I went down a dusty side road to take a last walk on the dike before hunting season begins and the area is closed off. Not that the season is promising. I learned from chatting with the hunters that all are concerned with the absolute drought, wondering if migrating waterfowl would find sufficient water to rest on.

Much going on at the end of the road, with cattle being rounded up and loaded onto large trucks. Ranchers on horses and small quad bikes moved various herds who had summered in the surrounding fields and flatlands.

Rancher in Training

One herd was still unaware of its imminent transfer, whether to barn or slaughterhouse I do not know. I was relieved that we have stuck to our intention to remove beef from our household’s menu – this year, now October, I’ve had it maybe twice despite loving a steak as much as anyone.

I had a moment of unabashed joy when one of the ranchers approached me and asked: “Are you the cattle inspector?” Let me try and explain my reaction, something more difficult to describe than the wave of relief spreading across his face when I assured him I was not.

Being identifiable by looks, before ever opening my mouth, has always played a role in my life. At times it was connected to being rejected – oh, did I long for petticoats, nylon windbreakers, anklet socks and patent leather Mary-Janes as an elementary school child of the 1950s. It was wool coats, knee socks, lace-up brogues, smocked dresses and hats (!) for yours truly instead, sticking out like a sore thumb against the village population who snickered at me in the school yard.

Who might be the only one with braids, forever slouching knee socks and gabardine skirt, in 1959, I wonder?

My beloved sister knew what’s ridiculous already at a young age…..

Later, sufficiently politicized in the late 1960s and early ’70s, I was finally able to make my own clothing choices. It became a demonstrative act of protest against codes and norms of a class I resented. I was drawn to the flower child aesthetic of the times (though not that life style – I functioned as a lawyer, after all.) An act of rejection, rather than being rejected then.

These days, after decades and decades of figuring out who I am or want to be, I enjoy being dressed as neutrally as I can when it comes to identifying markers, but still have some style of my own, with this or that flourish and flair, when you look beyond the jeans and sweatshirts. That is, of course, easier here in the U.S. than in my native Germany. There, non-conforming to the norms of formal dress or coded class symbols still raises eyebrows in certain circles which would have stung when still my teenage self. Interpreted as a faux-pas, it seems inconceivable to family or friends that deviating from those norms might not be a mistaken wrong step, but a step in the right direction of expressing that one does not want to share the codex, no longer rebellion as much as an escape from bourgeois conformity and what and who those insider cues represent. Why would I want to look like the people I don’t want to be like?

The focus has shifted to what I feel comfortable in or with. The discomfort of rejection – wether being on the receiving end or the one dishing it out – safely a thing of the past. Then again…you have to deal with commentary, always: I remember a guy at the bus stop who called out, “Hey Lady, cool boots. I have a cat that color in Vermont.”

Never a dull moment.

Of course you can never shake off your origins completely, and pretending to be someone you are not has never appealed. But you can make choices about being pegged, or identifiable, to provide room for connecting with others before class divisions stop you from the start. I might not be the cattle inspector, but not being pinpointed as a cerebral, aging academic has its perks. I ended up having the best time among the crews, invited to photograph up close, and lots of waving on all sides when the trucks departed.

I escaped tagging, once again. The cattle’s dreams of great escape, in contrast, thwarted.

As Barbara Kingsolver phrased it in Animal Dreams:

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

Or next to its closet, as the case may be.

And here is music from Berlin about (not) Living in a Box.