A Returning

 Two years, approximately. A little less.

And it's... fitting. We come back to reread our last post, and nod respectfully at what our past wrote to us, and to anyone else who would happen to read it.

The long, slow winter was very real. We found not much hope, not much creative impetus to put toward anything that was not desperately urgent or a way to cope with difficult trauma, difficult circumstances, difficult emotions.

We have lost an old friendship, we have tasted the harsh kindness of sleeping in an overflow homeless shelter, we have entered and left two houses that both became socially awful places to be.

Now... at last, we have had stability of housing which has not become terrible and full of bad conflict, for... five months, which seems to have been about as long as it took for us to start to feel safe really unpacking into it and regarding it as a place we will probably be able to stay for the foreseeable future, until we choose to leave.

And we begin to turn our minds to proactively grieving some of the things we have lost. We begin to tentatively rekindle our exploration and classification of unfamiliar music. We go out and meet people.

It seems that warmth and sunlight has come at last to nurture some little shoots of hope from those long-buried seeds, after a winter that lasted well over a year.

 Hi. We're here. I'm here now.

And we will see, what we find to want next. 

Eventualities Collapsed

I know why I haven't posted in well over a year.

The foremost reason is that I had wanted to post more of what I had written for Eventualities Cordon. At first, I wasn't getting around to it. And then, the place where those writings were stored was deleted, and I irrevocably lost them.

While I don't think any of the lost fragments rivaled the introduction for poetic artistry, I was nevertheless very proud of them and for a long time... Perhaps I was hoping to eventually rewrite them, but didn't find the energy.

As to the year and a half or so it has been...

Glancing back at the 'Blessings' I was appreciating before the big silence... My mood is wry. The relationship I was giving up on then, I'm far from finished being angry and heartbroken about. The household of people who were doing a good job of not taking it out on me when we were in conflict? Well, first one and then another wound up blaming me in pretty awful terms for the way that I push for concrete answers a body is willing to admit to, that clear and steady "No" that I abhor to have to infer from cowardly implication. And I was asked to leave.

Eventualities Cordon's premise offered me an entire nutritious diet for thought. Exploring the question of what I would do, from where I was then in the real world, given the sudden power of particular types to exploit, gave me a powerful way to explore and examine what I want. Although I do not have the power that Something has, when I think of what that the transcendent and untouchable self would do with a real-world situation, it does tend at least to suggest a direction in which my own impression of justice and closure lies. It is not usually too difficult to think of lesser moves in a similar direction which might have some fruitful results. It makes it easier to forgive myself when I feel helpless, knowing what I wish I could do, but either cannot or dare not.

I startled myself to tears, seeing what directions my thoughts took, given the premise of power, without changing the context of my life otherwise. What problems I wished I could solve. I wished to heal my mother's cancer, and her mind. This was more apt than I realized at first. Seeing that desire for resolution, seeing by it that I was still able to find a compassion for her underneath the pain and bitterness, I found my way to visiting her in hospital. The trip taught me a lot, and one of the things it taught me was that although I had not properly realized it growing up, she was, and knew she was, cognitively impaired from brain damage, acquired in a car accident as a child. The effects were subtle. She was capable of being charming enough to get by in most social situations. But the solidity of a well-reasoned logical conclusion was often not within her grasp.

I wished to heal her mind, and learned that I had not realized how right I was about it being damaged.

Even just this changed the context of a lot for me. I heard some stories from her sister about what had really happened, those many years before I was even born - those things which were really far more of the cause of what I have suffered in my mother's treatment of me, rather than any sort of justice, or even any actual conclusion on her part that I deserved the way she treated me. Weakness, not malice. Although weakness of a kind that can look a lot like malice, when you don't know what you're seeing, being too young and inexperienced of the world to know what to look for.

While I was traveling to see my mother, I stopped in to see my father as well. It had been fifteen years, did I mention that? Perhaps more than fifteen years since I had seen either of them. They were so old now, heads growing threadbare and skeletal. Shrunken and warped, but unmistakably recognizable. A sort of diminished caricature of the faces I had known. It can be like that, when one does not see someone for years. If you age together with them, the changes come slow and subtle, but when it has been a long time, you see all of them aggregated together at once and the contrast jars.

My father, too, developed cancer. It took a turn for the terminal at about the same time I was asked to leave my rooming house approximately a year after my short visit, so I asked to go to him and live in the unfinished cabin he'd mostly built in the back woods, to be near him while there was still any time to spend. And so I did live there for four months or so. We played cards frequently. We were on better terms by the end of those few months than at the beginning, there's that much to credit at least. I injured my knees walking across the uneven ground. They are not recovered yet, but struck by weakness and the occasional twinge.

