A New Process and a New Path

A note of warning: I'm attempting to use P’s language recognition software in order to make the process of blogging a little faster than its usual snail's pace. Of course this may mean that it will take longer - I don't know, I've never use something like this before. I'm certainly going to have to take a while before I get used to how to input punctuation.

At least it's fairly intuitive.

It takes me so long to get a blog post written, usually, that by the time it's done or mostly done, the topic is or feels irrelevant now. I have a very long, incomplete post that will not be posted - at all, ever - and I may in fact delete it from my computer. It was useful for organizing my thoughts, but… Let's just say that some things could not be unsaid if someone else read that document.

I have two new topics now that I need to blog about or write about or whatever: cruelty to animals, and anger. These two don't actually go together, but I'm not sure which one I'm writing about now. We'll just have to see.

I'm taking a course in university this term called Animals and Society. More accurately it would be Nonhuman Animals and Human Society. That should be a clue to the direction in which the professor is taking this course. We're not going to be learning just about the historical and current use of animals in society, but rather what animals have meant to societies in the past and the present and how they have been used and, most commonly, abused. (Can you tell I'm having trouble telling Dragon to input commas?) We have four books to read this term – four whole books – the first of which was Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. I looked at it and said, "Holy crap, this thing is 250 pages long. I'm not reading this in two weeks."

Two days later, I was done it.

First of all, it's well-written. I had no trouble imagining Peter Singer sitting across from me in a coffee shop, politely and reasonably talking to me about a cause which he felt, honestly, was just. In the course of the book he details the way that in 1990, farm animals and research animals were being used, and abused – horribly. Given that recently, I signed an online petition asking for the end of use of gestation crates for pigs – a device in which pregnant pigs are held for their entire pregnancy so that they do not waste energy by, say, turning around – conditions have not entirely improved since then.

He makes the most convincing argument I've ever heard or read for vegetarianism. He appeals to my utilitarian morals, suggesting what seems very logical – that the suffering and life of one creature should not be used for the trivial enjoyment of another. He is not claiming that we should stop carnivores from eating herbivores, or that we can't have companion animals – a claim from such organizations as PETA that bothers me deeply, as the animals in my life have been some of the most beloved people I've known. I understand their stance but cannot take it. Peter Singer, however, simply wishes animals to not suffer pain if it can be avoided – and he points out that there are ways in which it is absolutely avoidable, easily, if we only cared to try.

I've been enjoying learning new dishes to cook that involve meat. I've been making beef stew, and I tried making pulled pork recently. But I'm not so attached to meat that now, as I really think about that this piece of food came from the leg or chest or backside of a cow or pig or chicken, I wouldn't consider never eating this again. Or maybe I should say reducing my consumption of it – another thing that Peter Singer suggests that appeals to me is that since this is an attempt to reduce suffering, any efforts reduce suffering. I can help by eating less, or almost none, or none – the amount that I help is mediated and controlled by this, but eating less does not mean not helping at all.

Since I began reading the book, I have consumed only (of animal products) a small amount of beef broth, and some products containing milk, eggs and cheese. It's only been four days – I realize that's not very long, and it doesn't mean that I'm committed to going vegetarian. However, I really care so little about what I nurish myself on, provided that it's not revolting, that if one choice makes an animal with nerves suffer and die and another choice makes a plant without nerves die, I think I will choose the path of less harm.

As a side comment: I wasn't sure for a while about the idea of animal sacrifice with anesthetic. Now I realize that there are much worse things going on in this world, and that if an animal has had the chance to live a good life and then receives an injection and is then killed painlessly, the amount of suffering is virtually nil. Compare this to the procedure of castrating cows and pigs without anesthetic and I think the animal sacrifice is a much more humane process. (This is sort of, but also sort of not, in response to an old blog post from someone else, who knows who they are.) I think that the amount of harm done could be easily canceled out by supporting the end of animal suffering elsewhere.

The day after I finished the Peter Singer book, I attended an animal rights protest at my university. I had not known until the day I finished the book that my university's medical research involves vivisection – the process of cutting animals open while still alive. Given what I had just been reading about the ways in which animals are tortured for science, and more importantly the ways in which they are tortured in mass quantities repeatedly for trivial scientific gains, or no gains at all, this new knowledge hit a nerve. I joined a small group of people yesterday, holding signs on the sidewalk in the freezing cold and wind and having our pictures taken by a small number of newspaper photographers. Not a lot of people seemed to see the protest, but I feel like I performed a civic duty that day. Last term I was studying ancient Greece and, especially, ancient Athens, and it felt very significant to me that a man who did not participate in public life was considered selfish in that time and place. I feel like simply voting in elections is not enough to change society in the ways that I feel it needs to be changed, and that I have a responsibility to try to make that change. This is part of being Memory Walker. I have a knowledge of history and the human mind and of society, and that knowledge tells me strongly that I cannot sit back when I know that something is wrong and let it continue.

I could be wrong, of course. But if I think carefully before acting, I will hopefully avoid the majority of error – and fearing to act in case I'm wrong is what has paralyzed me for many years. Failure to act in a situation where action should have been taken is also wrong.

