Spirit of the Wind

I wrote this in May and forgot to upload it here. Originally, I'd written it for Inky Paws, but I forgot they didn't take nonfiction so I am just posting it on the Internet. I do rather miss writing these, but it's good to prove to myself that I can still do it when on a time crunch. Perhaps I'll try writing something else this year, though given my history it probably won't come to pass even if I start on it. I had the idea for this one for a couple years.

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Aspects of myself wane and wax with time, and the aspects I associate with my therianthropy are no different. My therianthropy is always there, but it isn't a stable thing. Different parts of it are brought out or buried by somewhat different things. As a whole those parts tend to move in the same direction, though. There are words for that, but I don't use them. Partly that's because I think trying to get too specific with labels is as bad as getting too vague; it pigeon-holes you. It's also because my experience talking to other therians is that it's pretty universal.

Scent-rubbing and vocalizations are always present. They don't wax and wane. They're not things I think about, I just do them. Vocalizations are more involuntary. I often hiss and snarl when I'm injured, and you sure as hell don't think about what sound to make after you stub your toe. Pretty much the only place I rub my cheeks on is where I sleep. While the behavior is always present, it seems to vary in intensity because of scent. When a place I sleep doesn't smell like me, I scent-rub a lot. When it does, I scent-rub only a little. Either way, it's soothing.

These instincts don't have very much emotion associated with them. Like I said, scent-rubbing is soothing. Of course I'm stressed when I bang my knee and snarl. But I don't associate them with feeling very different from how I normally do. A lot of therians report altered mental states; they have mental shifts. I won't say I've never had them. I have; feral instinct bubbles to the surface and the mental noise rattling around my skull quiets. They've always been rare for me, though. For some therianthropy is a constant altered mental state. For me those are more like brief glimmers than anything else.

They've also been less consistent, as well as weaker. My instincts strengthen and weaken somewhat randomly--or at least in response to things I'm unaware of and probably never will be. But I've noticed some general trends. Moreover, over the past few years I've talked more with other therians and found I'm not the only one with these sorts of experiences, not by far.

To start with, my instincts wax and wane with my mood. I have dealt with depression and deadened emotion for most of my life. It's not that I only experience mental shifts when I'm happy. I sometimes have them when I'm absolutely miserable. I associate them with emotion, though. When I'm not feeling much of anything, I don't feel instinct either. When I'm ground down enough, there's not much left of me to feel.

I and my therianthropy aren't really separate things, even if I sometimes refer to it that way. So it makes sense to me that it's this way.

Weather and seasons are another influence on those parts of me. The strength of my instinct seems to vary depending on the seasons. During the winter, it is weakest. During the summer and spring, it is greatest. That's partly because I loathe the cold and spend more time inside during the winter months, but I think it's also because my theriotype is from warm climates. If you put a cheetah in a blizzard, finding shelter is probably going to be a higher priority than hunting or scent-marking. Though, oddly, thunderstorms make me feel very shifty--it could be because few humans are out during them, and it's darker.

Related to this, my instincts seem stronger in deserts and grasslands--particularly deserts. The landscapes of the Sonoran Desert are wide open, but they're also hidden. I'm not restricted by trees, and I can see the sun and open sky. There are cacti, but you learn to move through them quickly. I can stalk lizards and rabbits through the desert, rub my face on rocks, and sun myself without being disturbed or having to worry about being seen.

That therianthropy seems to be weaker or stronger depending on the place you're in is something that many of the other therians I've talked to have noticed. If you place a wild animal in an unnatural setting that doesn't speak to their instincts, you will get a mentally unhealthy animal and they won't express their natural behaviors. It seems to be the same for a lot of us. We need a more natural landscape on a deep, visceral level--that's not unique to us, but there's additional reasons we need it.

We need it because having deadened instincts isn't good for us. Even when they're muted, even when we're trying to suppress them, they're still part of us. If you stuck me in a locked box for the rest of my life and made me forget what rabbits and trees were, that wouldn't change the fact that chasing rabbits feels right and natural. Dragging my fingernails over the bark of trees would still feel right on an instinctive level.

It can be all too rare to get those opportunities to let yourself express our instincts. If you go too long without being able to do so and suppress that part of yourself, you can even convince yourself that it's gone--or at least withered. It happened to me.

It's not, though. The fact that it readily re-emerges is proof of that. All too often we discount the degree to which our surroundings shape how we feel.