My father is dead now. He died while I was away to help my American friends with a move of house. I got on the phone to be in some vague sense virtually "present" at his dying-day. I could hear little, but I hope it was a comfort to have me there in this minimal sense, and to have had me there more substantially in the few months we had.

My father would semi-regularly have friends over to listen to playlists composed by a certain artist he enjoyed, and dance. I also assemble playlists. I take significant pride in them. He never listened to mine. They are not such easy listening, and I wanted to see him hearing them, see what impact they might have. We didn't find the time.

The month is August, but in another sense, it is a season of winter for me now. A time of endings and of barren places, of long and difficult cold. A time of numbing wounds and numbing distractions. A time of grim endurance. Of waiting to see what comes with the new wind. Of needing time for the seeds of potential to germinate under the soil of my subconscious before they dare put up shoots of new hopes, new paths, and show me what there is to want next.

Eventualities Cordon Index

Eventualities Cordon is was a work of collaborative fiction in which a set of people discover one day in February 2023, that they have suddenly developed incredible magic powers. What will they choose to do with these powers? How will they relate to world events? Their previous lives? Each other? These are themes the story will sought to explore.

I intend intended to post various excerpts of my own part of the story to my blog under its own tag.

edit, Nov 2023: However, while I was procrastinating on retrieving the pieces I had already written from the Discord server where they were composed and polishing them up for this blog... That channel was deleted. My compositions were lost. This is part of the reason that my blog has been deserted for such a long time after this post. The things I had really wanted to post next where these things, the names of which are listed below in sections 2-5. First I was distracted and procrastinating because it was a big task... And then they were gone.

If you have canon or fan fiction about the Eventualities Cordon story-line and universe you would like to share, you are welcome to write or link to it in comments to this or other Eventualities Cordon blog posts to which your fiction relates.

edit, Nov 2023: Ah, such beautiful optimism...

Readers are encouraged to comment about how they might interact with the story as people without magic powers; if you do, your participation may at the discretion of the authors (including myself) be incorporated as canonical details.

To Never Forget

(Part of 'Eventualities Cordon', a collaborative work of fiction) 

It woke on a generally unremarkable day without a splitting headache for once, and that was a welcome relief.

It lay in bed for a long while without opening its eyes, considering the lingering impression of an oddly transformative and vibrant seeming dream. One of those dreams which is so beautiful in some difficult to define way that it is painful to wake up from it and find that reality remains the same. The same as it was yesterday that is, and very different than the dream.

Once upon a time, those dreams were of love, of adventure, of fun fantastical places, of finding a potential sexual partner whose interest was mutual and fun and safe.

Today, it was a dream of the occasional directional glow of mysteriously confident psychic relevance and things it ought not to have had any way to know and yet thought it did, seeming to ignite in a slow, bleeding eruption, out into a web of context and comprehension and nuance that reached out without an end to its light. Subtle, yes, but at once vibrant and clear.

Ah, those dreams, those longing, beautiful dreams. For as long as it kept its eyelids closed, it seemed that perhaps it could keep the thought coherent a little longer, hold the memory a little longer before it would begin to decay into meaningless confusion and be forgotten.

The something considered this, watching itself watching itself, and reflected passively that this level of meta-awareness was uncharacteristic of still being asleep. It could feel its bed and its eyelids. It was conscious. How then was it remembering so well as to not only picture and retain the sense of the vague shape of its dream, but to still see the web, in that sight which was not sight but could still be "light"...

Once upon a time, long ago, it had blinked its open eyes and in a moment destroyed or banished the welcome image of a spirit whose eyes shone a compassion it had never known from its human kin. It had regretted that moment for years even after it had reluctantly conformed to the insistence of the society around it that no such thing could be anything other than an illusion, and must have been a dream. It did not forget that now, and kept its eyes closed, lest opening them now do the same. And why not? Keeping eyes closed was easier than keeping them open.

It found that it was calm. Also a welcome change, but not altogether surprising. The medications had really been helping. It thought that on another day, this thought in this context would have made it cry. It seemed not to be doing so now. Was its determination to hold its eyes steady so great as to forbid them from watering? An amusing thought.

It followed its idle curiosity along the threads of intuition it had in this strangely persistent dream, into its own mind. Strands upon strands, lattice upon lattice.