(This took me under an hour. I'm pretty sure that this could've taken me several hours to write by hand . Even with the stops and starts, this was a much more efficient process, and if P allows me to continue using her computer, I think I will.)

Spirits, Guardians, Figments and Projections

This was going to be titled "The more I learn, the less I know," and it was going to be a fairly anguished post about the current struggles I was having with knowledge, purpose, and being so exhausted by the world of human beings that I was ready to quit.

The War For Christmas had raged on my Facebook feed, among those who wanted to put the Christ back in Christmas, those who want the other score of celebrations in December to get equal recognition, and those who believe that the public expenditure on trees and lights could be better spent on education and health care.
Being on several mailing lists for First Nations culture, I was also inundated, at American Thanksgiving, with reminders that the festival celebrates the invasion of North America by English colonists who rarely kept their word. The word 'genocide' popped up a lot. And I got into a hating mood, which is rarely good even if it's for a real cause. I got to hating the celebrations and symbols of the dominant culture here, which is very WASP; got very sensitive about the visible presence of Christian groups on my campus, of the churches I go past on my daily bus route, of the stoopid Christmas music, of the presence of Christmas trees and nothing else but the occasional token menorah. There is a place for that sensitivity, but it was just being... well, hate. I was even glaring at the pretty tree set up in the foyer of our apartment building.

I had also spent quite some months worrying about the outward forms and names of things, and about 'doing it right'. If I'm going to look into Pagan religions and I'm interested in this and that culture, I should research carefully and learn everything I can, right? So I don't become one of those unintentionally irreverent New Agers who act very learned but are actually hanging up decorations that read "idiot foreigner" in Sanskrit or something. I 'chameleon' far too easily - mirroring what I hear and read, unconsciously thinking that I must obey whatever I come across if it seems to be from a good source - so by reading and enjoying a Recon source uncritically, I was absorbing the idea of doing it right, not as a personal choice but as the only way to be. This is no fault of said source! I can't even hear an accent without having that accent flavour my own speech for the next fifteen minutes.

Thankfully, I'm back to myself now. And there's something I have to do. This is the point where you commit me to the loony bin if you're ever going to...

Everyone, this is Nix.

Well, this isn't Nix. This is the best-seeming picture off of Google of a red wolf, a sub-species thought to derive from an intermixture of grey wolves and coyotes. But it seemed to capture him reasonably well, as well as a photograph realistically can.

Nix is my daemon, as in Philip Pullman/Golden Compass daemon. I'm even fighting with myself as I write this, firmly telling myself that you don't have to have read the books to understand, and I don't have to link you to anything, because my interpretation is the one that's important right now, and not anyone else's, because no one but me can explain what I believe. And what I believe is that Nix is my daemon, which is somewhere between a Jungian animus/anima other-half-of-the-soul and a spirit guide.
I do not believe that there is a physical wolf tagging along behind me, as there would be if I lived in the world of Golden Compass (although that would be AWESOME). But a few years ago, maybe 2008 or so, I was poking around and found a forum where people had expanded on the idea from the trilogy... and turned it into a surprisingly believable thing. And I thought about it for a while, and I did some research on different species... and I found Nix, stepping fully formed from a corner of my mind that I'd never looked in before.

'Nix' as a name is nothing incredibly significant. It's the last name of Garth Nix, who wrote The Ragwitch, a book I didn't even finish. Yet somehow the name stuck, like glitter. I've asked Nix about it, and he seems to like it well enough.

Nix is a male red wolf. The traits of red wolves generally mirror mine: they run in smaller packs than grey wolves, eat smaller prey, and so on. They're a #2, something I've always known I am; this isn't a self-esteem issue, this is a realistic fact. I am not big and powerful, and I cannot take down an elk. The species... fit.
As well: my second roleplay character ever was a Harry Potter character with the Animagus form of a wolf - except I always pictured him as turning out very leggy and lanky, with more brownish than grey fur. Lo and behold, this is what red wolves look like... So Nix had been hanging around for a lot longer than I thought. I just hadn't looked for him yet.

Nix has a wry sense of humour, can be a little snooty on occasion, and says smart-ass things I want to smack him for sometimes. But he is a guide: when I need him to be serious, he snaps to attention immediately, and almost always says what I really needed to hear when I ask him something. Sometimes his responses surprise or startle me; other times I already knew the answer, I just needed to hear it from somebody else. He kept my spirits up during my shifts at the Book Depot, which were pretty cold and lonely sometimes; he'd curl up on a stack of book boxes nearby and watch me work.

Now, when I use the word 'say', I do not mean speaking. I don't hear a voice through my ears, or even a voice in my head. If I were to try to write it down, it wouldn't have quotation marks around it, not even italics. I only know that it's not me because the response will sometimes interrupt me halfway through my question. Because I do not, otherwise, argue with myelf. And because, as I mentioned above, the responses will sometimes surprise me.
When I speak of some action by Nix, I do not mean - as I said before - that there is a real wolf in the room with me. That would be absurd. But I have a... sense of where he is, if I think about it; I could point, and it would be pretty consistent. He doesn't suffer the limitations of a physical form (although he complains about the rain anyway). I don't see anything, and rarely even get a mental visual; but I know that it is happening, in the same way that when a dream begins, I know the starting premises rather than having to puzzle it out along the way. In the same way that I know where my feet are even when I can't see them.

