As I grew up, Atari turned into Nintendo turned into computers and Xbox and tabletop gaming remained. There are video game worlds and series that are very special to me; I should always have a t-shirt on that says: “I’d rather be in Tamriel,” because it’s always, always true. Though I no longer have the time to keep up with any video games as a player, I’m always paying attention to what is happening because so much vital social critique and mirroring, as well as progressive art, is happening in gaming. All the hub bub about Grand Theft Auto? Those games are pretty brilliant satirical send ups of our culture–a harsh but true mirror by masterful game developers that outrage people who never play or understand them, which is great marketing.
As an introvert and person with severe social anxiety, I can attest that Pokémon GO is a pretty warming experience. Though I’ve uninstalled the game, I played long enough to understand it and have the game play experience and be informed. Indeed, there are far more stories about people with ASD or mental illness interacting in ways that they have not been able to for sometimes years, than there are about pedophiles and muggings. Last week when I was feeling ‘meh’ and stressed, I found myself with 30 minutes to kill and parked and walked a few miles around a heavily Pokestop-populated downtown area, where I saw a lot of people seemingly like me who enjoy being among people for a spell, but not necessarily interacting, having a sense of community and happy, shared experience. I saw a 65-year-old woman comparing Pokédex with a 20-year-old man, and an older man in a wheelchair being pushed by a young woman–he was navigating, telling her where they needed to go next.
notes for a poem, and all the feathers i’ve found at my feet within the last month.
____________________________
temple
a clutch of thick / lilac at the entrance, woven / silver bowl, stone / fruits. water poured runs / it through. two / webbed coals glow. / from them: sturdy white / hyacinths. a breath in; / call back your own iron / fillings. an exhale mutates / them: gems drop piling. / ribbons wind back the spine’s / spool. all walls anointed hyssop, myrrh.
For four years, I receive dead birds. At my door, at my feet, in my exact path. I have no cats. There are no cats around. Cats are not bringing me the birds. The birds exhibit. Show me they’ve perished, roll forth a narrative in last action and symbol.
CW: Images- dead birds Read More »
Wait each new moon,
make burn lists. Bury after
light; barefoot push the shovel.
Pull earth up, skies down in self
and recall — make minerals of you;
an iron in clouds yields the site.
______________
^ A trifle for the new moon & crooked-mouthed realizing it’s no-joke-too-late for a convent.
Jacaszek playing, and Richter’s Iconography; the latter always the black drive to high desert in snow storm; the only car on the pass and sensation of leaving the Earth.
This is the one occupying me, kicking my innards, turning, exploring.
I caught sight of myself in a window walking on the street today and had a split second of not recognizing myself, at all. I thought I was looking at a stranger until my brain pieced it. It’s like I’m wearing an odd costume.
I want to write about what it has been like to rehab these two little creatures, these dogs, terribly treated prior to our home, and the work to bring them to flourish. Or mostly flourish. As The National sang: Once ruined, baby you stay ruined. While they now thrive, especially Polly, deep parts in both dogs remain vigilant for what their cells remember – muscle memory, conditioned response, PTSD.
These have been the tools used (applicable in most relationships): calm, consistency, patience, schedule, compassion. Some of these might read as synonyms, but are not when employed as verbs.
We are not a yelling people in our house. At worst, we bicker. And we hold no grudges, pull away, ignore. No one goes silent as an attempt to punish or test. It took the dogs very long to realize that no explosive reactions would happen. If a door slams, it is an accident.
If a book slipped or cup broke after she first arrived, Polly would cower in a corner, looking up, bloomed eyes from over a lowered nose, tail tucked and ears slick against her head. She has not done that for years. She would shake and cower if we moved too quickly or, if our voices raised at the TV for sports, she would dash from the room.