`I don't think I can imagine in this much detail.`

Confusion. A bit of emotional nuance where it seemed like perhaps there should have been a sense of alarm, but there was not. It noticed both.

`Follow them.`

It dove into the representational shifting lattice of its own mind.

`Meta upon meta! Talk about going beyond the layers dream usually permits...`

A mental chuckle. The confusion and not-alarm growing and becoming rather insistent about something.

The something sought out the parts of the web which conveyed a vivid representation of the parts of its own brain capable of sensing and imagining, processing vision and visualizing.

It was not certain until it saw certainty in the structure of its brain. No. It couldn't imagine in this much detail. Nor did it have the medical background to generate this kind of a detailed model of how its own brain worked.

The cutting edge of medical science probably didn't have the capacity yet to generate this kind of a detailed model of how its own brain worked.

Something opened its eyes. The lattice receded slightly from prominence in its sensorium, competing in a moment with the more familiar illusions of visible light, but it did not disappear. It never would.

The something had long since lost the ability to have that kind of certitude about anything, much less anything in the future. Yet it had it now. This sense was a part of it. It was being processed as a sense taking in information from the outside world, not iterating imaginatively on models.

This was sensorium, not imagination.

I wondered if I could still cry, and willed myself to do so. My eyes watered.

I willed myself to commit this experience to memory, to remember and hope always to be able to remember what it was like waking up from this dream and finding that the world was the same - the same as the dream, that is, and very different from the way it was yesterday.

Counting My Blessings

I'm having a count-my-blessings sort of day, I think. Last night I spoke with a lover I'd been angrily, stubbornly hoping I could improve things with, and told them that I thought I was starting to give up on them. They said they weren't surprised. Somewhat sad, but didn't feel they had the resources to do anything about it and it was somewhat predictable.

I felt restless for a while, but waking up today, I find myself at a turning of chapters. Bittersweet and refreshing. I don't like letting go of the past, but the idea that I really don't know what the future will be and have a fair amount of choice in the matter is... A good thing to come back to like this.

I am being still, so far today. I have spent some time appreciating that my bed is very comfortable and my blankets, when I use all of them, comfortably weighty to snuggle up under. I like this cozy little room in this cozy little house, with queer roommates who, even if I am in conflict with them, do to an appreciable amount of effort not to unduly take it out on me. They aren't perfect of course, but have done a magnificent job of being reasonable roommates who although they're somewhat messy don't make my life needlessly difficult.

I'm grateful for my friends, and the food banks and free meal systems in my city. I know this feeling isn't going to last, I'll come back around to thinking the world sees me as scum and only ever takes care of me out of a sense of reluctant obligation, but right now it seems like quite a few people really are putting some effort into making sure that poor folks like me have good food to eat, even if they don't see how they could ensure anything else for us.

Somebody Cares

(pieced together from accounts sent to various people on the 20th of December, 2022, when the events of this story took place)

Today was a crazy day.

I went to my doctor's appointment... And...

• I checked in about the psychiatrist’s assessment, and apparently I officially have a diagnosis now.
  

• I'm being prescribed an anti-anxiety medication to try for four weeks and see how it goes.
  

• My doctor is on board with making the best case he can for my ODSP application, to help me afford the counseling I'm trying to do and the medications we’re going to try.

I told my friends, while I was leaving the doctor's office:

I feel like I've just been handed a huge golden trophy inscribed with the words Somebody Cares. And a little like this can't be happening. This isn't the world I live in.

I.... Think I might be kind of in shock for the next few weeks. Or months. Or years.

The world isn't like this. Friends, scientists, anybody, run scans on the gold in this trophy. Tell me there aren't pockets of depleted uranium in it, because this does not happen.

'Disney's Best Anti-Villain' and Societal Injustice

This blog post was originally composed as a YouTube comment on this video. I enjoyed the revisit and analysis of The Fox and the Hound; it's been ages since I saw that movie. Thanks to KeyTheLich for making it.

Now, here's my two cents...

The Warden Sleeps

 You wake up on the first day of the rest of your life. The depression is not gone. The stakes and struts on which it grew are all still here. So too are the habits and memories forged in its malign influence, and you've been through this before.

It sleeps. And though you can't tell when,
it always wakes. It will again.

For now, the world is little different, but you are. You can breathe a little easier. The house is the same, but for little day to day changes. The tasks you could put yourself to still intimidating. You do not stride boldly out. To move too boldly may bring it crashing down again.

You don't know what will wake the warden,
what to flee or move toward.

