Out of the Fire and into the Pan

It has been a stressful month or so for me, increasingly so over financial debts and concerns that I may not be able to arrange things adequately even to get myself to Ireland, much less beyond... I was very reluctant to return to Ontario Works, but this week I did so, and spoke very humbly to the staff member there who was quick to listen and encourage me, and trusted me when I said I was job searching already and had applied to ten or a dozen summertime positions, which I had.

I've made up a chart on Google Sheets of when I applied to what and how long I spent doing it, and roughly what sort of positions they were, and I've given to my friends and to my employment counsellor at Goodwill Career Center a link to see it as I add to it. I was feeling so glum and reluctant one evening that I turned to examining the feeling and what exactly it was about. I decided a large part of it was probably the silence. I've never been able to happily endure silence as a response when I put myself out into the world, whether it's a joke or a request or, as now, a job application. It feels like casual rejection, which feels hideous. Although I know that keeping at my job hunting a little at a time, stable-like, is how best to make sure I can find something, it's awfully discouraging to me not seeing any mark of progress, because I've not got interviews or hire offers yet.

So I thought about that, and I decided to ask my friends to help me by setting up like video game achievements for me, so that to help me keep going with gradual consistency, I could measure progress by milestones like grindy achievements; applications X days in a row like studying on Khan Academy, or apply to five receptionist jobs, or to ten labour jobs, or thirty jobs in total, whatever it'd be. Then I'd have marks of progress to look forward to, and to look back on, that didn't depend on any feedback I'm unlikely to get from the jobs themselves.

So that seems alright, and I do think it's helping me stay happy, which ultimately makes everything better. One of my friends agreed in right away and will share with me a song from his music library or a sketch he's drawn that I didn't see before for each two online applications I submit, or each one place I submit in person, up to two rewards every day. And yesterday, I went through and did five applications online to mostly labour oriented positions, so I could focus on how to present as a good labourer rather than trying to organize a bunch of different fronts at one time. I like that strategy, I think it suits me well.

There's also mother. I don't remember whether I wrote it here, but I got back in contact with my mother, and that's been stressful. I think she's trying, though. I told her once a little while ago that she had been behaving unappropriately and to stop sending me any more messages until I could figure out what to say back to her, and then she sent me a message to say she would (because no-one ever apparently thinks that saying yes counts as saying anything), but since then has stayed quiet, and I've got a long email sitting in drafts that I haven't gotten back around to yet to trim down and decide whether to make it milder, but I've been focusing on trying to keep my morale high enough to job search. I might say more about my mother here later, or maybe I won't.

I've come 'round to sleeping days again, which is all a great frustration, but I can still do my job searching at least, in the evenings when I'm awake. Normally I'd try to push my sleeping forward and forward through the days some more until it was back around to nights again, only I talk to Iris in the evenings. He's been very sweet and loving to me, and it makes me feel happy to have that place and time when I'm welcomed for a while. I've got him playing through Doki Doki Literature Club, which I played my virgin run of a while ago. I thought we might be done with his own virgin (or I suppose you could say blind) run through it by now, but he goes through the game so slowly, reading the dialogue and discussing the poetry and thinking hard over every choice and talking to me about it.

We spent some amusing and interesting hours together finding a bunch of secrets in the game, much earlier than I would have expected and which I hadn't even known were there, so I was able to participate in unraveling them from ignorance and with sincere exploration myself, which was great fun. I won't say any more about that here, because between them being secrets and the type of game DDLC is, if any readers have not played it, I would want to encourage them to do so and experience it all themselves. Iris and I have recorded our playing the game and I might put it on YouTube at some point if ever I find a comfortable way to edit videos again, so it's not like our experiences will be lost if I don't write them here.

Last time we played, Iris had a substantial conversation with Yuri for the first time in the game, having mostly spent his time talking to Sayori so far. It was very fun for me to hear him read it, partly because it went like conversations he's actually had with me even more than I expected. I see a lot of myself in Yuri, a lot of my own strengths and weaknesses and fears, depicted very well in some places, and that gives me reason to love the game if I didn't already have an inclination to. I spoke to Iris about it and he can see what I mean by that, although he finds much more kinship in Sayori himself, which doesn't surprise me... Such a simple sweetheart, taking unabashed delight in the simple solaces of the world like restful sleep and tasty food. And what's better, he doesn't mind if I make a little fun of him for it. It seems I get along very well with fellows like that, who can remind me by example to enjoy the simple things, and aren't too proud to let me laugh at them.

