I can never show him this, but writing it helped me feel better anyway

Dear Vella,

Recently you have been PMSing, excuse me, irritable and blaming a great many things on your eldest son and your eldest son’s girlfriend. While both these people admit they are hardly stainless innocents, there are some things that they rightly refuse to accept responsibility for.

Things that are not Eagle’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers.
• Your summer flu.
• Faruque’s bad habits.
• The bloody oppressive summer heat.
• The fact that Ash sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. This is made especially pertinent by the fact that you keep slamming into the room, yelling for thirty seconds, then leaving for ten minutes or so before coming back in and yelling again. If you have a point to make, then MAKE it for goodness’ sake instead of ranting vaguely and then storming out. And if you leave, you cannot expect Eagle to not assume you are done with the conversation and find something else to occupy himself.
• The fact that when you vehemently tell him to do something, then five minutes later and just as vehemently tell him not to do it, Eagle just sits there like a lemon blinking confusedly.
• Your forgetting to use a condom, approximately twenty-one years and eleven months ago.

Things that are not Ash’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers, summer flu, Faruque, etc.
• The mess in Eagle’s room. Amazing though it may sound, Ash is not capable of making a mess in a room at the other end of the fucking country.
• Any and every defect in Eagle’s character.
• The fact that she sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. You hardly have a schedule or some such that she can avoid.
• The fact that Eagle does not always agree with you.
• Eagle’s lack of ‘respect’ for you. That has more to do with the fact that it’s hard to respect a total whackjob even if they are one’s father.
• Original sin, bird flu, the destruction of the rainforests, the high price of butter and the common cold. Despite your claims that she is responsible for ‘everything’.

the home front

I can't blog about this. It's too private, too personal. But I can't not say something about it either.

All I can say is-homophobia in religion sucks, especially when it gets internalised. That, and...there's the moment when it all becomes horribly real and immediate-all the shit you know goes down. When some of it happens to someone you know, or a friend knows. The moment you can hear the wolf at the door.

Cousins, it's dark outside.

Hoenn roller coaster ride?

Hunting the Suicune; this is a new phrase in the land of its birth, one coined by recent developments, a recent person who is becoming legend. To hunt the Suicune is to chase your dreams; to quest after a hopeless cause; to seek and never give up, though you never glimpse your quarry, but to carry on seeking from pure orneriness; to go to see the elephant, travelling because you’re sick to the stomach of staying in the same place; to try and go out beyond the edges of things. “Now, bring me that horizon.”

I’m waiting on the delivery of the Hoenn games, fingers twitch-itch-itching to press the little buttons on the little controller and begin to kythe. Only that’s a lie; I’m kything already, but bits and pieces, guesswork and stepping stones. When the package comes in the post and the cart’s in the bottom slot of my little red spaceship, that’s when I’ll let myself fall into the river, be carried by the currents out to sea. When the kything becomes the air you breathe and the ground you walk on. (Earth, sea and air; Hoenn again there, the slow strong amoral forces that birthed the world where life can be.)

I don’t know what I’ll kythe from Hoenn, though I have guesses.

(And there’s an irony in all this; I walked those paths before and didn’t feel a thing, too caught up in annoyance at new game mechanics and the absence of old favourite Pokémon. I didn’t care for the third gen ‘dex; couldn’t see the beauty in the Hoenn beasts. Too narrow. Always too narrow. It’s always that way with me, maybe with everyone, like Jack pointed out in The Magician’s Nephew; try to be stupider than you are and you’ll succeed, try to be deaf and blind and you’ll succeed. Say No, not this, I do not accept this-and it won’t go away-it never does-but it’ll go from you. Or never show itself at all. It’s possible to go through the world with eyes closed, sleepwalking, and everybody does it at some stage, in some places.)

My guesses, my snippets, my dreams; earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves, hurricane and typhoon, twister coming-

-it's about the stars
the way they burn, the way they kill
it’s about the black acid ocean
the way the planet’s heart is red-hot iron
gravity that crushes
radioactivity
so many different ways to die-

so many different things we need
because we need all of them to be
or we cannot be.

the world is destruction
fury without malice.

all order is based on chaos.

Glory to Groudon. Glory to Kyogre.

...

The people of Hoenn-from them I kythe human warmth. Schoolteachers in sensible shoes. Old men who like to laugh. Lovers billing and cooing. An exuberant twychild. Stories, human stories, familiar as paving stones and sweet as Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Maybe that’s paradox, but to me that just looks like life.

I’ve been listening to the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack lately; the gorgeous sounds of Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu and the Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus have become the Hoenn Sound, for me. Hoenn roller coaster ride? Maybe so. It crossed my mind just now that Hawaii is volcanic. Lava and ocean water. Hoenn has Mount Pyre; I’ll have to wait for the playthrough, as I really can’t remember the geography, but perhaps there’ll be some similarities of appearance at least?