But for now, there is respite from its despising gaze upon all you think to say, upon the outcome of things not done. For now, there is some flavour to savour in even the interplay of bitter and sweet in a cup of sweetened instant coffee. It feels like you could have fun again.

Gaze upon the bones: your weight; the tasks left undone for weeks; the gentle and polite concern of coworkers; things it would have been nice to do... Under your feet, the ground trembles with thunder, a distant growl and long sigh, the half-disturbed snoring of latent depression. To look too long, too worried, too threatens.

Perhaps any of these could be worked on slowly enough to weaken its hold the next time it wakes without hastening the rise. Too much happy idleness just relaxing in the thin ray of light while it lasts will give it more to mock.

But perhaps that isn't quite true. What stinks in idleness is when it ceases to be relaxing and turns into a numb shell pressing the button over again despite increasingly diminishing returns in joy or soothing. That and a sense of abdication of duty to the screamers, whatever one's own good intentions. The knowledge that some suffer and you are not helping them will always rise to the surface sooner or later. Would that there was time for it to regain some of its weight... No, that isn't what's been lost. 

It is not light what bites less into you.
Your callous scarring will not let it through.

And what is there really to do about that?
Well, perhaps if you can loosen the grip of the warden, just a little by little, and refuse its shaming at how much of your strength this takes, perhaps someday the skin of your conscience will feel again, less under the thick of this numb weariness, as base childlike sense-pleasure can now. Maybe there is some nobleness in that somewhere.

HAPPY, HURT

disclaimer: This blog post is 100% fan squealing enthusiasm about why an awesome thing is awesome. I have no business relationship with The Stupendium and am not being paid to say this, I just got caught up in wanting to.

 

Okay so, one of my team members has recently been linking me to a bunch of Stupendium songs, and they're really good. The other day I arranged a YouTube playlist starting with a song my teammate had been listening to a lot recently, which I took as tonal inspiration, seeking a similar sound in instrumentals for the rest of the mix. You can find the list over here, but that's not what I'm here to talk about, that's just the background.

"Slide Into The Void". It's based on Control. I have never played Control. I have, however, played Lobotomy Corporation and read a fair amount of the SCP wiki, so the tropes of the Federal Bureau of Control were instantly familiar to me.

A few days later, I approached my teammate with a nonsequitur message:
🤍 HAPPY, HURT

They didn't seem to pick up the reference, and so I felt compelled to analyze and explain why I thought they might have. Why these two words are so emphatically memorable to me as a symbol of the song.

Another Line Around the Spirograph

It's time and past time that I came back and wrote something about what has been going on in my personal and romantic life. It has been, shall we say, intense; and gone through another cycle of a repeating pattern in my life.

A relationship breaking, but it might be possible to have the seeds of a better chance sewn into the transition out of this one from the very start.

That is not exactly new. But this seems perhaps not yet old: My heart was, already as it crumbled, an alternating cycle of sorrow on the one side, and hope on the other. Hope that extends beyond the love I am letting go of, hope that I can break these bad habits, break this cling, step back into a different role, and maybe someday, it can be the case that very little in the end was lost, even between us. Maybe, someday.

For now I see Her call another 'beloved', and my insides crinkle and I want the whole world to go away. And it has been so for months, because I'm staying in touch, or trying to. I wonder often whether it would be better for both of us if I were to cut ties and consign Her to the past, or to be not part of my life at all for some years. My conclusion? Inconclusive. It does not seem to matter in practice, because better or not, I do not think I could bring myself to do it.

 

The Man

There is a man.

The man comes home from work. He is tired.

The man takes off his shoes. He takes off his jacket. He greets his wife with a smile and a little kiss.

The man calls his children to dinner, and they eat together and ask each other about the events of the day. The man complains casually about his boss. His wife complains affectionately about messes. The children complain about their homework. The family tells itself that it's going to be okay, and this is how life is.

The man puts on slippers, and picks up a drink, and picks up a newspaper, and sits down on the most comfortable chair in the living room, and reads about events in the world beyond his house and his neighbourhood. He reads in order to be up to date on what to talk about with his co-workers during breaks, and what to avoid talking about because it may be awkward in light of something which has happened. He reads in order to know who to be annoyed at for what recent indiscretion. He frowns at indulgent politicians. He smiles at progress in public works. He pauses to wonder at the pace of technological advancement.

The man is comfortable.

The man is sometimes worried, especially when looking at construction projects, and newspaper headlines, and stressed people whose problems he does not know how to solve.

The man is sometimes happy, especially when he thinks about his wife, and his kids, and his friends, and his home.