1. Lava crunch cakes, but the center has garlic sauce instead of chocolate. It's coated in barbeque sauce.
2. Powerade flavored pizza sauce.
3. Bread sticks, each of which is individually wrapped in cold American "cheese."
4. Buffalo pizza with actual buffalo on top.
5. Pizza dough infused with Coca-Cola... the original kind, with cocaine.
6. Barbeque chicken pizza with cinnamon replacing the barbeque sauce.
7. Upside-down pizza.

Presented without further comment.

I wrote an essay about my religion three years ago, first on the Werelist and then on here. I reread it recently. Things haven't changed enormously since I wrote it, but they have changed some. That conflict seems less acute than it once did. I'm still an atheist, and there's still large parts of Jewish practice that I disregard (though again, fewer than most Jews). But over the past few years, I've come to appreciate the degree to which religion is not just a set of theistic tenets or even a set of traditions, but a lens through which you view the world.

I understood this when I wrote that essay. But I've come to view it as even more important as time has passed. Watching a large number of atheists prove that they're still bound into a Christian mindset even if they've drained themselves of the theistic claims has proven this to me. There is still an obsession with sin, there is still a belief in a Great Chain of Being... some of them even still believe in an afterlife, it just involves robots.

Jewish traditions--some of which are religious and some of which aren't--are ways to connect with my heritage even if I have issues with Jewish theology and don't believe in the supernatural. Keeping Kosher, celebrating the holidays, and following at least some of the other commandments are ways to do that (also, the prospect of no longer eating kosher feels kind of gross). That is worthwhile not just to connect me with other Jews, even if I lack direct social ties, but because for centuries people tried to destroy those traditions. The story of Judaism is not a single strand of defiance, but the defiance that's there is something I value.

I may change or warp those traditions, but that's me doing so as a Jew trying to live in accordance with my own values in a way that makes sense for me. Obviously I can't avoid being shaped by the surrounding culture, but I'm trying not to change based on their values.

But it's more than just my relationship to tradition. Growing up as a member of a non-Christian religion shaped my views on more than just the supernatural, and marks me as different from the people I grew up around. And I'm actually kind of proud of that difference, because while there are aspects of Jewish theology I disagree with, I disagree with far more of the mainstream religion that has shaped our society.

I don't know exactly where I'll go from this next. Certainly I will never be like the Orthodox, even in action. But I'd like to make a point of immersing myself more in Jewish traditions.

Seeing Christians act like their New Testament is so much better than the Old Testament.

Like I've said in the past, there's plenty in the Old Testament I don't like. At all. Actually, there's plenty of stuff in there that no Jews like (well, at this rate some of the worst people in Israel probably love that shit), which is one reason Biblical interpretation is a big thing in Judaism, it's just that I'm willing to declare myself a heretic and say that I reject part of the Torah. It was written thousands of years ago; it has God do really horrible things and justifies a lot of things I don't like. It also commands us to obey God, which is obviously a no go for any anarchist like myself.

But there is something really irritating about seeing Christians declare the God of the New Testament kind, merciful, and loving, and call the God of the Old Testament vengeful. The New Testament is the document where God consigns much of the human species to an eternally burning pit and destroys every other living creature. It's thoroughly entangled with the theology that justified Christians trying to turn themselves into the Borg and make everyone else like them. It justifies slavery and obedience to kings (granted, so does the Old Testament).

If it is true that there is less violence in the New Testament, it is because it is a mythologized history about some random dude's life rather than the story of an entire nation and its associated states. Jesus had no power (I mean real power, not supernatural powers his disciples later decided he had), which meant he wasn't ever in a position to say that God smote his enemies or that God approved of his massacres. Let's note that as soon as the New Testament starts talking about things that happen at a large scale and involved powerful people--in Revelations--God is acting if anything worse than he ever did in the Old Testament (and yes, I'm including the Deluge).

Quite frankly, this idea reeks of anti-Semitism to me.

Also, if you're an atheist I don't want to ever see you talking as if the problem with conservative Christians is that they're paying too much attention to the Old Testament and not enough to Jesus.

I recently saw a friend reference this paper, on virtual reality and nonhuman avatars. It's mostly about how humans respond to controlling VR avatars that are humanoid but have exaggerated anatomy (longer arms, shorter or longer range of limb motion) or respond differently to movement than a normal body would, and how the mind can make someone react as if their avatar is their real body even when it mismatches what their physical body is like.