And I’m pretty sure that Wallace knows how to surf, as well as Surf. Hehe.

Does your brain ever do this to you?

Me: *playing Pokemon innocently*
My Brain: Sacredshipping.
Me: what?
Brain: Eusine and Morty are TOTALLY getting it on. Sacredshipping.
Me: That's beside the point. Go away, I'm busy with the Bug Catching Contest.
Brain: Sacredshipping.
Me: Neither of them are my type.
Brain: You're not the one doing them, so you're not required to think so. Sacredshipping. Write it.
Me: Pokemon isn't my fandom and never has been. Well, except for the anime when I was, like, prepubescent.
Brain: Gotta start somewhere. You already did those Gym Leader drabbles. How about doing some fanart too?
Me: I can't draw.
Brain: Stick figures.
Me: And I haven't got any paper.
Brain: Go buy some.
Me: I don't know where to find an art shop.
Brain: Try Google.
Me: I'm meant to be saving money, dammit.
Brain: Cheapskate.
Me: Will you please go away now?
Brain: Sacredshipping. WRITE IT.
Me: *kills a lot of innocent Caterpies*
Brain: Sacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshipping-
Me: DAMN YOU.*gives up and writes it*

A Few Days Ago...

...there was Athene, and bad fish with good chips, and very happy plastic elephants; there was a museum with happy rocks and pretty metalwork, and a very fancy gun, and there was discussion about Balthier stealing from museums, and Charles the Second, and Ashelia B'nargin Dogmasca. There was Mieville's wonderful latest, which you MUST READ NOW, 'Thene, and there were green tea puffs and green tea mochi, and a very wonderful hoodie.

Things I Have Decided About My Funeral

(My grandfather's funeral was the first one I have ever been to, and so I went into it with the manner of someone investigating a New Experience. I do not know whether or not it was typical, as funerals go, but it certainly made me formulate certain definite Ideas about what I shall arrange to have happen after I croak.)


• No leaving the planning to my widow and kids. People who’ve lost a spouse or parent have enough on their plates as it is. I will put away a lump sum for the purpose and leave instructions in my will.
• Black is a good colour, and there’s something to be said for tradition in this regard. However, to my mind it does not go far enough. Everyone in attendance should be encouraged to dress Goth.
• No fake flowers.
• No hymns. Particularly no ‘dur, dur, dur’ ones. I demand decent music.
• No Bible readings or other compulsory Christianity.
• If anyone takes the opportunity to feel up my grandkids under pretence of comforting gestures, I’m coming back and haunting them.
• No embargo on mentioning my fuckups and less attractive qualities. Everyone can bitch as much as they want about me; I won’t be in a position to mind, and anyway it’s stupid giving people rave reviews as soon as they shuffle off this mortal coil.
• No damn quiches and penance sandwiches. The funeral feast shall be a hog roast. And there shall be free beer, too.
• On the subject of food, before the funeral everyone must get together and anyone who wants to can have some tea and cake and Breton biscuits to tide them over till the pig. It’s too hard to have a ceremony if your stomach is rumbling.
• Having charity donations instead of relatives spending money on flowers is, I admit, a good idea. However, part of the funeral funds must go to at least one big bunch of tiger lilies.
• The whole thing must be outdoors.
• As soon as it gets dark, let off some fireworks.

Big, blonde and beautiful? Well, two out of three's not bad...and I'd rather be big than lumped in with Rauk.(j/k)

My grandfather died. Don’t offer me sympathy; he was a hidebound, racist, sexist, homophobic, malicious old arsehole, and our relationship was strained to say the least. This did not get me out of having to go to his funeral, though.(More on that later.)

So I came down from London to spend some time with my birth family. And one thing that my mother and her boyfriend just never shut up about the whole time was the issue of my weight.
I’ve always been big-hipped and big-chested, but these last few months I’ve gotten bigger in those areas and all-over, really. According to the doctor when I had my medical checkup I’m four pounds shy of being clinically obese. Me, I say ‘wut?’ to this. I wouldn’t call myself fat. Plump yes. But I don’t feel I look fat. Not that looking fat’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just that I don’t think I do.

My birth father Vella’s made a few comments about this, but he is a fashion designer and has gotten used to stick insects in makeup and thus I generally ignore him. Besides, it’s mostly due to his cooking and choices of snacks that I’ve put on weight.(Mmm, fried aubergines...)
Even though Vella considers it his bounded duty to evaluate all apparent women for attractiveness, though, he has not made anywhere near as many comments as my birth mother Sarah and her boyfriend Michael.

I was there Saturday 24th to Tuesday 27th, and all the damn time it was ‘you have put on a lot of weight dear, you’re really less attractive, you used to regulate your own weight so nicely, you need to cut down...’