The man doesn't know what to do about the politicians, or how to feel about fluctuations in immigration.

But the man knows he works hard and does well enough by his boss and co-workers.

He takes care of his wife and his kids.

He looks back on his day and he feels he is doing his best. He can relax into that thought, like a warm bath; or an old, well-worn pair of shoes. He does not feel compelled to question it. He could, but it would only leave him more worried than happy, so why would he?

He settles into his chair, and keeps reading.

 

You Who Would Change Me

To the ones who read my messages of despair that I always get into these conversations that feel like fights, that I'm afraid my professional relationships may always be characterized by comments like "If you're so anxious about this, maybe you should reconsider your fit for this position"...

To the ones who greet my whimper with a cheer, who are proud that I'm finally coming around to seeing the problems in myself and may be open to getting better... Who tell me to grow up and adapt, to make the people around me more comfortable...

To the one who told me today encouragingly that I may be onto something, that I could seek psychiatric evaluation, that I "can't make other people adjust to me on a dime" so I should consider how to broaden my own approaches in order to get "more doors staying open" to me...

Life Advice in YouTube Comments

Yesterday I spent a little time wandering through YouTube comments on a video about psychology and the kinds of people you can't help.

A number of the people commenting were observing that they saw elements of their own behaviour in the "unhelpable" types being described. I left replies with advice to some of these.

To a commenter who said they had brought everybody down without realizing it, I answered:

“without realizing it” is the trap there. Well... Now you have an opportunity to see things differently. Here's a piece of advice I have said many times to my friends:

When you start to notice your mistakes in retrospect, it can feel really terrible, but it's important to remember that seeing the problem AFTER it's happened is pretty much a prerequisite to seeing it WHILE it's happening, and eventually, with enough practice, seeing the problems your own behaviour could cause in the moments BEFORE you react to some stimulus.

When you realize your own role in your problems at ALL, it makes you stronger. It gives you the chance to do something about it. Even if you don't see the ways in which your actions may have been harmful until after you've left the situation, once you realize it, you unlock an opportunity to apologize, or look for ways to make it up to the people you have hurt, or even just to learn from your mistakes. You can't do any of that effectively without seeing the mistakes.

When you start being able to see it in the present, you will unlock the power to stop yourself, or call yourself on it. "Oh wait. I- I'm being a jerk aren't I. I didn't mean to do that, I wasn't seeing the situation clearly. I'm sorry. Let me take a moment to disconnect, walk, calm down, or otherwise gather my thoughts and try approaching it differently."

And when you start being able to see it coming in what you are about to say, you can change so quickly that other people won't even see the problems you decided not to cause.

Of course, that doesn't mean you won't face complicated situations where figuring out what the right thing to do is hard. n.n' But it will give you more options as you notice your own part, and practice acting in different ways, so you aren't always running on a terrible form of autopilot.

Good luck!

 

Take It With You

I have no patience for hollow compliments.

If I am worth listening to, listen, even when what I say is hard to hear.

If I am a great philosopher, embrace my ways - use them.

If I am a cunning pathfinder, walk with me through hidden and treacherous ways.

If I am a good cook, then come by my table and eat of my food.

 

If you would give me kind and complimentary words, and then walk away from me unchanged, taking nothing with you...

Then please, spare me.

Spare me the awkward obligation to pretend gratitude and praise you for your shallow, meaningless roleplaying as somebody who gives a fuck.

Oh, and if this leaves you full of awkward silences you don't know what to do with... I have something for you. Forsaking hollow signalling does not mean you must be left without any tricks.

Here is a sentence of great arcane power. It can be pronounced many different ways, to transform an awkward silence into a meaningful one and give you more time to think. It is almost always true when you need it, and it is almost never impolite:

"I don't know what to say."

Catching up: The Job

Another long gap. I spend too long away from this thing.

For the last half a year or so I have been working nights 2-3 shifts a week stocking shelves at a local grocery store. It's been a great workout. The pay's alright, and has allowed me to not worry about it while acquiring a number of nice new things, including replacing my phone. Most of my coworkers are pretty nice and I found after a while I was getting along with them nicely, but throughout it my fear of the apparent scorn of my immediate supervisor never completely went away.

It seemed he glared at me whenever he looked at me, and seemed he wished he was doing something else whenever he spoke. I heard variously from other co-workers that he's just like that, but recently I've observed him speaking to some of my co-workers in ways that are damn near respectful... far closer to it than he ever spoke to me so far as I can recall.

