleon.  Do you think of Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great, or Cleopatra?  No, usually not.  Not to mention that many of history's powerful women only wielded power through men.  Often women came to power as regents for their young sons.  Catherine the Great only gained power by overthrowing her husband and having love affairs with powerful men in the kingdom.  Other women had to use their femininity as their strongest asset in politics.  Cleopatra kept power and influenced politics by making alliances, or romances, with powerful Roman rulers like Caesar and Marc Antony.  Elizabeth I was probably the first monarch to rule in her own right but she had to do so by constantly using her possible marriage as a bargaining chip.  She never married and one has to suspect that this was at least partly because her most powerful tool was dangling the hope of possible alliance with her into various political situations.

The lion in Leeds that greets me at my bus stop.  I like to think it is a royal lion.

So, the only real way to rule in your own right without having to use your marriage as a bargaining tool for power is to be a king.  If you are a queen your property goes to your husband when you are married and he controls it.  A king doesn't lose control by marrying.  A king doesn't rule only as long as his son is in his minority.  Historically, a king has more inherent power, authority and respect than a queen.  I didn't want my kingly status to depend on my personal choices of marriage and alliance.  I wanted to remain powerful and retain my freedom, and keep my cardboard castle to myself.  So I declared myself a king, claiming the position, the power, and the freedom that comes with such a title.  And I stubbornly defend this choice with anyone who argues.

Besides I wanted to be able to wear the color of royalty officially.  Purple was the colour of Roman emperors, kings and powerful men in ancient times.  The Roman Emperor Aurelian wouldn't let his wife buy a purple shawl because it cost its weight in gold.  It was expensive, it was a status symbol and it was highly regulated.  Sumptuary laws made it available only to certain classes of people even in the Tudor age of England.  So, I want to be ready just in case the old sumptuary laws keeping purple for the royalty come back in fashion.  Now that I've made myself a king I can wear what I like.  And more often than not I choose purple for my kingly raiment.

Batty Ideas, Harmonizing Bubbles, and Bonsai Trees

Foggy morning in Leeds

Today at work I had one of those moments where I realized how bizarre my life is.  This time it had to do with two things.  1. My stranger than strange job.  2. My very strange mind.

Let me explain.  My job is to come up with new ideas for ways to talk about and ultimately write about my clients.  There are only so many times you can write about the way that blinds allow you to adjust the light in a room.  So you need to come up with other topics.  I'm really good at it because my thoughts are well, simply random.  When I interviewed for this job they told me they were looking for more creative thinkers.  So I employ my creativity without any filter at my job.  Which means that I write about whatever come to mind.  Sure I've written the articles about decorating with blinds, but I've also argued that wooden blinds are more eco-friendly than curtains.  (There is some truth to it in the way that some materials are produced and acquired more sustainably than others.  Nonetheless, they're about even really.)

Perhaps my crowning work was the piece on creating a cardboard castle for your children to play in.  It comes complete with a working drawbridge I'll have you know.  What does this have to do with wooden blinds you ask?  Ah, well, every castle needs a portcullis and what better to use than wooden blinds?  I kid you not.  I get paid to write these things.  But today while I was writing a slightly more sane article about kitchen safety I had my realization that my job is truly strange.  I was talking about the danger of toasters getting too close to curtains and catching them on fire (you should really use wooden blinds see?) and I happened to write the phrase "errant toaster".  I had been thinking that it had simply wandered out of it's usual place and gotten too close to the curtains.  When I revisited this article I read it with the other connotation of the word errant.  I read the sentence with the mental image of a wayward toaster.

I am sure I do not need to tell you that my mind took this idea and started running with it.  Suddenly I was grinning vacantly at my computer screen as I imagined evil toasters with devil horns and pitch forks running around the kitchen prodding things, setting toast and curtains on fire, and generally creating havoc.  Undoubtedly I was scarred forever by the nightmare scene in The Brave Little Toaster and deep down still cringe at the idea of a toaster in flames.  Except this didn't star a creepy clown and the toaster in my work was evil not cute.  This is like the Brave Little Toaster's evil twin.  With that train of thought derailing my sane article writing I decided to switch to another topic.

Photo by Stellajo1976, via Flickr

Cleaning.  Surely cleaning was a safe topic.  I'd write about how you can make cleaning more fun.  I wrote an article about turning household chores into the Cleaning Olympics, complete with sibling rivalry turned into athletic competition, timed events, and medal ceremonies.  Then I started working on making cleaning fun for adults and my thoughts got derailed by bubbles.  Yes, bubbles.  Ever since I watched Disney's Cinderella I have wanted bubbles to harmonize with me while I scrub the floors.  Is that really so much to ask?  I'm not asking for singing, talking, loveable mice to help me.  I'm not asking for Fantasia like powers to make the mops do the work for me.  I even sing the song, Sing Sweet Nightingale while I do my work.  All I'm asking is that the bubbles oblige and harmonize along with me while I work.  I started thinking about this and got utterly derailed on that article too.  I decided that the problem was the head scarf.  I haven't been wearing a head scarf while I scrub and I can't tie a perfect bow behind my back.  I mean, how do you do that anyway?  Mine always end up sideways.  Sigh, yet another Disney ideal I'll never reach.