And the crowning idiocy, the crazy diamond of dumbassery, ‘This is because you don’t realise what a pretty girl you are, your self-esteem has always been too low, you need to make more of an effort with your appearance and then people will like you and you’ll feel better about yourself!’

The sheer stupidity of it floored me, I swear.

Fuck you, Mother Dear. Most of my self-esteem problems were your fault in the first place! And they never revolved around appearance!

Yeah, I did-at one point-have issues with the look of my body. Thing is though, that was because it was too Milesian, and I’d been hanging out with chicks from the people I called the Tuatha de Danaan then. I was holding myself to standards that bodies from this world just cannot meet no matter what their genes are like, no matter how they diet or work out, no matter how much surgery they get. And the appearance wasn’t the point in and of itself, either. I wanted to be like my de Danaan friends because they were tough, smart and mostly happy, and I felt that a Thulcandran could never be any of those things. The face in the mirror just rubbed that in every time I saw it. Maybe if I’d had some good Thulcandran mentors earlier...ah, well. Can’t change the past, and I did eventually find a very cool Thulcandran-Milese wingsister who helped me out with that whole tangle.

Anyway, point is, I wouldn’t say my self-esteem issues are gone totally, but I’ve given them a few good whacks, and I’ve at least got it into my thick skull that Thulcandrans can be very cool. Ergo, no need to wish I’d been born on another world. The bits of the multiverse I can reach as is-in body and spirit-can give me everything I need if I just figure out the how and why.

On a more universal note, I have NEVER thought that my physical appearance was a matter of grave importance in and of itself. You get told all the time when you’re a puggle, ‘the moral of the story is, it’s what’s inside that counts’. Now, back then I didn’t get that people paid lip service to that only. I took it as the truth! Crazy, huh?*

The important things, I thought, were: my intelligence; my basic decency; my artistic talents. In no particular order. Looks were just ‘stuff’, and I wasn’t really interested in ‘em much. The closest I got was how I loved to play dress-up in a witch’s hat or devil horns or pair of sparkly fairy wings or the Pocahontas dress and dog costume Vella made me. (Not both at once.) Oh, and one time he got me a dress with lions on. I couldn’t care less what I looked like in it, I just adored the lions. I liked the ladybird buttons on my school cardy, too. I was kinda potty about animals in general, I guess.

Then I got bigger...and was totally confused by the sudden strong messages that I did, actually, have to care what I looked like. More than that, I had to want to look a particular way, want this with all my being, and do everything in my power to achieve it.

Out of cheese error; please reinstall universe and reboot...

Really, I never lost the view of that puggle who played with hir plastic animals; sie wouldn’t have said ‘We’re born naked, all the rest is drag’ because sie’d never heard that phrase and didn’t really think the concept out in words at all, but sie did think it. Drag can be fun, but it’s not real life.

So now that puggle’s grown his spines and left the pouch, he’ll clench spiked fists and growl when someone starts saying that women have some kind of duty to spend a good portion of their time beautifying themselves. Worse, that they all naturally want to. Because that is How Women Are. And any woman who doesn’t, or who doesn’t have a conventional notion of what beauty is, obviously has something wrong with her. (Oh, and any man who takes as much time over his looks as a woman’s supposed to is a wanker, probably gay**, and obviously has something wrong with him. And let’s not even get into crossdressing...) Why, is this my fist embedded in your skull, Michael? Dear, dear. So sorry. Oh well, it wasn’t as if there was much in there to damage. A few pounds of manure and it’ll be as good as new!

But enough about the placental mammal contingent.

Ash thinks I look okay and not too fat. I am more inclined to give weight(pun not intended)to her opinion than that of placental mammals, really. Several sensible people I know of take the view that fatness is not in and of itself a bad thing in any case unless you’re at ‘cannot shift own bulk’ level. (Which most fat people are not.) I’ve come round to their point of view too.

When people first started mentioning that I had gained weight, I worried. But when I thought of actually looking at my body, that all dissipated.

My body is very female in build, earth mother look enhanced by milky-coffee skin and dark eyes and hair. I have curves all over, and yes, that includes my belly. (If you don’t believe me, Ash, I’ll have to send you pictures. Actually I may do that anyway.*grin*) This is all pretty troublesome a lot of times, what with the whole genderqueer thing; my body doesn’t match my brain. If I’d been told to pick one female body and stick to it I’d have picked something with broader shoulders, narrower hips, smaller tits. Oh, and something taller while I was at it. My body does not feel like it’s mine-it’s more like I picked up the wrong outfit by mistake and ended up wearing something sized for my sister.

