Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Pieces of Modesty - 32/40

In high school, one of My Boys, handed me a book and told me I would really like it. And he most certainly was not wrong. The book was The Xanadu Talisman.


If there is a book that was ever life changing for me it was this. I loved it, and I loved it intensely. Modesty Blaise was everything I felt I was not, but could be.


Here, look at some images of how she has been depicted.


She was strong, sexy, independent but not too much so... her best friend was a guy, she was bad and turned good... in short to my teen brain she was fabulous. I began reading every single book. But what had happened after the first one is that I had discovered my alter ego. And I was over the moon. 


I worked on my eccentric skill set - I began to practice all sorts of different things; lock-picking, knife throwing, and different types of sword fighting, I started dressing in black and worked to find ways to wear weapons in my hair. I would not say I was obsessed, but there is that part that when I needed courage to be more outgoing, that I would adapt my version of her personality.



I mean, look at her:




Thankfully, I did not love her enough to try to become her, just head that direction. 


As I get older, I am becoming more aware on the probabilities behind why I may have chosen her as a role model. It is rooted in wanting to have that amount of confidence. 



Maybe I should invoke her a little more often.



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