What are ya?

I have a friend who is quite into star signs. Given that he lives up here in the mountains, that shouldn’t surprise me – it’s basically a prerequisite for living West of Blaxland and East of Lithgow. No, what does surprise me is that he’s into them more than I am, and knows more, and refers to them often. So, as I am a pair of fish in the zodiac, he is often telling me things about me which line up with that persona. I say ‘well, you know, it is very cold when you leave home at 5.30 or 6.30 in the morning!’ and he looks horrified and says ‘you leave home at 5.30??’ and I say ‘weeeeell. Sometimes I have to wake up at 5.30’. And he laughs and says ‘of course, I should have known, you are a story teller. 5.30 makes a much better story than ‘sometimes I have to leave home at 8’!!’ Later as I take my shoes off I say ‘oh, I have odd socks, but I really like this sock and I can’t find it’s pair’ and he laughs again and says ‘(my name), you always wear odd socks. The last time you were here you had odd socks on’, smiling, looking warmly at me like it is my divine destiny to wear odd socks, that the world is better place through my wearing of odd socks, and that this is all a delightful turn of events - and I feel somehow pigeon holed and defensive. I want to be a prickly astro-pedant and defend both my right and ability to wear matching socks, lecture him about my flexibility on the issue of socks, point out that my sock draw is roughly half half pairs versus not-quite-pairs. I don’t, I hold back, realizing that this defensiveness is a little silly.

It’s a funny thing though this notion of personality don’t you think? These bounds of what it is to be us – sometimes a random assortment of preference statements that people seem very wedded to: “I only eat vegetables starting with a P”, “I like thai food but I wont eat Japanese”: do/don’t, like/don’t like. I much prefer to think about who were are as a shifting spectrum of possibilities – it is contextual, subtly affected by circumstance. What kind of person am I? Outspoken? Sure – everytime in a group I think something needs saying and it looks like no-one else is going to pipe up I end up being the mouthy, finicky, persistent and outspoken one. Shy and quiet? Absolutely. Give me a situation where I’m not sure what is really going on or what is making people tick and I will not say a peep, watching, trying to figure out the dynamics, wondering if my suggestions would be useful, waiting to see if I might fit into the mix.

In a peverse way, I have found much satisfaction in examining all the things I think make up ‘me’ and occasionally seeing if I can do without some of those preferences – love personal space and independence? Watch me live in another country in a tiny shoebox with a family of 4 who I also ate with, socialized with and worked with 24 7 for 6 months. Love art? Watch me do a science degree and try my darndest to make a living through rational sensible thinking. Love intimacy? Watch me go solo. An excersise in testing the boundaries in who I am, what I can do without, what is core and what is peripheral. Sensualist/ascete, scientist/artist, celibate/sexual, communal living/hermetic withdrawal, city/country, materialist/spiritualist; or as the Australian band TISM once so beautifully offered up the conundrum of identity: ‘whatareya.. wanker/yobbo?’. And my answer, as always, is ‘errm, a bit of both?’