good manners & evil queens

i feel something taking shape in myself. i'd like to flatter myself and say it's a good person. by this, i mean someone with good manners. to say "someone with good manners" might be treating everything like a nail a little too much but i realized this summer at camp that the least we should expect from each other, no matter what kind of situation we're in, is good manners. of course, this brings into question from whose culture the manners are referenced, but i suppose the rule of thumb would be first to consider another person's space and how well their needs are being met and to go from there. and so i'm trying to practice this with everyone, including myself. it's a useful sort of compass.

for me, it is good manners to be honest. i have been asking myself a lot lately, "what is your true intention here? what do you really want, and what do you really need?" these questions have helped me already in a couple of situations, but there are blind spots. it seems that the place where honesty breaks down is in the relationships between the sexes. we fall into old, easy patterns out of laziness but more often because of the intoxicating possibility of union with someone else on a number of levels. when i am honest with myself, i see that the sexual is all-pervasive in my thoughts - not because of an desire to experience pleasure as much as the constant lure of a power interplay. but we cannot be honest with each other about sex; we would then be being honest about power.

i just tried to frame a confession in a metaphor, tried to explain how my intentions sometimes aren't pure when i know i have captivated a man's attention. i wanted to talk about how what i really seem to be looking for is a mirror to cast a flattering reflection, and then i realized the parallel between that metaphor and the evil queen in Snow White... and of course being as full of the Jung, RAW and feminist Irish poet as i am, went into the symbolic substance there. the evil queen's most powerful motif is excess vanity - her wish to see herself, regardless of the truth, as the most beautiful woman. her repugnance is her stubborn unwillingness to accept that she not the most beautiful (which can be read, at least by me, as "the most powerful"). so there it is (or perhaps i have digressed too far), that naked clamor for power in the guise of flirtation - ugly, certainly not good manners, but something i recognize in myself. but even as i process this, i realize that without the evil queen and her cruel, insatiable vanity, there would be no story - no Snow White would ever find her Seven Dwarves or, obviously, Prince Charming. and, to recognize that the full cast of characters as possible selves (as i must, Child of Western Archetypes that i am), i may be staring a man in the eyes to see my reflection, but i will always have my eyes open for the possibility of really seeing him for who he is. and if that impulse is not always guided by good manners, it is at the very least governed by honest curiosity.