si dawson

I was chat­ting with my sen­sei this evening, and he told me about a party game he learned. I'm sure this is as old as the hills, but it was new to me, and I found it more than a lit­tle eye open­ing. So, I thought I'd share it with you.

First of all, grab a piece of paper (or what­ever new fan­gled gad­get passes for paper these days). Write on it:

1. Your favourite domes­tic pet
2. Your favourite wild animal
3. Your favourite dessert

And for each, the spe­cific attrib­utes about it that make it your favourite — ie, what appeals so strongly about each.

Go ahead, I'll wait. Won't take you more than a cou­ple of minutes.

Fin­ished? Ok, good. Well, here's what I answered:

Fave pet: a cat — rea­sons? It's inquis­i­tive, sassy & elegant

Fave wild ani­mal: the shark — rea­sons? It has an effi­ciency > 1 (until recently thought impos­si­ble), it's fast, incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful & a lit­tle scary

Fave dessert: durian — rea­sons? the sheer per­ver­sity of it, it's exotic, and orgasmic(ally tasty)

So what does this all mean? Well, there's a rea­son I left the expla­na­tion till the end — so you could write your answers down (yes yes, I know you're read­ing ahead. Stop being cheeky, & jot them down).

An inter­est­ing side note. Almost 20 years ago, I did one of those jour­ney­ing expe­ri­ences, where you find your power ani­mal. I'm not totally sure about the prac­ti­cal use­ful­ness of this infor­ma­tion, but I'm curi­ous about every­thing, so I gave it a shot any­way. For me, it turned out to be a hedge­hog. I kinda realised, over time, that that was a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of myself. Prickly as hell on the out­side, squishy on the inside. Also inter­est­ingly, my favourite dessert has changed rad­i­cally over the last cou­ple of years, since I started aggres­sively on this heal­ing path.

So, side note aside, here's the inter­pre­ta­tion, I know you've been dying for it:

• The pet is what you look for in a partner
• The wild ani­mal describes your own attributes
• The dessert is how you like sex

.. and I looked at my list, and I thought to myself "You know? That's a lit­tle bit bloody scar­ily accu­rate". I'd guess this also means my power ani­mal has changed (although the impli­ca­tions of this are beyond me).