Princess by night

It is a little delicious having a secret identity.

I don't have a lot of experience with leading a double life, in all honesty, despite all my dreams of becoming Canada's star girl detective. However, my one clandestine period was more gratifying than I would have expected. When the Duke and I first began dating, we were a bit tangled in the remaining strings of others-- including indelible gossips and emotionally raw exes. As such, we decided to carry on a little covertly at first, and met in random coffee shops and kissed at night behind trees. On one particularly memorable weekend, he made up a work trip, I turned off my cell phone, and we rented a hotel room in a haphazardly chosen suburb far from our circles of acquaintances. It is invigorating, staring out the glass at the city, and realizing that no one has a clue where you are.

Granted, the grad-student-by-day, secret-blogger-by-night combination is hardly the calibre of Clark Kent/Superman. Still, as this nocturnal identity seeps in through my pores, I find my sense of self shifting a little.

I am reminded of how jarring it was to actually speak the words "Princess Pointful" allowed during my first meeting with a fellow blogger. I began instinctively giggling, as it seemed as though this secret identity of mine is so wrapped in the written that it is outside of the realm of the spoken word.

I've developed into one of those people who feel compelled to write. I've began pulling out my clipboard in anonymous moments and frantically scrawling down lines that beg to be spilled, in direct contrast to how such spaces use to be defined by reading snatches of journal articles and drowned out by music. I've actually evolved into one of those people who needs to capture the moment, whose passion can be witnessed by the speed of their pen, the flick of their pencil crayon, the click of their camera-- all to make sure they don't lose grasp on those random glimpses of insight and beauty.

To these people on the bus, where I sit, I am simply another student. They likely don't sense the urgency in my pen. Yet, as I mentioned previously, it is such an odd revelation that these scribblings matter to people thousands miles away from this patch of pavement. They know my words so well, yet they don't even know the colour of my eyes. I'd like to imagine they could spot me readily in a crowds, but without my words, to all of them, I'm just another person on a bus. 

How surreal to be known and not known simultaneously.