the key the secret

I'm not addicted to making treasuries or anything, but, well, I made another one last night while I was thinking about some stuff...

click on the image to be taken to the (ludicrously and overly pretentiously named*) treasury

This might surprise some of my IRL friends, but I had never actually realised how much of a secretive bear I am until quite recently.

You might have seen my post about the beautiful locket I was given the other week, which I absolutely adore, and which reveals a very tiny clue of my love of hidden things, secrets and mystery. There are plenty more, though it seems my self-awareness of this particular trait of mine was completely non-existent until I started examining the evidence...

• When I was at primary school I had a secret place in the playground that I used to go to - it was technically "out of bounds", but it was somewhere quiet I could sit and be alone - as well as my hiding places behind the hedges of the school field.

• 'Hide and Seek' was is pretty much my favourite game ever, and instead of playing on the swings or the climbing frame on childhood trips to the park, I would find trees with empty hollows and sit inside them, hiding away from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, or climb up into the branches, surrounding myself in the dense foliage.

• I have a collection of old keys. I love the mystery behind each one: not knowing what any of the keys are for, or where they could take you, or what new discoveries you could make. Everything about them is just beautiful.

• Many of my favourite books when I was little, such as 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe', involved hiding places, secret adventures and magical worlds tucked-away within reality.

• I was obsessed with secret codes when I was younger, and although not civilised enough to really be called secret languages, a few of my friends and I did invent 'coded languages' which (we assumed) could only be understood by us.

• When I was at uni, a lot of artwork I created contained themes of coded languages, hidden words and secret messages, as well as plenty of keys.

• Oh, and I used to be obsessed with this song...

The clues are all there, really, aren't they?

There's no point fighting it: how can I have any hope of being an open person with all that built-in lust for secrecy and ensconcement (that is so a word) rooted so deeply within my psyche?!**

*I knew that Fine Art degree would come in handy one day.

**I knew that 'A' Level in Psychology would come in handy one day.