I've just listed some pretty weird things. Like I said, this is the point where you lock me away for life if you're ever going to. But the funny thing, especially after I've made so much noise about trying to find a path to follow for so many months, is that I don't believe in Nix. I know that he's there. He's not intrusively there; I have to ask him to come out (and sometimes, if I'm moody, he refuses), and concentrate on him to keep him around. But he's there.

What is he exactly? I could spend a very long time trying to figure out if he's some projection of the under-used parts of my personality, or an adult-sized imaginary friend, or some other psychological figment. I could spend even longer trying to fit him into this or that belief system; an awful lot of systems could handle something like Nix in theory, although in practice he doesn't usually act that other-worldly. ...He just started laughing at the very concept, although he won't (and can't), of course, tell me where he is from, besides that he is 'from me and also from elsewhere'. Helpful, hm?

He's certainly not the only Being I feel is out there. There is Something that I am lighting a little oil lamp for, in the kitchen, with nothing more than vegetable oil and string for a wick; but despite the tininess of the outward form, the sense of putting a little something out there to honour... well, Something.
That's as far as I've gotten. I'm open to more if and when it happens. I won't push; pushing will, if anything, make it happen slower.

Spoon Theory

To update VERY briefly from my last, long-ago post: I did get in to see the counsellor, twice. I wrote up most of two separate posts about it, then never finished either. Basically, I ranted about how I needed my parents to be responsible for themselves so I could stop worrying about them; then I realized, over the next couple of days - rather as they have, I'm sure, forced themselves to do for me - that they *are* adults, and whatever they do is their choice. They are not asking for my help, and I have only a limited responsibility to bail them out unasked. This required a deep breath, and coming to grips with that the choices they are making right now may cut years off the time I have with them. And that this is not my responsibility. I was nearly sick afterwards, but after it settled out, that... fury I mentioned in my last post seems to have dissipated, and has not really returned.

Now that that's done, I want to talk to you about spoons. But you need to read But You Don't Look Sick first, for context, or else you'll think I've gone totally insane.


The author of this posting may have invented the best idea ever for explaining chronic illness. I was talking to one of you, my dear patient readers, a few days ago about Asperger's and how I believe I have a mild case of it; here is a much better explanation of why I hold said belief than I was able to provide before.

To synopsize from the article/blog post: 'Normal people', especially young ones, have a nearly limitless reserve of energy. (Note: I don't think I know very many of these so-called 'normal people' personally, but I know they exist because I see them in my class seminars, talking about how they stayed up all night drinking and partying and cramming.) This energy and capacity for 'getting stuff done' is symbolized as an unlimited supply of spoons.

Those in the tails of the standard normal distribution (read: not in the middle of the bell curve), however, have a finite number of spoons to spend in a day. Depending on their circumstances, they may have a fair number, or maybe only a very few.

According to the author of the posting, her friend, to whom she was explaining this (with the aid of real spoons), looked at her in a kind of horrified sadness and asked how on earth she manages to live a life of counting her spoons. Now, I may be jumping to conclusions, but I infer from this that the 'normal healthy person' 's reaction is generally going to be roughly similar to this - rather than nodding in agreement.

Well, that's okay. I already knew I wasn't a healthy, normal person. So let me explain to you the spending power of a spoon in my world.

Now, I obviously don't have lupus, unlike the author, so the situation is so incredibly different that I would never presume to know what she's going through. My body is so functional. My hair doesn't pull out by the brushful and my fingers generally bend when I tell them to. It's a blessing that I should cherish more.

I spent a fair bit of last night and this morning puzzling it out, and I think I have my answer. It is not so much physical tasks that cost me spoons, but rather mental/organizational and social/emotional ones. If I have incorporated a set of actions into a routine, the entire routine only takes a little effort. However, if something is new or out of the ordinary, its spoon cost can skyrocket.

Thus, I can get up in the morning; get dressed, (not to be graphic) use the washroom, put on my shoes and coat, check my laptop, get P her clothes and something to drink, and help both of us get out the door, all for maybe half a spoon or less.
However, if I have to a) shave b) wash my face c) choose my clothing by any criteria other than grabbing one thing at random from each of separate drawers d) plan and make breakfast e) make a phone call f) pack something unusual g) take some painkillers... or a host of other things beyond the routine... it starts costing me. If I had to do all of those things in the same morning, it might take me three hours, because I have to approach EACH UNUSUAL TASK with a kind of conscious intention and planning that chews through an incredible amount of time.

