i’m finally reading the time traveler’s wife. i’d started it years ago but didn’t get very far–just wasn’t into it. but now is probably the right time, and even though it makes me uncomfortable that the things she’s writing about are similar to the stuff i write about (i hate being accused of stealing, even though anything that is a truth comes from our collective unconscious), it’s definitely interesting. one of the biggest points of interest to me is that it’s a story about 2 gemini’s and it deals with very gemini themes. i strongly believe the writer has to be a gemini.
okay, i just looked it up. Audrey Niffenegger. Born June 13, 1963. that explains why her thoughts and style resonate with mine.
i was convinced she was either a gemini or lived closely with gemini’s when i read this line, spoken by the father of henry to his fiance:
“He isn’t calibrated to bring peace to anyone’s life. In fact, he is in many ways the opposite of his mother: unreliable, volatile, and not even especially concerned with anyone but himself. Tell me, Clare: why on earth would a lovely girl like you want to marry Henry?”
you have to know a gemini intimately or be a gemini to have such an acute observation. especially since her character’s response was that it’s because he’s really, really good in bed…
we inherently run a wider spectrum of personality than other people. the most disciplined and nice gemini’s can not change their inherent nature, but will do their best to control their volatility, outputting the need for change and variety in what they do while trying to maintain a more consistent personality. but the truth is, the core of our being is constantly changing. so sensitive to time, space, environment, and our own constantly changing reactions to a constantly changing world on a person who is not consistent enough to be the same person from moment to moment.
i often ask myself, why would anyone want to be with me. and the answer is, why would anyone not want to be with me. we are easy to love. we make you feel alive. we are everything and yet we are nothing that you can hold on to. paradoxical, contradicting, real. we’re sand through your fingers…you either appreciate the experience as a whole, or live a frustrating life of trying to catch and understand each grain when it’s inherently impossible. we’re like seasons. they come and go and to love one season means having to accept them all to get back to the one you love. and that is not easy or desirable for everyone.
sometimes i don’t think i would wish a relationship with me on anyone i truly cared about, because it’s not easy. i know that i’m a really great person and really interesting and the positives of being around me weigh pretty heavily. i’m a good person to know, a good person to be around. if you’ve ever been scared of the prospect of boredom from spending the rest of your life with one person, then you should spend the rest of your life with someone who is rarely the same person. but it is not easy, because you have to be willing to let things flow, and let the me you love disappear and return, sometimes in front of your very eyes. when i have positive to give, i’m pretty selfless. but then there’s that other side that can’t be controlled, like a werewolf’s other side that is changed by invisible forces. day to day and moment to moment, i can become a completely different person, not that the person is better or worse, but just a completely different person. that can be unsettling for some people who like things the way they like them.
we were not built for stability. we were not built for consistency. we were built for a multitude of life experiences within a single lifetime. we’re often deemed the most human sign, because we will embody and reflect the entire range of human emotion and experience.
the key is expectation. i guess if someone were comfortable with the paradox of the person next to them being a different person from day to day, sometimes moment to moment, yet see that despite the switches they are still the same person, if they can see that it is in fact the constant change and evolution, the movement from liquid to solid and back again that is in fact cyclical and consistent and makes the greater, consistent person, they would find it less unsettling. they would see that the gemini is often consistent in his or her inconsistency, and often possesses a singular aim within a given moment. the gemini is a consistent person built on frames in motion, the same way an organic, dimensional world appears consistent on a projected film strip when it is in fact a series of fluttering still images. we are inherently self-centered because we are always aware of our environment and trying to project a consistent being (it takes awareness + discipline, thus our attention to ourselves, the outer world, and the relationship between), but at our best, we are not selfish. we are unstable by nature, but take a few steps back and we are an entire spectrum radiating simultaneously. we are wise, infinite souls inside little children, we are angels inside demons. heaven and hell, we’ve touched both. in fact, we have a knack for being in both simultaneously. there is no one more aware of the present than a gemini, and no one worse at adhering to linear time. we are as much here as we are not, and we have an uncanny way of surrounding you, and talking to you as though you are caught in the middle of a conversation between ourselves.
our purpose is to learn, understand, make connections, communicate, store. accept our nature to understand the person. if we disappear, wait in the same place and sooner or later, we return, not realizing we were ever gone.
do you want an interesting life, or a stable one?
we will give you the former, but you will gamble for the latter.