Three things…

R. is doing a project for his Brazilian cinema class where he’s going to film people saying three things about themselves. It’s based off a scene in a film they watched, A Hora da Estrela, wherein the heroine describes herself saying “I’m a typist, I’m a virgin and I like to drink Coca-Cola.”

I’ve been thinking about how to respond to this (which might defeat the purpose) and have come up with some variations:

- “I’m a TCK, I’m biracial, and I’m a student.” (Judge a book by its cover edition)

-”I’m a knitter, I’m a doodler, and I like old books.” (Introvert version)

-”I’m a reader, I’m a cook, I’m a mass of old scars.” (slightly creepy version)

-”I’m a sister, I’m a daughter, I’m a woman.” (Grrrrl power version. And interesting to note that sister feels most natural first here. Not sistA, though. Sister. My two brothers are some of the most precious things to happen to me. )

-”I’m tough, I’m curious, I’m delicate.” (contradictory version– but at least I’ve figured out what adjectives to use to describe myself should the need every arise)

-”I study people. I’m an artist. I like to eat noodles.”

And so on.

R. is still stuck on thinking about his. He has the obvious ones (“I’m Serbian. I’m an engineer.”) but the perfect third one is eluding him. I think what attracts him so much to this movie is how it depicts the heroine’s struggles with maintaining the things that make her herself in the face of moving to a new environment. The list she makes are apparently some of the things that separate her from those around her. Being foreign here, I think he really identifies with this sense of separation from his surroundings and so on.

Anyway, I could go on writing about this for a while, as well as psychoanalysing my boyfriend, but as it is 2 am, I really feel I ought to go work on my paper some more and then to bed. I am a procrastinator, I am in my pyjamas, and I am sleepy.

What would yours be?