It became intolerable for me, and eventually I reached out to a bunch of people around me for advice, and one part of that advice was to talk to the store manager, who would likely seek to accommodate my moving positions in order to keep me there. I am, I suppose, possibly considered a good employee. Just not, it seems, by my immediate supervisor.

How that panned out is that I took the commute across town and back on a day my manager had suggested, and called en route to let her know when I'd be arriving... and she was too busy dealing with the district manager and doing something related to a new phase of pandemic lockdown to speak to me at all, so the customer service rep asked me to write her a formal letter on my position. So I left one, including a footnote asking her to call or email me so we could talk this through.

I left that experience feeling even more impatient and frustrated with the branch manager. Checked on the shift scheduler online to find my shifts for next week had vanished, a little while later, so I called in and asked whether I still had shifts and the online version had lost them (that's happened before)... But I was told, no, the manager asked my supervisor to remove them and was going to try to get me transferred to front-end.

She hadn't told me anything. I appreciate that my complaint is being taken seriously enough to act on, but I really should have been part of the conversation about what to do about it. I feel this is being terribly mis-handled and I am feeling pretty unimpressed about it. I still have yet to actually hear back from her at all.

So I guess I'll be transferring to front end? I don't know how that will go. I bet it won't be as good a work out as hauling the products out to be put away. I can do customer service though, I've done it before.

From this kind of start, I'm feeling pessimistic though. My head is starting to buzz with internal accusations that asking for a transfer was not a good idea. I already asked my friends to back me up on this, to remind me that my dissatisfaction was real and the stress I was under was not something to put up with. That... was in the context of helping me be willing to look for other jobs, though. Maybe I should ask them again, to help me validate the move having made it.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I moved the topper off my bed (I had been having back pains after sleeping) and it seems firm now by comparison. I don't know if that's why for most of the last week it seems like I can't stay asleep for much more than 3.5 hours.

So. That's the big thing which is happening right now. Maybe I'll catch you up on more later.

On the Subject of Gods

 

We-mortals, we are stories.
The Gods are tropes.

 

This too is an oversimplification, of course; I just think it strikes closer to the marrow than most on the subject.

To suggest that the Gods exist independently of ourselves is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes exist independently of stories.
Not a bit less ridiculous than that.
... And not a bit *more* either.

To suggest that the Gods do not exist *at all* is just as ridiculous as to suggest that tropes *are not real* at all, that there is nothing there to *talk* about.
Not any less ridiculous than that. Nor any more.

 

Heyo, House

I seem to recall a Brer Rabbit story I heard read aloud once, some long time ago, in which the clever rabbit tricks a wolf by asking "Heyo, house; Why you don't Heyo?" as though he were in fact used to the house actually speaking aloud to him... so convincingly that the wolf who is waiting inside to ambush him is fooled into revealing himself by calling out and trying to sound like a house.

It comes to mind, I think, because I have a new house to greet. Well. Quite an old house really, with some of that quirky coziness of a house that has stood a long time and been patched and updated bit by bit. But I have been here only five days.

As to the house I'm leaving... When the first roommate I waged war with there left, it was an uncomfortably novel feeling. It seems it's always me that winds up leaving when I clash with roommates. "But not this time – the ground is mine," I reflected, feeling disoriented. Well, that was then – it didn't survive the next tenant who came and took his place.

But, as I think about it, what was that house to me? What was it really but a room of my own for privacy which I had not had in far too long; and a rent I could afford for the time being; and promising at first, which didn't last past the first month? Wasn't it always intended to be temporary? Why did I stay there almost a full year anyway?

Well, never mind. The place I come to now I choose for the company. The roommate who has lived here for seven years and is determined to stay seems a promising companion, LGBT friendly and understanding. Decorations bedazzle the details - fridge magnets, old stickers and pins - with hints of nerdiness and reminders to challenge all those various foolish expectations that all people be the same and dull and perfect. My room is smaller. My rent is cheaper, but transit is now an expense worth mentioning. It takes an hour to get to work.

Yes, I have work now as well. Good honest labour for a good honest wage, pulling and stocking and tidying non-perishable groceries at a big grocery store in the city. I've been employed now perhaps a month and a half, fifteen shifts in total. I'm still learning layouts and efficiencies, but I'm pretty solid on the basic process of what I'm doing, and I'm gradually getting faster while minding thoroughness and making the necessary concessions to my poor sore body. I am anxious every day that I am not going fast enough, but I know this is disordered thinking. I also know it's okay for me to need more help than just realizing it's disordered to get through it effectively.