It is now my routine to be outside in time to catch my bus, and after I catch that bus my responsibility is over until I reach class. That's pretty much spoon-free. However, if I had to spend extra time to get ready, the entire schedule could be off - and then I'm in uncharted territory again. If I miss the first bus, I have to jog the couple of kilometres to where the next bus in my route picks up from, and that's a spoon. If there's nowhere to sit on the bus and I have to reach up to the bars way above my head (since I'm short) to stay stable as we go on the highway to my university, that can be another spoon. All in all, one five-minute addition to my morning routine can leave me exhausted and sore before I even start class.

I calculate that approximately each hour that I spend at school costs about one spoon, depending on the activity - and, more importantly, the environment. Some lecture halls are better than others; some have a bank of fluorescent lights that seem to glare into my eyes no matter where I sit or if I sit anywhere but a select few seats, or that flicker - or the speakers buzz. Add up to a spoon for every one of these environmental influences present, per hour. Then, time spent not in class can be restful - such as if I find a padded bench somewhere quiet - or it can be worse - such as if I somehow get stuck in crowded hallways.

A Monday requires me to walk to the bus; I then spend 8am-4pm at school. A bad Monday could be 10-14 spoons' worth of energy expenditure and physical exertion and pain, and that's if I didn't have to open my mouth.

When I get home, if I know what I'm making for dinner - and if the kitchen is clean - and if I still have any energy left - I can swing right into cooking and it barely takes any 'work'. Still some, but I wouldn't call it a whole spoon. If I ran out of spoons yesterday before I could do any dishes, though, and the counter is covered in dirty cups; or if we have to - while getting increasingly hungry - hammer out a plan for a nutritionally useful meal that we can both stomach despite varying levels of nausea, which tends to then lead to me trying to cook a piece of meat straight out of the freezer, with all the problems that entails - dinner could be a multi-spoon endeavour all in itself. But eating something junky loses a spoon, too, because that means that my entire nutrition for the day was half a glass of juice or milk in the morning plus whatever I scrounge in the evening.

Then homework is extra. I've managed to make my statistics homework into a routine, so that's now a relatively easy task. My essays are making me want to cry, though, because I'm trying desperately to learn "how to write good papers in university" and I'm learning this year that THERE IS NO SUCH THING. There are no rules. Each grader in each course has a completely different set of requirements. "You're not citing enough!" then "I want to see some original thought! Don't cite every sentence." "Make a strong argument, only use enough facts to back it up," then "I want a review of the current state of knowledge - you're not presenting a case, just the facts." I need some consistency! How am I supposed to learn if the lesson is always changing? As I'm trying to emphasize here, I need solid rules to follow and as much routine as possible, and this is exactly the opposite. The social aspect of this - the confusion, anger, anxiety and frustration this is generating in me towards my professors and the university system in general - means it's costing me a spoon just to *think* about any of my homework besides my statistics.

There are what I call 'meta-school' things - handling our OSAP grants and loans, choosing courses, planning exams. These involve dealing with officialdom, and are never routine, so they take at least a spoon per effort.

Every two weeks I have to get a fresh injection of testosterone. The process of remembering to pack the vial, get to my appointment on time, make nice with the nurse, get stuck with a needle, and remembering to put the vial away again when I get home probably totals a spoon. It's reducing slowly as it becomes ever more routine. Having to go get a new vial when the old one ran out recently, however, was such a time and energy expenditure - planning (1), phoning the pharmacy (1), getting to the pharmacy (1) - that I had to move the actual appointment to the next day.

One of these posts is probably two to three spoons, considering the hours I spend typing and thinking, and attempting the difficult process of expressing my thoughts and feelings in words that other people will understand.

Spending face-time with other people might be the heaviest expenditure at all. I have to carefully craft a plan - I use that word on purpose. The reason for visiting (I can't just 'drop in', it doesn't work in my head). A way of asking to visit or to be visited. Food or drink to be consumed; I may have to pack us our own food because of dietary restrictions. I have to plan how to get there, tally up how long it will take; frequently it would take more time on the bus to get to a friend's house than I/we can spend actually visiting. Is this bus accessible? If not, P can't bring her wheelchair. It can take me half an evening to plan; carrying it out is then like winning the Olympics. Whoopee! I got there on time! I didn't get lost! I made it through a two-hour social interaction! I made it home before midnight! The entire process guarantees that I'm 'borrowing against' my spoons for the next day - so a quiet visit for tea will have me as laid up tomorrow as someone else's wild party.

I'll calculate that I have - as a very rough estimate - maybe 20 spoons to spend on an average day. As you can see, social/emotional tasks and tasks involving planning, rather than following a well-trodden routine, are my big 'expenses'.

This. This is why I think I have Aspergers. Not because I prefer books to people. Not because I have a limited diet. Not because I have a crappy memory for faces. Not because buzzing lights hurt me. Not because being crowded in a hallway makes me intensely - yet indescribably - uncomfortable. Not because I will sit and debate the definition of a word instead of understanding the emotional message behind it. Although all of these are potentially symptoms, reported by a vast majority of people with AS.
But because the core things that people with AS have trouble with are the things that cost me spoons. Time management. Social interactions. Planning outside a routine.

So. As the author of the posting said, please: feel honoured (just a little tiny bit) that I'm spending this time with you. You're worth the price.