I guess all trans and genderqueer folk have their own ways of dealing with this. The way that works best for me is to not think of my body as mine. Or rather, to not think of it as me. It’s a tool; it’s drag; it’s my Pocahontas outfit and dog suit. It’s a thing I happen to have, and till I can alter it so it’ll fit a touch better I’ll just use it as is. It works okay for what it is, it’s not its fault that She Who Gives All Gifts picked the wrong model for me. It can eat and drink, walk, run, dance badly, talk, listen, snuggle and kiss. It has hands with opposable thumbs. It has muscles should I ever choose to train them, and a working female reproductive system should I ever choose to use it. I probably won’t do either of those things, but I have the opportunity. It’s mine to play with.

And hey, why not?

So, Sarah, sorry to disappoint you but I’m not gonna diet anytime soon. I’m just gonna let my curves stay curvy as hell-if I’m gonna look earth mother, might as well go the whole hog. (Mmm, hog.) Besides-I was a Qu before I was an Echidna! It’s only fitting. I like looking this way, and my self-esteem’s never been better.

I offer big love with no apologies
How can I deny the world the most of me?
I am not afraid to throw my weight around
Pound by pound by pound.

*I also believed that being different was good; that people different from each other could be friends; that girls were able to do anything boys could do, and should if they wanted to; and that in his youth my dad had been Mowgli from Kipling’s Jungle Book. Hey, I never said I got them all right.
**Even if he’s had girlfriends and enjoyed it and gotten hickeys and so forth. Especially if he has had girlfriends, etc. Also any nasty traits in his personality are proof that he is gay. Apparently straight men can’t be vain, vicious and vapid, because these traits are what define gays. And you thought it was just that they liked penises.

The Blog Posts That Would Have Been, If Only

Okay. Now, the library decided to ban Blogspot.

This annoyed me.

I wrote a couple of blog posts on Word that never got posted. And are now seriously overdue and probably past their sell-by date. But I wrote the damn things and now I shall post them.

Judy

Aquila says: It could be worse. There was this one game I got-also Square-where I never actually figured out how to work the battle system at all. Despite hours of effort and reading the guide pamphlet thing. In the end I said bollocks and returned it to the store.
Ash says: Unlimited Saga?
Aquila says: That's the one. I'd forgotten the name till you said it.
Ash says: I had the same problem.
Ash says: Shame, cuz it looked good.
Aquila says: My theory is it's another xenophobic world. The characters are like, 'WE DO NOT WANT PEOPLE LOOKING AT US. GO AWAY.' So they are Obstructive, and Complicate Simple Matters in a successful bid to make people storm off in frustration.
Ash says: Or maybe they were dying for their story to be told, and the developers fucked up, and they're sitting around waiting for visitors and wondering "why doesn't anyone like us?"
Aquila says: I like your version better. That little witch girl seemed sweet, come to think.
Ash says: Yeah.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Her location is not marked on any map.

The labyrinth is an egg that she failed to hatch from. The labyrinth is the womb of a dead mother. The labyrinth is a school with no pupils but her, and it is the endless silvery dimensions behind the mirror.

Grandfather was trapped in a mirror, Judy thinks. I have to save him. But grandfather is not here.

Maybe if she walks the labyrinth long enough, she will find him. Maybe if she walks without stopping, checks every door and passage, she will reach the way out.

She is very tired, and her little hands are cold.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Her companions are three familiars that patter behind her in the dust. They do not speak, and they are cold to the touch. As she is cold.

She has a memory that this is not what she was promised. Things have not always been like this. Once she was warm, and sheltered, and a mother-voice whispered to her of games, and adventures, and other children all in sunlight. It told her stories that made her laugh, and dance in anticipation. They were not fantasies. They were truths. Prophecies.

Prophecy is dead now. Stillborn. Miscarried.

Her existence now is not Life. Neither is it Truth.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Sometimes she sobs, but tears never fall. She thinks that tears might make her feel better. They would be hot, she thinks; salty and hot and wet. She might be warm, if she could cry.

Maybe tears would wipe clean the dust that clings to her, her hair, her clothes. She is covered in grey. She cannot remember the colour of her skin. She has a few vague ideas about it; are people brown, or pink, or blue? And what did colours look like, anyway?

Purple was nice, she thinks. She thinks she remembers wanting to be purple.

Judy walks the labyrinth. Sometimes she remembers things. She remembers a breaking, a hot, bright world glimpsed for a few, precious seconds, and then, the labyrinth again, cooling slowly.

She is a genius, she thinks. Is that right, that word ‘genius’? She’s quite sure that she is one, as much as she is sure of anything. But she can’t quite remember what a genius is.

Perhaps ‘genius’ means grey, and cold, and solitary. Perhaps ‘genius’ means dust that falls into her mouth and nose, unfocused vision, and slow, muzzy mind.

She isn’t sure that she likes being a genius, but she has got to be something. She clutches to the word, because it describes herself, and she does not have many words that describe herself. If she cannot describe herself to her, then maybe she does not exist. And she does not have many words at all.

