DO YOU DISAGREE WITH YOURSELF?

According to a pop cultural meme, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Which, if true, means that I am 20% Chinese American, 20% Italian American, 40% Old Fart.
And 20% Lesbian.

But I identify as a Dutch American Honey Badger.

There may also be an element of Filipino in the mix. Early yesterday evening I had just finished a plate of coconut keema pullao, when my Cantonese apartment mate returned home with dinner.
Despite being full I beetled into the kitchen happily exclaiming 'anong itu?'. Which is Tagalog for "what (then) is this?"

A pork dish, a garlicky vegetable dish, and roast duck. Plus rice.

I've also had conversations in Taglish several times recently.

With actual 'people'. Not just myself.


My apartment mate, very Cantonese, thinks a lot about food.

Three weeks ago when the hospital let me go she brought home food to assist my recovery. Two meat dishes, and rice. I vaguely remember that there was also a vegetable, because she knows that we white people are neurotic about a balanced diet.

To a Cantonese American, a balanced diet is one that doesn't tip over.
It's simple mechanics. Meat here, and meat there. See?


That I mention her ethnicity is deliberate. It's a key part of her personality, despite the fact that she thinks entirely in English, which is her native tongue. As a Dutch American, I cannot say that I think entirely in anything, but that's rather accidental; I've been exposed to several languages, and will lazily grab whatever word or sentence seems a handy tool for that moment. Obviously more so when I'm talking to myself, which is not necessarily aloud, most of the time it's internal.

The monologue intérieur is often best kept strictly intérieur; last night on Grant Avenue two people within the block where I was smoking my pipe did not grasp that. One of them was deeply, personally, furiously, insulting one of her luggage items, and another one was disquisitioning on the subject of 'bitches', for which he had his own definition, and about which seemed to know an awful lot. Both of those "conversations" would have been better kept within the head.



How you talk to yourself, and how much you do so, are a large element of your identity and what you self-identify as. The Chinese American twenty percent is sane, though often identifying as one of the stuffed animals. The Italian twenty percent is varied and enormous, consisting of separate sane individuals. The lesbian element is professional. Sane too.

The Old Farts (plural) and the Honey Badger are only borderline sane.

The two people on Grant Avenue are batshit crazy.

And probably identify as artists.




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