Spilling Over

I had every intention this morning to, right now, be playing my Diablo III starter/demo version, and gleefully lett my mind shut off but for the simple tasks of avoiding and killing monsters, collecting treasure, and enjoying the intricate graphics. Instead, it seems that  the gods have a different plan; one way or another, I couldn't get the blasted game to connect to the internet (a requirement) where I was, so instead I'm on a bus (with no internet at all) grumpily moving one step closer to my eventual destination today at the dentist's office. Meanwhile I'll try D3 again at my university, which is between here and the dentist's.

But here I am, with eff all to do for twenty minutes. Well, not really; I've been to my first four classes for this term, and now know about all my assignments from now 'til December. (Forgive any overuse of swearing; I'm already leaving out a lot of 'goddamn's.) I will never, between now and May, really be able to claim that I have nothing to do. I love (not) how unless a person is paying their own way through university and has the money up front to buy their textbookss a week before class starts, we all automatically start a week behind on readings... As an OSAP (Ontario Student Assistance Program) student, my book money might not be here for another two weeks, putting me even further behind. I'd love to be that great student who's read all the required material ahead of time, but it's just not financially feasible.

Why, you may be asking, is this so unstructured - just a sort of multi-topic rant about whatever's on the surface of my mind? It's related to that I haven't done a post in weeks. I'm spilling over. The bag's so full that even touching the zipper produces little noises of ripping fabric from the shift in pressure. I can't start talking about anything to anyone because everything would explode at once and it would become an attack against them without me even meaning to. Instead I'm at about the point of the song The Hit (Smile Empty Soul; don't laugh):
Just take me away from
These people
Who want shit
From me
Just tell them
I'm busy
So fuck off
And die

I'm moody. I'm bitchy. At times I'm actively angry. Someone just let a door go instead of holding it as I started to walk through, and I almost... I'm not sure. The urge, the impulse, the desire to rage was there, but I don't know what form it would have taken if I'd let myself act on it. I'm like a pan of extremely hot oil: there's almost nothing to see when I'm left alone, but touch me with a drop of water and I will spit. I will take your face off.

And then in other hours or on other days, I'm fine. This will be even choppier than I expected because I'm writing it over the course of at least two days. Before this paragraph was written Tuesday morning, before a dentist appointment; by the time the appointment was over, the anger had drifted away. I found an injured swallowtail butterfly and carried it fifteen minutes to my parents' garden, in hope that it might live better there than on the sidewalk; I talked to the crossing guard at my old school, who has been there since my brother, 17 years older than I, was in elementary school. I calmed. Then, later yesterday I hit my third major mood at this point, which is depressed and overwhelmed; I thought for a few seconds about checking my OSAP loan status, for instance, and felt my strength drain away like someone had opened a tap in my leg and drained out all my ATP.

Today I've managed exhaustion to the point of cheer, irritable, nervous, and driven to deal with some of the otherwhelming stuff (thankfully not feeling all of those at once, but rather in sequence). I would like very much to only think about my Dungeons and Dragons campaign and a planned Falling Skies-based roleplaythat are about the only two things I'm looking forward to right now... Unfortunately I instead am worrying about my classes, my homework, our books that I can't buy yet, our finances, my wisdom teeth, an eye exam, a tax return that hasn't come back yet, P's transport to and from school, a doctor's note to prescribe her the massages she needs to be functional without pain, my parents, a vet visit for our kitten who was supposed to get his first rabies shot two months ago, dinner, the inevitable fine-motor tasks that P will be assigned that she cannot physically do, the complete lack of a meal schedule, housework, needing a new binder because my current one is becoming non-functional, and how many opportunities I'm missing to make and maintain friendships and connections and get involved on campus because I have to go home and cook dinner every night. How many things I'm neglecting in the process of keeping two people fed, clothed, and out the door. I hear P talk about getting a third cat next year, and wonder how the hell that's supposed to work because I already don't think we're giving our current two enough attention.

That's completely leaving out questions like the ethics of buying from discount stores when I know the products are made in slave-labour conditions, or how to convince our city to make more bus routes wheelchair-accessible, or the nature of love and friendship, or whether there are gods or Gods, or whether all good character authors/writers are just a little bit schizophrenic. It leaves no time for me to learn to sew, research two-spirits in either Cherokee or Mik'maw culture, or do anything much on my own time that I would consider improving myself. My 'on my own time' is here, right now, on the bus for twenty minutes at a time. I barely have any time to read. Or hike. Or do a bit of real computer gaming; these are things that I used to consider the core of my activities. I'm ashamed of how little I have read in the past five years that was printed on paper and/or more than four pages long, that no one forced me to read; I used to go through novels in a day and a half. I haven't drawn anything more complicated than a tiny pen sketch in my notes for... years? I appear to have become an adult, one who can deal with the outside world and keep the utilities from being cut off, but I think I lost something in the process.

I hate the amount of time I spend mulish and resentful about other people's demands on my time. I will sometimes set myself needless tasks just for the backwards satisfaction of refusing to accomplish them. This isn't the person I thought I was, or that I wanted to be.