This past week has been... tough. My landlord surprised me by not letting me know until Nov 30th that he expected me to move on Nov 30th, not Dec 1st, and not telling me directly at all – It was left to my friendly roommate to tell me. My job surprised me by allocating me sudden shifts which had not been on the schedule the previous week on the nights of the 29th and 30th even though I asked for the 30th off. I didn't even see the change to the schedule until I'd already missed the Nov 29 shift.

And so I contacted New Roommate and made sure I'd be able to move my things to the house early, did some last-minute packing (glad I had been working on this over the previous week and had already done most of it), vacuumed the room I was leaving until it was nice and soft and neat, and took a few hours' nap despite the stress... Then hired an XL size Uber to bring me and my belongings across town. There was plenty of room and I managed the physical labour of shifting boxes and suitcases fine. New Roommate helped me stack them in the living room while their old roommates were busy leaving. I called my best friend for support and comfortable company for a little while and then went to work for the night, and for the following two nights as well, which was my first time doing three shifts in a row at the new job. I certainly hurt by the end of the third day.

Then there was last night, when I unpacked and set up my room. Today I started colonizing and cleaning the kitchen. I've done a little exploring around the neighborhood to find the nearby convenient shops, but I do not know the turns yet without consulting Google Maps.

I am... getting somewhere, I suppose I'd say. Aye, getting somewhere. Getting along in work a bit faster as my endurance and understanding improves, starting to make friends with some of my coworkers and join their banter at 2 AM lunch. Getting acquainted with a new roommate I can talk to and get that lovely sense of being on the same page. Getting back into doing a little bit of cooking, getting to know my new kitchen. Getting back to this blog after a whole disgusting half-year away. Getting all sorts of turned around on my sleeping schedule while dealing with emotions and memories and mood swings and anxiety and the fascinating surges of "nesting" energy that come to me when acclimatizing to a new house. I'll figure it out though.

So it goes. Now you knows.

A Poem to Wanderlust

I wake and the wanderlust crusts upon me.
Like the first frost on a window, like limerence on a lonely soul.
Like heart's compass remembering North after so long spinning aimless it had been forgotten.
Like thunder at the very beginning of a rainstorm.
Like bubbles breaking the surface of an underground lake.
Words of yearning surface in my mind like clues to a cipher, like a god's whisper.
"The Body Needs to Travel".

 

 The Body Needs to Travel is an album by Ian Tamblyn that I listened to in my childhood.

Such is Life, Such is Life...

a story originally written in autumn of 2019


I told her that I was weaker today, tired today.

I told her that I was not up to the same standard of vigilance.

I won't say I was expecting it when she jumped me; I wasn't, really. It just didn't come as so much of a surprise that I failed to react in time.

And so there I was holding her knife hand in a vice grip, her back against the wall.

"Really? Aren't you tired of these games yet?"

She squirmed and fought, but she fought half-heartedly. The chains I had built around her did not permit free movement and hurt to struggle too hard against. She was forced either to be caught in an obvious lie, or to concede the truth although it weakened her strength.

She confessed that I had not provoked her attack. It was her responsibility, it was her fault. She was the instigator. But she was angry at me. Perhaps nearly as angry as she was at herself.

Had I raped her? A demon bound to service does not serve willingly, so had I raped her? Maybe. As much as it may also be claimed that she seduced me... or that what bound us were more like wedding vows. Or that to take any single option thoroughly out of another man's capability is to imprison him.

Our world is not one in which such all or nothing ideals can yield useful judgements. To a high enough eye, all love has conditions no matter how well-intentioned, all conditions are coercion... And so if sex under coercion is rape, surely I had raped her, as all us hairless apes guilty of loving one another have been traumatized rape victims who go on to perpetrate, since the moment our species's behaviour first met whatever conditions the observer chooses to sufficiently qualify what we do as love.

Perhaps, to some eyes, we are not even there yet.

I was angry. I was frustrated. But more simply, I was tired. I had broken down and cried twice the previous day. I had thrown up sour juices from my belly and spat them out. I was tired of holding her so tightly, watching her so closely that she couldn't attack me.

But I was not so tired that she would beat me. Even tired, I was too fast for her. I could see in ways that the wounded creature was blind, too paralysed by fear to reach far enough out to touch that thing which cannot be seen with light nor sound nor nerves, but that required something else to sense. Something subtler, something that required some of the absence of fear.