At the end of my shift I realized I had to stay and water the bonsai tree.  Now that I've started watering my colleague's tree and everyone knows that I'm keeping it alive it is sort of my job.  If it dies it will now be my fault not my colleague's.  So I now have bonsai watering duties at work.  It is growing leaves again, but it looks so straggly and sad.  I feel sorry for it.  When I placed it back on the desk I shook my head.  I have the weirdest job in the world, but I guess at least I have the mind to match it.

The Scarlet Women

It is about time I tell the story of the Scarlet Women.  Let me begin by saying that I have been blessed with some incredible friendships.  My best friend Bethany is my dearest and oldest friend.  I cannot even remember a time I did not know her.  And despite the fact that we haven't lived in the same state since we were 11 and now do not even live on the same continent we still keep in touch through, email, skype and pinterest, of course.  Although I was blessed with this strong friendship I was apparently not given strong roots to go with it.  I seem to be a bit of a wanderer.  Or an exile.  So it was that I found myself at two different schools for undergrad and yet another for a masters program in self chosen exile while I pursued my academic destiny.  Yet, as hard as those transitions were I wouldn't trade them for anything.  My life would be sadly lacking without the amazing friends I found in all these places.  That is how I first found the group of friends that was to become the Scarlet Women.

Being a very mad person indeed I had decided that I needed to transfer universities mid-way through my career.  Not only did I need to transfer, I needed to move further across the country (I grew up in CA, started university in Chicago, IL, and finished in VA), and I needed to do it in the middle of the year.  I couldn't possibly transfer in the fall with a whole class of new freshman and normal transfers.  No.  I had to transfer in January.  And so it was that I found myself at The College of William and Mary mid-way through the year with a handful of other transfer students.  We adopted each other and soon became a transfer family.  We grew very close and had many adventures, including the formation of our own tribe, the building of a cardboard castle, and the creation of the Church of Coffee.  But the story I want to tell you about now is how we became the Scarlet Women.

While we were dueling, holding tribal dances, and partaking of the sacred liquid we also went to class.  We went to lots of classes, did lots of work and met lots of other students.  One summer my friend, who we will call Carmine San Diego, was attending a class in anthropology among other subjects.  It was a discussion based class with not too many people in it and since she is a nice and friendly person she would smile and say hello to all her fellow students when she met them around campus, including a student we will simply call Guy.  Guy had also been in one of her other classes the previous semester.  Carmine San Diego had crossed paths with Guy several times.  She had always smiled and said hello and he had smiled back.  One day while heading to Wawa, the magical purveyor of milkshakes and other late night treats she ran into Guy again.

On this particular day she asked how he was and after a brief and polite exchange he went on his way.  That seemed fairly normal.  Later that day he found her on facebook, they were not friends, and he wrote on her wall.  He asked "Do you stop and talk with all random strange men on the street or is it just me?"  Well, aside from being outright rude, this was an utterly astonishing thing to ask.  If you have two classes with someone you are hardly a random stranger off the street.  And why would you spend time searching for someone on facebook just to insult them?  Carmine San Diego told another friend at dinner and they started laughing about it.  Suddenly insults were flying back and forth.  "You say hi to your classmates?  You are such a brazen hussy!" "Trollop." "Strumpet." "You should wear a scarlet letter."  And that is how the Scarlet Women were born.  Carmine San Diego was the first scarlet woman and we all joined the ranks.  If smiling at people and making polite conversation makes you a strumpet then we were all guilty of being scarlet women.

As with most things in our group we took the idea of Scarlet Women and ran with it.  We gave each other red things and wore red as a badge of honour.  You have to laugh about these things.  There is just no point in being insulted by idiots.  Now, clearly saying hi to people was promiscuous.  So, if we were scarlet for saying hello to people I don't even want to know what he thought about the sorority girls on campus.  So, naturally the sorostitutes and the scarlets were engaged in territory wars.  We "worked the corner" by Wawa where our whole existence began and where the milkshakes lived.  That is, we went there often to get milkshakes (you wouldn't see a sorority girl there they were too busy being worried about gaining weight and not fitting in their perfect white dresses with matching pearl necklaces.)  They had sorority court further down the street.

From then on whenever we went to Wawa for milkshakes we would laugh about working our territory.  Whenever we wore red it was in pride of membership.  You have to be a little bit proud.  Think about, if someone is so overwhelmed by a polite hello that they call you scarlet, then you've got it going on.  So, if you have ever been insulted without cause, told you were scarlet or slutty for a perfectly acceptable skirt, called a tart for standing with your hips a little asymmetrically,  or someone implied that you were promiscuous when you were simply going about your day, then you are a Scarlet Woman.  A woman of such class and beauty that mere mortals cannot handle you.  Let's face it, they are just intimidated and envious of your natural class and charm.  Don't let them bother you.  Stay classy.  Take their insults as a compliment.  Wear a little bit of red, a ring, a pin or maybe a scarf and just smile.