The good news is that I have finally, finally, booked myself an appointment with the free counselling service offered to students at my university. It's in about a week and a half - Friday after next. I have this worry that I'm not even going to be able to open my mouth, because I've spent so long denying and glossing over and sucking up and saying the positive thing that I might not actually be able to access how I'm really feeling with my vocal chords any more. The backpack is so full that the zippers are jammed, and nothing can make it out without a serious application of effort.

I feel done like dinner, which is a really terrible way to start the year. Yet I will go home and warm up some supper for us and send some emails and be sort-of-efficient, and watch an episode of Falling Skies and go to bed and never have said more than one word about this to anyone. And I will repeat this until the end of the year unless the counselling changes something.

Cough Syrup

"Be grateful for the opportunity to wake up every morning." I just wrote that a few days ago.



Yesterday was my 23rd birthday. Yay me. I got a huge response on Facebook and a few well-wishes on TUL. I appreciate that.

Yesterday I did not go hiking, nor did I eat exactly what I wanted, nor did I get dinner cooked for me, nor did I get to avoid all my chores. I did not get to be alone with the sky, or play geeky board games with family, nor did I arrange an X-Men movie marathon.

We brought our kitten to my parents' for a playdate, and with the intention of playing geeky board games, listening to Loreena KcKennitt CDs, and having a good time.

So my parents' car had a nearly flat tire, and we had to stop to pump it up. Toki (the kitten) was freaked out for the first two hours of the visit, even though he's enjoyed similar visits before. Mom left for her yoga class for several hours mid-visit. P had an exam to study for (which she's writing right now; hence I have time to write) and my dad was too tired to do much.

I ended up batting between encouraging Toki to play with the other kittens, helping Phina study, and stretching pizza dough in the kitchen by myself. While mom was out, I made an innocuous comment that resulted in a revealing conversation about how my dad's antidepressants are doing shit all.

After we got home that evening, the night wrapped up with a mutual friend tearing up P's faith in humanity by yet again going back on a promise, her nearly crying, and me taking eight teaspoons of DM cough syrup for a non-existent cough.
I think the little adjustment to reality that that much dextromethorphan creates finally wore off about twenty minutes before I started writing this (although it could all just be sleep loss, and I'd have no idea).

I ought to be feeling guilty and worried about this. I hadn't done something like this for over a year - I think the last time had been soon after we moved out of Toronto. I had switched to cough syrup somewhere in March of that year; I had finally run through the obscenely huge bottle of liquid codeine that P's dentist had given her when her wisdom teeth came out (she used two teaspoons and swore off it, saying she didn't like how it made her feel and that it tasted like cherry shit). Once the cough syrup was gone too, I stopped.

It was a direct response to stress from other people, not for fun. I was under a lot of pressure from many directions right then, and I was out of coping. P was very upset when I told her, obviously.

I realized some time in this last year that I don't need counselling or therapy. If I could run away and live in a cabin by myself two hundred miles north of anywhere, my problems would vanish. Except then I'd be lonely. I do have attachments. Usually they do me good, but right now they're making me take cough syrup. The people I love and care about most could use some therapy, but I am actually pretty much okay when left to my own devices. But none of them are getting any therapy, so instead I had some cough syrup.

I'm not guilty and worried about this. I'm not feeling a heck of a lot of anything, except a bit cold and tired. Motivation to write my Dungeon Master post is a bit tanked right now. I really want to go back to sleep as soon as possible and see if things improve, but going back to sleep will not make P stop seeing rejection everywhere and will not get my dad off medications that are only making him worse, nor will it give him a job that doesn't suck.
He admitted yesterday that the back injury he suffered last October is essentially healed. He just feels like too much shit to go back to work. I don't even know whether they actually fired him or whether he's just on some kind of indefinite, unpaid, un-benefitted leave of absence. It doesn't matter; I think he's fired himself internally. NuComm is a shithole and I can't blame him for not wanting to go back there.

I'm kind of trying this morning, though. There's an anger swirling around deep in my mind (anger is nearly invisible to me, by the way, which might be an excuse to see one of the free university counsellors) and I think part of it is directed at him for throwing himself away. Putting up a good front of daily functionality is not enough, sorry. I don't want my father to just act like he's doing all right, I want him to deal with what's fucking him up.
I also want him to take one of my score of suggestions for a first step of action, besides getting the kittens. Yes, they are making an improvement, but that's not enough. He's playing with them and caring for them, but it hasn't gotten him to move that step further and (for instance) water the house plants - which used to be his pride and joy. I'm watching him let them die because he can't make the effort, and my sympathy is wavering. It's not that I care any less how he feels - this is me caring. I want him to be better, I don't want him to suffer.

The urge to smash something is overwhelming.

I don't know how to correct this. I don't know how to correct for this. I don't think that I can or should walk away and ignore this, go on with life as usual, but it seems like I'm supposed to - like I'm being encouraged to. Nobody else wants to look at it, to touch it, to deal with it, probably because it hurts too much and they don't want to share my cough syrup.

