Middlesex+Journal+5

My identity is a combination of countless things. My past, my family, my friends, my personality, my likes, my dislikes, my hobbies, my temperment, my actions, and many more factors help to shape who I am. However, not one of these things are the sole determining aspect of my identity. My identity comes from within and is something that only I can connect with. Though others may have a certain view of me, it is ultimately my internal understanding of myself with which I relate to. After enduring many things and undergoing some changes, I am at a point in which I feel like I'm beginning to fully connect with that identity from within. I have never completely reinvented myself, I think that my personal transformations all flow together and create who I am today. I don't think I need to convince anybody else of who I am as long as I am secure with myself.

"Begin the Beguine" is a very popular song of the 1930's recorded by many people, including Ella Fitzgerald and Artie Shaw. When Shaw wanted to record it initially, the company was very pessimistic and believed that no one would know the song from beginning to end. However, soon the sales skyrocketed and it was being played on radios everywhere. Bombyx mori is the larvae of a domesticated silkworm. This insect goes through many great changes and stages in order to develop into the silk producing animal that it is. This represents the birth of Cal and her future metamorphasis in life. [] []

Eggs are an important symbol in the novel. Cal states, "I like to imagine my brother and me, floating together since the world's beginning on our raft of eggs" (199). Ex Ovo Omnia means "everything comes out of an egg" relating to Cal's imagined conception and life in the womb surviving on egg shells.