escort diary® of Jolie: On the octopus tattoo
I have a blue-ringed octopus tattooed on my body and people ask about it constantly, which I enjoy, because it gives me the opportunity to deliver my favourite piece of information about the natural world, which is this: the blue-ringed octopus is the size of a golf ball.
I find this disproportionately delightful.
Let me explain why I chose it, because people always ask, and the answer is not "I thought it looked cool," although it does look cool, and I am not above choosing things because they look cool, but this one goes deeper than that: the blue-ringed octopus is my spirit animal.
I know that "spirit animal" is a phrase that has been so thoroughly overused by people describing their relationship to sloths and golden retrievers that it has been drained of all meaning. I know that a white person using the term "spirit animal" makes me sound like an insufferable hippie. I'm not, I'm also not the least bit spiritual at this point in my life.
But, the meaning of the animal remains who I am: it looks, at rest, like a completely unremarkable little creature - beige, soft, the kind of thing you'd walk past in a rock pool without a second glance and that is not interested in being noticed by things that are not worth its attention.
And then something threatens it, or interests it, or engages it, and the rings appear: bright, electric blue. The most vivid colour in the ocean, appearing on the most unassuming body. It is not a warning in the way that a snake's rattle is a warning. It's a beautiful, vivid warning that you're just a little too close.
I love the blue-ringed octopus because it is the animal kingdom's most elegant argument against the idea that power requires size, or fangs or claws.
It doesn't: power requires specificity. The octopus doesn't have speed or strength or any of the things that the natural world usually uses to establish dominance. What it has is one very specific capability, deployed with absolute precision, at exactly the right moment, and the slippery consistency of a liquid. That's the whole strategy: be exact, be fluid, and adapt.
The blue-ringed octopus is, and people forget this, one of the most adaptable creatures alive: it has no skeleton, no shell, no fixed shape. It can compress itself through a gap the size of its eye and changes colour constantly - not just the rings, the entire body, shifting to match whatever environment it finds itself in, not because it is hiding but because fitting in is a survival strategy it has perfected so thoroughly that the environment forgets it wasn't always there.
I know this feeling very well: I have walked into boardrooms, dinners, casual Sunday lunches, black-tie event, and rooms I had no business being in, while looking like I was completely comfortable. Not by shrinking, but by adapting. By reading the room fast enough, and adjusting to match the space without ever losing the thing underneath that makes me what I am. Skeletons after all are optional.
This is, I think, why the tattoo feels less like a second skin and more like a label.
I am not harmless. I am kind, by choice, and not at all times. I CAN be warm, and I am genuinely interested in people and I laugh easily and I make excellent tea and I will listen to your problems with the patience of someone who was trained in psychology and the genuine caring of someone who has lived enough to undertand how messy the human experience is.
None of this is performance, but I will always adapt, morph and mirror whatever I am being given.