She was going to have words, she thinks. Words, and numbers, and colours. They were in the promise. But the promise never came true.

And unkept promises fade.

(A/N: No, I have no fucking clue where this came from...)

^_^

Spending nearlyaweek with Ashwas fun.

All is quiet? Not likely...

I apologise to my non-existent readership for my prolonged absence. I've been...doing Stuff, and I got caught up in it...

What sort of stuff?

Well...riding a lion in Trafalgar Square. Drinking cider, eating guacamole. Going to the Natural History Museum a lot, reading Ursula Le Guin short stories, re-reading Unseen Academicals. Getting given up on by my therapist. Angsting about this. Just today, getting a hopeful sounding letter that makes it seem that getting a new one may well be on the cards soonish. Breaking my glasses. Getting new glasses, and finding that the optician here in Tower Hamlets, Aldgate, London, is a lot nicer, friendlier and more considerate than the one back in small-town St Neots. Playing Zelda on DS, and getting stuck on it. Playing 358/2 Days, which is the gloomiest KH game yet, which is some achievement. Playing Tales of Symphonia again. Talking a LOT with Ash and getting in trouble for pulling all nighter phone conversations(free weekends how I love thee). Planning to meet Ash in London in a couple weeks, yay! Occasionally exchanging emails with Athene, whenever I can make time for internet cafe-age. Trying to chip away at the OCD on my own...and finding it tough going. Not giving up. Nearly giving up. Having troubles with phones that break at inconvenient times for no apparent reason.(Okay, one was mysterious, the other went through the washing machine, which was admittedly my fault...)Having flu and trying not to be Janaff(i.e. Impossibly Whiny and Hypochondriac)about it. Discovering that my father likes the Dubliners, and Isaac Asimov. Despite these revelations, still mostly not understanding him at all. Looking out now into the dark street, thinking I should sign off soon and head home...

But watch this space for further developments.

Exhilaration

So, I did something that my father would kill me for. My mother too.

I got a secret Oyster of my own, and I went out into London while Dad was at work. On my own!

I went to the Forbidden Planet-I remembered the way from going there with Thene! And I have a very talkative Aeris now in my pocket, and a new book in my backpack.

I watered some sad-looking plants in a church, and I looked at stones in a hippy shop. I'm typing this now from an internet cafe. Once I'm done I'm heading home again...for today, at least!

I just keep smiling and laughing. It's so great to be out like this!

London's open to me now. It's not just a city, it's my city.

I'm not trapped anymore.

On Placental Mammals

Now some years ago the pigeon had a hole named after it; the Pigeon-hole. And Man decreed that all things must fit into a Pigeon-hole. This meant that Rules must be Obeyed, and each creature was given its own set of Rules. For instance, if you were a fish you must have gills and live in water.

'But,' said the fish, 'some of us don't only live in water and can breathe air out of the sky.'

'Ah!' said Man, 'then you are a lung fish.'

There was no escape, even for Men themselves.

The Rules said, if you live in a house with two children and a wife, work in an insurance firm and drive an estate car, you cannot possibly be a ballet dancer. But inside you may be a ballet dancer even if you weigh fifteen stone and have a wooden leg.

That is the way Pigeon-holes work and everything is forced to fit into one. But this is the story of creatures that didn't fit and what happened to them.

By the way, all the pigeons I know think they should be called Man-holes, and are thinking of Getting Up A Petition.

-'Attila, Loolagax and the Eagle', Nichola McAuliffe

___________________________________

*bump*

*bump*

*bump bump*

...

"Are you okay, Mr. Chapman?"

"It happens a lot to a platypus. If people can't fit something into a preconceived category, it's invisible to them."

-'Kevin and Kell', August 20th, 2009

I said before that I might write this, and I have decided that I shall. Because I think it needs to be written.

First off-what is the literal meaning of 'placental mammal'? In short, it is a mammalian life-form that produces placentas in the process of pregnacy. I won't go into the biology, but this is a very common way of doing things. Most mammals across the world are placental-from humans to wolves to tree shrews by way of blue whales and sewer rats.

However, most does not equal all. There are two lineages of mammals that do things a different way-the marsupials, like kangaroos, that birth their young in a semi-fetal state and keep them in a pouch till they are fully developed. And the monotremes, which comprise only two species-echidnas and platypi. Monotremes lay eggs; in the case of the echidna, the eggs and later the hatched young are also kept in a pouch.

Now, monotremes and marsupials are ancient lineages-considerably older than placental mammals, in fact. But it's placental mammals that are all over the place, all over the world, filling every niche. Apart from opossums, which can be found in the Americas, marsupials and monotremes are restricted to Oceania/Australasia/whatever the hell it's called these days. They are considered a peculiarity of that part of the world, and their difference from the normal mammals that live everywhere else is constantly noted.



