(You know, it's really terrible when you can get in a game of Tetris on the cell phone while you're waiting for a page to come up on your computer. And it's not like I suck at Tetris, so it's usually a long game. Oh, well.)

Anyway, I promised Miss Lynx that I would write something about my animus, and rather than being a tease like I am so much on this site, I thought I would actually do it.

Lynx's animus (as you will find if you peruse Dandelion Files) has been haunting her lately. Mine's guidance is more, shall we say, sporadic. I find that sometimes I wish he'd show up and tell me how it is, and I end up having to work stuff out all by myself. Other times, he butts in when things are apparently OK; in fact, when I think I'm pretty satisfied with my life, I will have at least one dream where he shows up, at a crowded party or on a street, solely to look at me like, Why are you screwing up your life?

But I get ahead of myself.

My animus is everything that I am not in a lot of ways. He's the guy that isn't afraid to make a scene or be the scene, who's quick-witted, athletic, confident and could give a lesser what anyone who hasn't earned his respect thinks of him. He bears a large physical resemblance to a minor celebrity who I don't find particularly attractive in waking/conscious life (and who I hope I never meet -- it would be icky), and a small resemblance to me (around the eyes). He's pretty average looking really, but he just doesn't give a fuck, because he knows he has other qualities that people love him for.

He first started showing up in my dreams about ten years ago, about the time I broke up with my last (OK, only) serious boyfriend. (Full disclosure: He also bears no resemblance whatsoever to said boyfriend, other than race and gender, and -- probably -- intellectual capacity.) He likes to go barefoot. He's maybe on the short side for a man, maybe three or four inches taller than I am (I'm five six). He has lovely, elegant hands.

And, really, that's all I know about him, other than that he will show up unannounced, sometimes to frown at me sternly, sometimes to grab my hand and help me negotiate a room (or field) full of people, waving and shouting at all the people he knows that love him and who he loves back, sometimes just to sit with me at a table and laugh and eat with lots of people from all walks of life. I often wish I were him, and then I realize that something inside me is him, and it comforts me.