Her attack was clumsy to me. I was tired, and did not enjoy the task of restraining her. But what must be done must be done. I grumbled. I will admit I kicked her ego while she was down. I was in a bad mood. She threw at me an argument, a package of words, which unfolded into an entrapping net of meaninglessness.

Still feeble before me. I had seen this kind of net before. I did not even sidestep. I walked through it, and I held her chin. I spoke into her face, up very close, and I explained. Her net was like a mist to me. I had had my turn being entangled in such nets before. I had learned long ago how to wriggle out of it, how to avoid being caught in the first place.

She spoke with quiet words that I had freed myself perhaps, but had not saved her. Behind the front of her words, she was crying and shrieking to be freed from her own net, but she could not have seen that she was, with her sense blinded by fear. The key was in her possession, but she had forgotten how to find it and did not know how to use it. I showed it to her, guided her hand to the right pocket, and opened it with the key inside. She looked at the thing blankly.

I told her she could use it, that she could figure it out.

"No. I refuse."

"I see what you are doing. You are trying to scare me away so I'll let you die. I also refuse."

She cried then, and she cursed me, helpless before my power over her, pitiable in her helplessness. Such is the nature of things bound. One cannot help but resent one's captor. I know I cannot in fairness expect her but to lay on my shoulders every scrap of suffering she lives while I bind her to life and force her to endure.

And so, had I raped her? Had it perhaps been time, and long since time to not bind but trust her? But sex was one thing, and one thing I could do without.

If she died, if I undid the chains and lifted the geas that guaranteed her from taking that knife to herself and then she did, it would stay with me forever until the memory was destroyed along with the rest of me.

Was I in my guardianship truly worthy of any other thanks but her contempt for keeping her here, in a beating heart and the raggedness of her sobbing breaths?

I do not have the comfort of conviction that I am doing the right thing. I am not actually certain. But for now, I continue to hold her here. It is the best I dare to do. In my own fear, my senses are clouded, although less so than hers. I cannot see a way to heal her without holding her to life, no matter how unwilling. If I could put her into a sleep until I have the answers, perhaps I would...

But in truth, I am glad to be spared the decision to choose between my own deepest loneliness, and forcing her to endure waiting for a cure that neither of us know is coming, that neither of us really know is possible.

Such is life, I suppose.

Such is life.

Advice and Resentment: All Over Again

I come here for a change not presenting my own writing about my experiences, but the words of a friend who felt inspired to write about my experiences after hearing me relate a part of them.

A dear friend of mine shared a disappointing experience with a counselor just now, and I feel the urge to say something about this. The profession of counseling is naturally one of providing advice, one of giving counsel to clients. It’s entirely expected that a counselor will have opinions on how to improve a client’s behavior. And yet. 

There are people who have been talked over, who have been pressed down upon with the opinions of others throughout their lives. These people have spent a great deal of time treated as though they couldn’t possibly know what they’re doing. They have been imposed upon with well-meaning advice, time and again, to the point that they begin to lose their own voices. Their own agency becomes forfeit to the crush of external narration, telling their stories for them. 

It’s a counseling instinct to want to correct a client’s poor choices. A client’s working through reclaiming their agency and voice doesn’t mean the counselor is relegated to observation alone, or that all sharing of advice is harmful. It does however mean that counsel must be given with care. Someone going through this process, such as my friend, is very likely to set boundaries on being given advice, and is very likely to frown on advice being wrapped in polite disguises. Responding here by rejecting being relegated to observation is a false dichotomy, a trap of black-and-white thinking just like counselors everywhere try to guide clients out of. That negativity and accusation only refreshes those old hurts, no matter the counselor’s intentions. 

There is a middle path that I’ve learned to walk — one that should have been obvious to my friend’s counselor — though I still stumble from time to time myself. Offer. It is so easy to assume the privilege of being the expert, to throw advice out like people are blessed to hear it, and people all too often forget the simplicity of offering first. It is a habit that must be trained, but a very compassionate one, full of respect for a client’s agency and intelligence. 

"That sounds stressful. I have advice on how to handle it, when

you’re ready for it." 

"That’s a good start. Would you like to hear a way to improve

that, either now or in a bit?" 

Those are just two examples off the top of my head of how to offer, rather than impose. As a counselor, you have the luxury of patience, the luxury of writing your suggestion down and holding onto it, for when the pressure has been vented, for when the concerns have been validated, for when the urgency has faded. To give in to the dichotomy, and assume the privilege of the expert, is such a common kind of weakness. I know we can all do better, counselors and friends alike. 

In loving and hopeful defiance, 

Sable Seylerius