I Am A Microsociosystem

• I am a confused child; I get mixed messages from people; things are not consistent

• I am a man who wishes to be seen to be an experienced traveller

• I remember an odd jumble of experiences along with explanations that I came up with at the time for why they happened.  Then, as now, I think my explanations are often wrong. But I still make deductions about how I should behave next time, based on those wrong explanations.

• Sometimes I am wilfully blind. Or stubborn.

• Things appear to matter to me sometimes when, on the face of it, they don't. 

• I can be as shy and embarrassed as I was when I was 7 for no apparent reason.

• I have no idea what my face is saying some of the time. It's talking and I don't know what it's saying. (But I imagine that other people know exactly what their faces are saying.)

• I have conversations with myself.

• I mind terribly about odd things.

• I think I'm ready to die when I'm clearly not.

• Sometimes I hear myself talking to someone and the words and tone are scarcely credible. The acting is terrible some days.

I seem to carry around with me at least as many characters and personalities, men and boys with attitudes, girls with dreams and aspirations as there are in this entire TeamJava. If all twelve of us have twelve "innards" let's call them, that's a gross of us. And all 144 could be judging the other 143 during any one day. That's 20,592 inter-judgemental relationships. And some of my lot are forming judgements every 10 seconds or so. That's potentially millions of judgements every hour. Millions.

For example, working in the corridors at Borobodur, I found one of my twelve (who bears an uncanny resemblance to both my parents and my brother) working himself into an apoplexy of righteous indignation at the size of the Americans' bottoms, at the Russian tourists in high heels, at those who looked at the site only through their cameras, at the fat Western men with tiny, female, Asian companions, at the fatuous remarks made by almost everyone sooner or later, at the bad parenting, at the chomping, slurping hordes in this sacred place...

How despicable those tourists are. Surely my bottom is tiny, my clothing respectable, my feet bare, my looking attentive and aware, my wife appropriate, my speaking measured, my eating perfectly attuned to my needs, my parenting skills unrivalled...

Why I really believe I could be enlightened quite soon, you know. But my innards are far less reliable. They can be attention-seeking, shame-inducing, pompous. The list is endless. There's that one - give him half a chance and he'll be picking up rubbish bins and crawling under rubber mats and making a frightful scene - trying to be noticed without really being seen.

Oh well, I suppose I shan't be enlightened so long as they're trailing around with me. Perhaps they'll grow up and leave home soon?

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