For instance, there's a study they reference where people were given virtual tails controlled by hip movements. Not only did they quickly learn to use such avatars and control the tails, they felt alarmed when their avatar's tails were threatened.

There's some obvious applicability to therians in this study, even though we're not referenced. We may not have VR headsets or avatars, but I think our mental images of ourselves might act along similar lines, resulting in the sensation of the phantom limb--just like in the study where people were given avatars with tails. I think this might also explain why some people seem to have their phantom body sensations deepen later in life. As that mental identity as an animal cements, perhaps the mind grows more used to the "avatar," and so the feeling of feedback grows.

This also indicates that even without advanced technology, alleviating species dysmorphia using VR may be possible. Previously I'd figured that it would be impossible without extremely advanced technology capable of faking physical sensation, on par with the Matrix. But it seems that, at least to some extent, our minds can do the lion's share of the work.

I'd recommend this paper, and I'm interested in what other people who have read it think.

If you don't know anything about World of Darkness, oh reader, this entry will probably make no sense to you.

On a lark, I joined a Werewolf: the Apocalypse server a few months ago, and finally got around to playing my character last week. I rolled a Red Talon theurge, and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Being able to take the animal-born viewpoint in the setting has long been one of my favorite things about the setting, and people generally view lupus (especially Red Talons; yes, they're the ones with a hateboner for the human species) as next to impossible to play so I like to meet that challenge. Since the game isn't actually super urban, I've had plenty of opportunities to play him.

It's been a pet peeve for a while that people think they're unplayable, really. They're not; I don't think it's just because I'm a therian that I find it pretty easy to understand how a species which was nearly wiped out by the human species could loathe all of them, or be able to play a wolf (I am, after all, not a wolf). And just because my PC hates humans doesn't mean he's dumb enough to try attacking an entire city by himself, either.

They're angry, and a little terrified, but not stupid.

In my case I made a moderate (relatively speaking, anyway) who's got enough self-restraint not to just go off, and is just naturally very level-headed. Doesn't make him actually like humans, but it makes him perfectly playable.

I have some pretty big plans for this PC. It takes place in Washington, near Seattle, so there's the possibility for dispersing wolf packs to establish themselves nearby, there's the possibility for some crossover stuff (I have some ideas regarding mammoth resurrection...), and I want to see if I can have him create some form of animal-born oriented politics that crosses species.

In other news I've been on more than a few hikes in my area, and have seen a lot of wildlife, from green herons to red efts, and many beautiful plants and lichens. I'm learning many of the plant species, but it's slow going; there are so many different types here, and it's harder to distinguish them than in the desert.

Two side stories I wrote for a recent plot I'm doing for the Realm of Kaerwyn, set in my weird fiction setting--the one with the acitan (the cheetahs with hands). I'm pretty sure no one reading this will understand the background, but eh, felt like posting them anyway. It's my journal.

( Warning! Stories with minimal context contained within! )

I went to Antelope Valley last weekend, and the wildflowers were blooming.
It was mostly California poppies, but there were other flowers as well.

There was actually quite a lot of traffic, despite there being very few people in those photos. Most were hanging around near the entrance, though, and I was hiking a mile into the park, over steep (and incredibly windy--I was nearly blown over) terrain. It looks warm, but with the wind it felt very cold; I had to wear two fleeces. The area is big wind country and you can tell why hiking there.

I did see some wildlife. A few lizards (probably side-blotched), some birds. But overall, not very much. There are rattlesnakes in the park, but I didn't see any, and I couldn't identify any of the birds.

I'm sure the flowers seem intense, but compared to many years, this one was actually not that vivid. Sometimes, they look like this. Someday I'd like to see the Valley when it's blooming like that.

I haven't written for the Wanderer's Library in, like... seven years. But I've had this piece on my brain for that entire time. I finally submitted it this week, and it's doing well so far. It's not the best thing I've ever written, but I'm proud of it, and proud of what it represents (me finally getting off my ass).

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( Fiction starts here )

I've been taking a few MOOCs lately. The quality... does not greatly impress me. The ecology ones I've taken have actually been fine, the humanities ones not so much. Despite being less familiar with the humanities than my own field, the humanities ones--at least so far--have been far more basic and far easier. A week's section has maybe twenty minutes of video, and that's it.

They're free, so I'm not inclined to complain much (you can pay to get a certificate, but I don't feel it's very much worth it). It's just a little disheartening that even courses by very good universities can be so very superficial at times.