Fred is smaller, and came to us far more traumatized than Polly had been. He has seizures, possibly brought about from head trauma, still dislikes his head being touched, and has poor vision. After he eats, he sits and cries. We don’t know why and never will and no amount of consoling him has helped, though the crying no longer lasts for much length of time. He still sometimes rushes away if we move too quickly near him, but not always. More often now, he sits and stares up at us, uncertain at worst. And, observing his worry, we scoop him up in a firm, secure hug.
I know that had we (as stewards of him) been different, more erratic, less patient, we would have driven him over the emotional edge he was occupying when we found him, and he would be a neurotic, chaotic dog in constant misery.
His fright has lessened considerably; he knows we won’t hurt him physically or psychologically. His mistrust of women, and strangers, is extremely lessened. He even becomes curious now and seeks us out, and that is something that levels me to see. While he starts off the night sleeping in a crate, at some point he joins us on the bed, and we often wake up with his head between ours.
Last week we stayed at the Oregon coast. The Oregon coast is never warm, not truly. It is windy and fairly wild, and often rather stunning. In colder months it is sparsely populated. We took the dogs with, playing each day on the beach. No fences, just expanse, and a ball to chase. They were delighted, and we are delighted to witness their happiness, their trust and thriving. It humbles and levels me to watch.
If this all reads like a lament, in part it is. And I knew it even while we were at the beach. In 5.5 months our first child will arrive. I know from both simple logic and the reminding of others, that soon our dogs will be largely ignored out of necessity and for quite some time. At the beach, I needed to see how happy they can be, their capacity for it, how much they have changed.
I know that what I see in them, the remains of the trauma, is much about me and my own. It’s sort of Lacanian – needing to find a sense of mastery over something I had no ability to control or effect. The home I needed to actualize for them is the home I have also needed to live in, with patience, calm, certainty, and terminal compassion. For a great portion of my life, I was not so different from these dogs and the state they arrived in, the results of their experience. There is no mystery in that.
Both dogs are alert to change. In the first trimester (of this pregnancy), the dogs took turns resting on my torso (in between my bouts of illness), just protecting me. And, whipping their heads about to watch what was in the air around me – perhaps the mutation of physical and spiritual states, or visitations. They sniff me curiously, lay immediately at my feet, bark at anything they suspect might be nearing our house, be it leaf or wind or human. Soon they will be weary with me, late at night with a new mewling, wondering why we are up, why the new one is crying, when it will stop. They won’t understand why I don’t have the time for them I used to. But I know they are both healed enough to love the new little one from a place of assurance, and that despite changes, they remain loved, important, and wholly significant.
In a subtle climate, one becomes quick to notice smallest changes; everything we are is about the growing season and how much snow is on the mountain, how high or low the rivers are. Winter has been a worry, on the heels of an odd autumn. Autumn was a prolonged dry spell, with an uncharacteristic metallic sun hanging, and no rain to put the season to bed. The bees were tested with no food left to collect and no signal to huddle inside and wait it all out.
Winter has been sinister-dry with the same sun but a brass color with cheap gold overlay. Except the rain has finally come, not in usual constant drizzle, but in sporadic, protracted, great torrents. Enough to startle us from sleep to check the basement, foundation, outside areas. Today I picked up tree parts in our yard, deposited by trees we don’t even have.
The Daphne is a month late. And now that it has bloomed, those blooms bear brown spots as if it is ready to quit. The usual scent of ambrosia has a sour note like glue; like on its last legs. The ground is past soaked sponges, gone to deep mud for slipping — everywhere is footprints filling in behind.
During a national conference of permaculturists 4 years ago, one told me: Yeah, this will be a rain forest in 50 years. I can see it, and I think about it a lot. Our voices, music, TV have to be turned up over downpours. It’s loud. It sounds like we are living in a washing machine.
I always speak of moving, but where is there to go?
Some of the more hopeful Daphne.
There is an image floating around social networks proclaiming: “Only 10 Saturdays until Christmas!”. It seems odd, and pressing.
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