Now, pay close attention; this is where it all gets metaphorical. Be careful and you won't spill allegory down your shirt.

Placental mammals are Normal. This is a major part of their worldview. Ask one to give you a fact about, say, kangaroos, nine times out of ten they'll mention the pouch thang. Because this is so utterly Weird that it completely defines them.

Because that's what us marsupials and monotremes are to placental mammals. We are Weird. Sometimes they say we're evolutionary rejects-that our ways of doing things don't match up to theirs, that it's not as good, not as natural and obvious. Sometimes they don't believe in our existence at all.(The first time the taxonomical guys in Europe saw a stuffed platypus, they laughed their heads off and said it was a fake. It didn't fit into any known category; it looked like a mix of wildly disparate species; surely no real animal could look that mismatched and odd.)And sometimes, they just say 'GROSS!'

Now, gross is subjective. So there's no way to disprove that.

Thing is though, Weird is subjective too.

And that's why, really. Placental mammals need scapegoats. They need to feel Normal, and a lot of the time they're secretly terrified that they aren't. They need someone to point at, so they can say to themselves, OK, I may hang upside down and grow algae in my hair, but at least I'm not like those weirdoes who lay eggs!

Transphobia in the gay community. Racism in the trans community. Homophobia in the POC community.(Not that any of those are communities per se; but that might just be me being individualistic.) Placental mammals really are an incredibly varied bunch. Each of them has a different definition of Normal, but the thing they all agree on is that there are some people out there who are violating it, just by existing and doing their own thing. A lot of the time the people they think of as the Weirdoes From Down Under are just another set of placental mammals in their own right-which would be funny if it wasn't so exasperating and sad.

This echidna spent quite a few years knocking down and widening a personal definition of what consitutes Real People, and let me tell you, it's tiring work. In the end, I just decided-the hell with it. Instead of trying to figure out what's normal, let's just ask one question, when presented with any given situation. Is anyone getting hurt? No-then great, everything's okay here, move along. Yes-then do something about it, but keep in mind what the actual problem is! Someone is hurting. That is the problem. The problem is not that things do not look the way you think is pretty.

Thinking that everyone should be like you, taken to its (il)logical conclusion, ends up with the idea that everyone should have your job, drive your car, and marry your sweetie.

One last thought. All humans are placental mammals-and I don't just mean biologically. People seem to have a built-in tendency to get Linnaean with the world-and to put themselves at the top of the Tree of Life.(Either that, or put themselves at the bottom. The Happy Medium seems to have packed up her crystal ball and tarot deck.)So before you laugh and say 'yeah, those placental mammals, so damn stupid'-pause for thought! We have met the enemy and they are us! That goes for you, and, yes, for me too. Like any other of the annoying gremlins lurking in the engines of the human mind, there probably is no way to exorcise this one for good. All we can do is recognise it-and give it a good hard whack when it shows up!

Yet another headache, courtesy of family and their hangers-on

Okay. Hypothetical-well, not so hypothetical-question here.

I got my hair cut recently-quite short. Ever since then, my mother's boyfriend has been referring to it as 'spikey dykey' in a disparaging way.

Now, okay, my hair does seem to grow in natural vertical tufts when it's that short, for some reason(it never used to). And I am not really thrilled with the look either-it wasn't what I was hoping for.

But I'm pretty sure it's NOT overly PC to get annoyed at someone equating being a lesbian with being unattractive!

Especially since I sort-of came out to my mother and her boyfriend some time ago.(I told them I liked girls. They don't believe me. Apparently I am too young and naive to know. HAH.)So-in effect, he was telling someone that as far as he knew identified as a lesbian, that she looked like a lesbian, and that this was ugly.

So...finally protested about this, in a phone conversation the other day. My mother's boyfriend laughed and said it was a joke and that my hair was 'spikey dykey'.

When I pressed my point, he got shirty and said I was overinterpreting and being too PC. And when I pointed out that not all lesbians have spiky hair he denied this and claimed that he knew more lesbians than me, and knew more about lesbians than me, and all the lesbians he knew had spiky hair, and that I was ignorant and talking about things I didn't understand.

...I mean. Really. FEMMES EXIST DAMMIT! > <

I'm pretty sure it's not me with the problem, here.

So, here I am again.

I am writing this in a state of annoyance. My email account has been cancelled and I have no idea why whatsoever. I suppose I'll have to get a hotmail account or something...

Dad is saying that he'll give me the house keys; I just hope he really does. He has a habit of promising things and never doing them.

I keep meaning to write things. Blog posts or stories. But...thing is, my head hurts. Not physically. Maybe my heart more than my head.

It's all to do with that conversation I had with Thene, when I was staying with my mother for a weekend so as to see my GP about meds. About families.

