"Of course I contradict myself; I contain multitudes."
- Walt Whitman
Today is September 15th 2008. It's not a particularly eventful day, except that I'm finally starting a blog. I've been a gold medalist in "starting". Not always as good at finishing. In terms of this endeavor, it's more an issue of maintaining which also isn't my forte.
I recently discovered a friend's blog and it really inspired me to jump into this culture. I've resisted it for the typical reasons of ego and pride. For the same reason it took me so long to get a cell phone. I tend to resist the cultural gravity, but yet I have a strange fascination with it as well. That's one aspect of the platypus, from which this blog gets its name.
I have always had a strange fascination with the platypus. It seems to be an animal I have a kinship with. Some of it is the sense that the platypus is a harmonious blend of seeming contradictions. Nature seems to be organized into these tightly grouped categories. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. (Where would we be without mnemonics?)
The platypus seems to bend these rules. Then, if we look more closely at the problem of the platypus, we see that the problem is with our system of classification. The platypus is fine. It is grooving around in various environments, while our zoologists scratch their heads. Ignorance seems to be bliss, for the noble platypus.
Then, I saw the Kevin Smith movie, Dogma. In the opening credits, they allude to the mystical genus bender in the following excerpt:
"remember: even God has a sense of humor. Just look at the Platypus."
As a way of explaining my colorful platypus tattoo in shorthand, I simply restate this quote in more or less the same words. Not everyone wants a dissertation on the flaws inherent in any contrived system of classifying nature.
When I got this tattoo, it was a pivotal point in my life. Yes, tattoos were becoming trendy, but they still had an air of rebellion and anti-socialism to them. This was a forearm tattoo. It was public. It would not be covered up by a short sleeved shirt. It wasn't safe. It was roughly equivalent to "coming out" ... as a vaguely rebellious platypus enthusiast.
Slightly cooler than being a trekkie.
Now, seven years later, I find myself regretting it about 30% of the time, appreciating it more about 30% of the time and being oblivious to it about 40% of the time. The extra 10% includes time spent asleep, and, for the record, those percentages are approximations only. A device to illustrate a point: even my feelings about the platypus tattoo are platypus-like.
There will be more illustrations later, but for now, I'm off to bed.
Until the morrow.
JT