It took some deciding to go with the Glee version of this song. The original music video is just too weird, and Darren Criss does a good job (although the original performer has a reality to his physical performance and expression that Darren Criss could only dream about). The important part, however, is the context of where they used the song in the show: one of the characters getting 'caught' as gay and ending up trying to hang himself. I cannot understand this song except in context of frustration, confusion, lost opportunities, and longing for an unreachable better existence.

Writing this post is my way of reaching out to you through the screen, and I'm loath to stop writing and tell it to actually publish. Please; I don't mind if you feel the need to pass some sort of judgement. Say it to me, don't just think it. Care enough to act. Make a suggestion. Send me a hug. Anything. Just be honest about it. I've had too much of people hiding behind a pleasant facade of functionality for now.

Roofless Pillars in an Empty Grove

Someone (you know who you are) recently posted a blog about the pillars of their practice, and invited others to be thoughtful in the same vein. It fit in wonderfully with what I had written the day before about I thought for a few moments about replying with the body of this posting, but realized that it would be much more suited for a post all its own.
(I always have trouble with responding to other peoples' written thoughts. I want to keep my replies about them and their thoughts, but usually what occurs to me to write is something about my thoughts, experiences or difficulties about that same general topic. I don't want to draw attention to myself on someone else's stage!
...At the same time, as I write these, I'm perfectly happy to let you, my readers, ramble on about nearly anything in my comments. I think I may be holding myself to a different standard...)

So, the body of this post. I started thinking about the things I already do, and the things I might do, and the things I would like to start doing. In terms of practicing, I mean. Before researching, before committing myself to making another groups' practices meaningful to me, this is the sort of stuff I do and would do if I had the time. A lot of it feels very un-spiritual.

• Light a candle before going to bed. (It is a very small tea candle, in a tall candle-holder, on a very wide stove.) I'm not sure what this is in aid of. Maybe to honour the night; maybe a prayer to wake up in the morning. Maybe it's just practice being mindful. Current, as of the last four days.
• Walk (or sit) in a green space every day; the greener the better. Hug a tree. Forest grounds me in a way that nothing else does. It helps me let go of petty personal troubles and the equally petty problems of human society, alike.
• Greet the stars every night. The moon, too, if she's up.
• Track the moon's cycles.
• Pay more attention to all of nature's cycles. I want to have a sense of when the apples will be ripe, when Samhain is coming, when the leaves will fall, when the first snowdrops will sprout. Time gets away from me too easily.
• Stay focused. Do things because I intend to, not because of some outside push or on a whim or by accident. Have all the threads of myself gathered into both hands, like the reins of a powerful chariot.
• Keep a detailed calendar.
• Be kind and considerate.
• Extend the same benefit of the doubt to both myself and every other person. If the action harms no one, then do as you will.
• Always be learning.
• Keep a garden.
• Be prepared for anything within reason. Keep a good sense of humour when Murphy strikes.
• Be grateful for the opportunity to get up every morning.

I recognize some of this as Wiccan, more from unspecified pagan sources; some just straight philosophy, some organizational, and some appears rather Boy Scout. It's not complete, but it already seems like too many 'things' for every day! I'll have to re-examine this in a few days, and see what I missed, which things I might actually try to incorporate, and which I'm already doing and don't even realize.

The Things You Believe, The Things You Know

I'd touched on this in one of my first postings. I was trying, not even to unravel, but just to find a thread end in the huge tangle that is me + irrational religious spiritual beliefs.
...Yeeeeah. Apparently the atheist critic in my head is still trolling strong. Hell, I haven't even gotten off the Brock Atheist Group on Facebook yet. I've been taught so strongly, fiercely even, to examine beliefs for flaws in logic - to slice and dice with Occam's Razor, the philosophy stating that any argument is stronger if it doesn't have to involve the supernatural - that I tend to fall back into that thought pattern quickly if I don't keep its opposite fresh in my mind. Since I didn't post anything for a while here, I've been drifting.


It's a danger. As soon as I get something written down, it's out of my head, as if I solved something about it even when I didn't.

So...
I'm coming at things from a different angle - again, one I touched on weeks ago. Despite the Razor neatly organizing many parts of my world, there are others that completely escape its touch. And maybe if I write them down, I can show them to my neocortex and be like, "See? You do believe in fairies. Now STFU."

(My apologies for the writing style of this one. It's not terribly late, and I've only been up for twelve hours, but I am terribly tired. Or headachey. Or something. But I'm not missing this opportunity to write.)

So, let's take a look at these 'irrational' beliefs - the things that survive despite that label because I know that they are so, no matter what logic says.

