Riddle Me This

Fill me with silver pieces and touch the right spot. Be patient love and things are sure to get hot. I'm almost always your second pick. But worry not, I always do the trick.

What am I?

When the weather is nice, people flock to me. but when it is stormy, they let me be. if you visit, you cannot leave me behind. For on your clothes and in your crevices, parts of me you'll find.

What am I?

In a bowl, a tasty treat. Off a block, like a second meet. In a tooth, smile no more. Off a wall, an eye sore.

What am I?

I guess that's me...

I often feel like I'm a mismatched jumble of things I've seen or heard. I get caught up in these ideas I love so much without really thinking about why I like them. What is it that makes me love the dark, sad paintings that hang on my wall? Why are mindless puzzle games (steeped in repetition) so soothing yet I loath the every day mundane? And even now, as I sit in the University Union across from my friend of 4 years who perceptively commented that she felt there was a lot she did not know about me, I wonder if I even know. Where does the Self end and the Other begin? Is there even a solid distinction? Or are am I just a collection of memes with nothing innately original about me?

Yet there must be something intrinsic to me. Why else would we all be so different? It's not the popularity of an idea that ensures it sticks, but rather the perfect way it matches with who we are. So maybe the finding of a new indie pop song that speaks to me just reveals a new facet of self instead of me being an amorphous blob that consumes and incorporates everything I come across. It is those encounters with the Other that tell me who I am; most prominently when the Other turns out to be me.