I thought I wasn't dumb enough anymore to get annoyed about life being unfair to me. Life is unfair. I got the memo. And...I can deal!

But the idea...the idea that this isn't the normal way of things...

That breaks my head. And my heart.

I should be more eloquent. But I can't muster up the effort...

Weariness

I'm being discharged on Friday. I just don't fit in here. My therapist will be seeing me at home. But they reckon that this is not the environment for me.

I don't either. But I know my parents are going to hit the roof. I'm not looking forward to it.

I just feel so tired.

I left Cosmo, my miniature rose, out in the courtyard on the table to get some sun. While I was gone, someone came and threw her pot into the bushes. Compost everywhere. I don't know who or why. The pettiness of it makes me feel so tired. Why do something like that?

I don't know.

Smiling inside

This story makes me a very happy echidna.

Let's hope it comes true someday.

The rewards of exploring

I have found an absolutely wonderful place. A magic place. And it's so close, it's on hospital grounds!

Not that I'm meant to be there, I think the padlock on the gate was a bit of an indication I'm not allowed in, but when I saw it through the wire fence...I just had to get in. And lucky me, there was a hole in the fence that I squeezed in through! Looked like some sort of animal made it...

The Place is this smallish fenced-off area next to one of the carparks, bounded on the other side by a stretch of grass with some sycamore trees. Once upon a time there was a building there, and the concrete of the foundations pokes up from the ground, in big flat broken-table plateaus.

It must have been ages ago that the building stood, because there's long grass all over, and plants and flowers-there's buddleia and lilacs growing wild, smelling gorgeous, and attracting so many butterflies. Tortoiseshell butterflies, and cabbage white, and once I saw a shimmery blue and white one, though it was gone so fast I only glimpsed it. And sweet peas and a bush covered in rosehips-I think there must have been a bit of garden there once-and the tough weed-flowers, fireweed and those yellow ones like stringy dandelions and some reddish ones I didn't recognise, that had fluffy silver clouds of seeds.

And stones. Smooth round flints, embedded in the concrete and lying around loose, little ones and big ones. Rusted iron pipes, about the width of my thumb, long and spindly-some loose, some stuck in bits of concrete. Rubble, and plants growing up through it...

And it was a special place. An extra specially alive place. A sunshiny feral growing calm place, a place with warmth and stillness all about it. A magic place.

One smallish plateau was particularly special. It was more or less in the centre, and shaded by buddleia bushes, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to make an altar there. I made it from flints and a bit of rusty pipe-bigger than most of the bits of pipe lying around, more drainpipe size-and consecrated it with the milk I had brought with me to drink and put a sweetpea on top.

And I scratched out a name, on the concrete, in front of the altar.

Once I googled the name Tikal and discovered that as well as the name of Pachacamac's daughter, it is the name of an ancient city. A ruined city of the Maya. I saw some pictures of it-stone pushing up through grass-read a little about it. One site called it 'the incomparable Tikal'.

That phrase stuck with me.

So I named that Place, that special place, The Incomparable Tikal. And I sat there, and felt more alive and at home than I have for ages.

This isn't the best tarot quote out there. But it's in the top ten.

I've been meaning to post this here for awhile, but only just got round to it.

Copyright to Comet Jant Shira and to Ms. Steph Swainston:

"The cards..." I swigged my drink. "The cards don't tell the future. How could they? The future isn't set. These cards tell you about yourself in the present. All you need to know, to predict the future as accurately as possible...all you ever can know, is yourself right now. Most people don't know their own character well and these cards help you reflect. Then for the future, you extrapolate. Go ahead and make the future up-your character will be the main factor."

Because hellfires, I had to talk about it SOME time

When I was a kid, I assumed I was female. This was on the not unreasonable grounds that everyone I knew said I was, and at the tender age of five or so I didn't see any coherent argument that'd have me disagreeing with them. I just said 'huh' mentally and went back to the more important things, like playing with my plastic animals, riding my bike round the green, pestering my mother to let me have a pet(unsuccessfully), and devouring 101 Dalmatians.

I was, however, somewhat uncomfortable. I couldn't, at that point, really put my finger on why.

One of my mother's saving graces is that she did, to her credit, stress that girls could do anything they wanted(although in my teenage years I was darkly amused they still, apparently, had to do 'anything' with shaved legs and painted faces.) Nevertheless, I didn't feel comfortable. Something just didn't feel quite right.

I remember watching Pokemon and Digimon on TV-the first anime shows I ever saw. That'd be later, when I was around ten. I remember watching them religiously, but...always being slightly confused, in the back of my head. Surely I should like Misty best, because she was a Girl like me. Or Sora. Maybe not Mimi, because she was too pink and frilly and helpless and, well, girly, but Misty and Sora were tough and brave. I liked them.

I liked them just fine, but...why did I like Ash and Izzy best of all?