1. My dad has seen ghosts. He once sat in the lap of a ghost, as a child. He picked up a hitchhiking ghost.
2. Ghost, or possibly some other type of spirit, cats exist. They live in houses where cats have lived and been loved for years. I am not sure whether they are directly the spirits of the cats that lived and died there, or other spirit cats, or other forces which simply choose to take the form of cats for easy viewing.
3. Poltergeists exist. They particularly enjoy hiding things that you sort of need right now, and that are going to piss you off if you can't find them, but that aren't essential to your survival. ...Probably. It's funny to see you get frustrated, not so funny to watch you freeze to death. The poltergeist will eventually return the item when it sees fit, which is only going to be some time after you give up on ever seeing the item again.
4. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. (Accepting this fact is part of the worship of Murphy.)
5. I saw a fairy outside my window once. It was a little glowy yellow light, maybe... two inches across, based on the glance I got? It wasn't just out of the corner of my eye - but when I blinked, it was gone. I have no other explanation for what I saw. Besides...
6. There are plenty of fairies in my parents' back garden, and that's where my bedroom window faced when I saw the fairy light.
7. The basement that we used to live in had until recently been home to a very angry man, and the place was black with unpleasant energies. We had to cleanse it once or twice yearly, and I marked up a Norse protective rune (I think it was a World Tree, but I can't remember) above every entrance and window for good measure. Without these efforts, P and I spent sleepless nights huddled up, staring at the corners of the room in fear of some unnameable thing.
8. Something came into my parents' house on, or with, the stuff inherited from my grandma Eve (which itself had come, barely touched, from my Great-Aunt Virginia). Or maybe it came off the nasty furniture moving guys who had come in for the day at about the same time. I suddenly couldn't sleep a night or two after it came in, and found myself drawn to look at the pile of stuff in the living room in the very late night... then suddenly had to book it (backwards) down the hall to my room and slam the door, and stuff the crack under my door so that 'it' couldn't get in. The fear was intense. Mom helped me do a banishing ritual the next morning, and... well, it was fine henceforth.
9. All animals and trees have spirits. I can hug a tree, if it's the right tree and I'm in the right mood, and fit into it like it's hugging me back. I can feel... something, and it calms me down and roots me back into the soil where I belong. I try to remember to always thank the tree afterwards.
10. Anything that is unique has a certain value; it has brought Dust - life - ness - into the universe. This is the stuff missing when things are too well organized, or too sterile, or too efficient; it is the opposite of barren. Efficiency can be endlessly reproduced, but something unique, once destroyed, can never be put back together quite the same... This includes people, animals, plants, books, movies, and even the way you arranged your bookshelf. It is stuff, 'information', and once lost it is gone. Thus, it is valuable. (If you haven't read the His Dark Materials series, the first book of which is The Golden Compass, you need to. Now! They're amazing, and they should probably get their own post here sometime. They're where the idea of Dust comes from.)  I used to hate throwing out anything that had words or images on it and that wasn't obviously mass-produced.
11. Good things will come back to you. Bad things will come back to you manyfold, although it may take a long time for it to show up. This is sort of like karma, but not exactly. Real karma is looking beyond the immediate rewards-punishments system this seems to be, and realizing that movement towards enlightenment leads to more comfortable lives and movement away from enlightenment leads to lives meant to teach a lesson. Thus, - I dunno, rapists are clearly not learning what they need to from this life, and their next life is probably going to suck because it's going to involve learning why rape is bad.
12. This doesn't always sit easily with my belief in free will. I did an essay in the fall about free will and whether we have it. My conclusion was that the amount of free will we have is directly related to our ability to understand our own motives and foresee the consequences of our actions - to understand ourselves as complete beings in every dimension - and that because that is a very difficult feat, few to none of us have completely free will. ...Then again, maybe it does fit in just fine: gaining personal knowledge and control could be considered heading towards enlightenment, and full enlightenment grants full choice - including the choice not to be reborn. Damn, I just sorted out how predestination fits into free will! Am I good or am I good?
13. Whether God, the Goddess, the God and Goddess, or the Gods are the same thing as this karmic force, or whether Their influence on us shows up as the workings of karma, I am not sure. I'm not well-read enough in either Hinduism or Buddhism to know for sure. I do remember something from Buddhism which considers even the Gods to be caught up in the cycle of life, death and rebirth, and that even they are not fully enlightened - if they were, they too could cease to worry, fear, and grieve. The Gods and Goddesses of antiquity certainly seem like they just have super-sized doses of anger, fear, grief and pain, rather than freedom from them.
14. Something set the universe (multiverse?) going.
15. Sometimes things just happen for no discernable cause.
16. There are limits to human knowledge.
17. Apparently, I believe in reincarnation.
18. I also believe in an afterlife. I think its properties depend a lot on what you believe it to be (so if you think you're going to hell, you might end up treating yourself to a dose of punishment until you feel like you've been punished enough). I think it can fit in as another state of being; after a certain period of time, we might or might not be reborn again. I'm not sure whether this conflicts with the enlightenment theory or not; maybe we have to be sufficiently enlightened before we can choose whether to return or not. (Boddhisatvas, in one Buddhist tradition, are people who have reached enlightenment, but who have chosen to stay and help the rest of us get there. It's like they're holding the door open instead of going through themselves.)

I think that's quite enough random unfounded beliefs for one night. Damn, where is all this Buddhism going to fit alongside the First Nations spirituality and/or Celtic and/or Wiccan and/or something-else traditions I'm interested in? I don't consider myself Buddhist! Gack! Help?