I say simple, but it doesn't mean stupid. Iris and Fish and Coda too can understand the complexity and darkness in my perspectives well enough to empathise beautifully and sincerely; I know it's not any lack of understanding or capacity that leads them to deal with life on such simple terms, but their own preference, and oftentimes conscious decision about who they want to be. I can thoroughly respect that. I can enjoy walking a time with Iris's sunny attitude, knowing that he is sincerely willing to take his turn walking with me through nightmares... so spending time lighthearted doesn't mean denying the dark is there, in the way that it has often felt to me as though it does in broader society. It's not whitewashing. It's not stupid politics. It doesn't make me pick sides between two ends of a waveform as though they were contradictory to one another for the contrast. I love that.

Anyway, I started out this writing meaning to say that my benefit return from filing my taxes has come in, and now so has Ontario Works support for this month, since I hadn't paid my rent yet, not having the money, and I asked humbly if they could help me with that and was told they could and would. So I've paid my rent, and I also paid off most of the debt on my credit card that's been building up from groceries and stuff... And my plane ticket... and there's such a weight off my shoulders now about that. But I still need to work at finding work for those weeks of summer I have left if I can, because I can use all the money I can save up to get myself started strong in Ireland.

The Red-Tailed Hawk

I was job hunting at the campus today, taking advantage of the quiet, disused classrooms of the late afternoon in summer term, and the air conditioning, with my laptop and my music.

I was walking around the campus after a couple of hours of work when the falcon flew by me. She passed only a foot or two from my left shoulder and crossed in front of me to land on the green, a huge bird larger than a raven, looking about the size of a cat... but lighter, no doubt; a lot of that visual size is feathers.

I came closer and watched her (male hawks are smaller, so it was almost certainly a her, because she was huge). She stood on the lawn, looking in every direction, checking her surroundings cautiously, and walking slowly. She seemed aware, but not alarmed, as I came closer and then eventually stopped when I could see her comfortably. A great bird; hooked beak; bright, cunning eyes; huge wings, a faded grey-brown with gentle variation; long, distinct fan of a tail, tawny coloured and ended with a thin black stripe and white tips. Having done some research at home, I understand she must have been a red-tailed hawk, possibly a Krider's or Harlan's hawk, with a light, spotted chest and face.

Her quarry was a small groundhog. It stared at her; she did not stare at it, but kept looking around her, alert for dangers. She often looked at me. The groundhog made its effort to back away. Trundling backwards, it was slow and awkward. Several times over the groundhog stopped, perhaps to rest, perhaps to encourage the hawk to forget it was there. She flared her wings at it while walking forward, making her visual presence huge and imposing, coming on like a living wall of talons and feathers, and several times she jumped at it with a single beat of her wings, patiently, testing.

The way it ended was that the groundhog backed into a wall; the corner bricks of a garden, not high, but twice the height of the animal. It could certainly have climbed the barrier, but it would have had to turn its back to do it. The hawk lunged, the groundhog hissed and counter-attacked, threatening to bite her talons. She drew back, but lunged again and struck, her broad wings hiding the groundhog from my view. I heard it scream quietly. She must have struck well, because she did not draw back and strike again, but only clutched it tightly until it was dead.

She raked it with her claws some time after it had stopped moving, and (always looking around her) adjusted her grip and flapped and stood on it; adjusted her grip again, and flew a short distance. The groundhog must understandably have been heavy, it looked a third of her own size. She stopped and rested in the garden, bit at the groundhog, and waited a while before flying another short distance onto another area of lawn.

At about that time, a visitor to the college campus greeted me and asked for directions finding something. While I was talking to him, the hawk flew away and I did not see where she went.

I occured to me that I could have run in and scared away the hawk, if I had wanted to; I could have rescued the groundhog, or taken the kill from her. I doubt she would have the audacity to fight something so much bigger than she was. It occured to me that I could probably eat a groundhog, although I have no idea how to skin and butcher wild beasts like this in order to eat them. Although I considered this, I only watched her, in quiet reverence and awe for the grace and the violence of the hunt.

I don't believe I've ever witnessed a wild animal hunting and killing another wild animal. There was something utterly beautiful to it, and perhaps part of that was the mercy of its brevity, and certainly part of it was the simple necessity of it to the hawk. Or perhaps it is largely that I was simply entranced by her. Watching her watch me, and the world around her, and hunt and claim the groundhog with what I can only describe as cool, competent professionalism, confidence and patience in every move, felt a little like falling in love.

I did a little bit of searching into falconry. I may want to consider seeking an opportunity to work with these birds somehow in the future.