I assumed it was A Crush. Girls had crushes on Boys, I knew. However, I didn't want to kiss these boys. I wanted to be them. Or to be their friends. I wanted to be Ash, with mythical beasts sleeping at my belt and riding on my shoulder, loyal friends at my side, and all the paintbox landscape to explore. I wanted to be Izzy, and have everyone amazed at my smartness, have friends who respected me and knew me as, well, me. Not a girl. Not even a smart girl. Me.

I knew girls could be smart. They could be Nobel-Prize-Winner smart. They could be Gym Leaders and Lady Knights and world-saving heroines. And yet...and yet...

When puberty hit, I was appalled at what my body was doing to me. It just seemed all wrong. Why was I bleeding and cramping? What the hell were these things on my chest, could someone please take them off? The females in my life said it was just part of being a woman. I felt I'd gotten a bum deal.

But Girls were Girls, and Boys were Boys. I knew that. So I had to try and be a Girl.

I drew the line at pink, however.

I also refused point-blank to have anything to do with bras, makeup, or fashion. The bras thing was simply because I hated wearing something so uncomfortable, but makeup and fashion I despised because I had somehow gotten hold of the idea that the only people interested in their appearance were vain, shallow and catty. Being a frump was Honest. Also, more comfortable and easier.(I eventually managed to realise that a mild interest in playing dress-up did not preclude an intelligent and thoughtful nature; this was thanks to some very nice spirit-women I met up with. Peace and love to them, wherever they are.)

My mother tried in vain to persuade me to be a Proper Girl and Dress Nicely. I fought back with all of my might. I won, more or less, though on special occasions I would have to wear a Nice Dress. Not a dress, I wore those all the time-they were comfier than pants, and I didn't really care what they looked like. For some time my favourite item of clothing was a stripy blue cotton sundress, which I had had for several years, and which had gotten pulled more or less totally out of shape in the course of that time, till in the end my mother, despairing, threw it in the bin when I put it in for the wash. That, and the blue fleece with red stars on it that Sendalinde stole to give to one of his adopted orphans-but a Pretty Dress, which you had to be careful wearing, which she would say made me look nice. I didn't think so. I looked in the mirror and felt glum.

A memory that leaps out at me-I did Work Experience at the Raptor Foundation, cleaning out the cages of rescued birds of prey, petting a cockatoo called Zu, and once picking up an adorable little owlet. It was cold, messy work, so I wore a heavy fleece, and trousers, and my hair pulled back under a hood. One day I was cleaning out some kestrels when a visitor to the place-an old fellow, white-haired-noticed me and asked me for directions to someplace. The toilets or something. I forget what. He called me 'young man'.

When he called me that...I felt suddenly, unreasonably happy and pleased. But that was wrong! I knew I was a Girl. And he had made a mistake. So I pretended instead to be offended and corrected him, and he apologised, and all was well. But I kept turning that incident over in my mind. I told myself I was indignant. I almost convinced myself that was true.

A similar thing happened when I got my hair cut short for the first time, then looked in the mirror and saw a younger version of my father's face looking back at me.

This was about the time that I really got into reading porn, and I seriously wondered about my preferences due to this. See, when I got a crush, it was always on a girl. When I thought someone was hot, girl. But I was bored by femslash. I preferred yaoi or het. I had absolutely no idea what was up with that. The reason, though I didn't know it, was that I couldn't identify with a female. So it stayed 'sex happening to someone else'...

Another memory. I took a fencing class for awhile. I needed to wear a sports bra while I did this. One day after I had put it on I looked down at myself and thought 'holy fuck, those are tits. And not a bad pair either.' And started crying.

Then one day, I was searching the net for veves, the Vodoun god-sigils, and info about the lwa. Why is another long story for another time, but anyway, I found this site. And, well, I read the stuff on religion, and then, cause I am a voracious reader, started on the stuff about being trans. And I followed a few links, and read some more things, most notably Venus Envy...

I did not, however, manage to put it all together in my head till some months later.

I was in the bath. I don't know what it is with me and bathtime revelations. It just happened. Everything came together and holy god, I was petrified. I sat there an hour, while the water got cold, just thinking Holy shit I'm fucked.

That was only the beginning of Figuring It Out. It took awhile, and a few talks with Athene, but eventually I was done Figuring It. Or, well, not done, but...reasonably certain to be going on with.

I still have to present as female, because coming out would open up so many cans of worms I might as well start a bait shop. That will have to wait for later, after I'm free of my family and on top of my OCD and generally In Control Of My Life. The waiting annoys me a lot sometimes. Like the time when someone chided me for not being 'ladylike' and I wanted so badly to scream at her, I'm not a lady!(I controlled myself and kept silent.)But I think I can handle the wait. As long as Ash knows who I am, and as long as I know. I can handle it.