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and a belated introduction
Mar. 1st, 2012 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yourdeerI realize I haven't really introduced myself.
My parents, Polish immigrants, call me Mania (Mah-nyah); it is my nickname since childhood. As a little thing my fingers were always bent to form hands into paws, arms spread as wings, toes pointed into hoofs - I was any animal, all the animals; I could find a home in cat, dog, mouse, horse, hawk. I remember my mother urging me to uncurl my fingers and hold my hands normally, her discomfort with my need for paws. I remember my dad helping me make a jumping course in the backyard by hammering nails into picket stakes that I could force into the ground and place a dowel across and gallop around, leaping over, whinnying.
My childhood friends christened me Mare - with my deep love of horses - drawing, riding, pride in imitating snorts and whinnies, it was naturally what made sense when we sought nicknames in a childish pledge of eternal friendship.
My best friend, and I in our quiet teenage mischief lived in the symbols of fox and raccoon - she with her quiet rage, pride in her tail, and physical playfulness, me a little more friendly with stripes and little deft hands and curious nose, we gave testament to this with countless drawings, figurines, and matching fox and raccoon plushies.
I wrote a lot of stories in high school, and found it easy as one heavily invested in fantasy novels to create a species that would be the focal point for my drawings and fictions for four years: a patchwork and exaggerated combination of horse, deer, hyena, and raccoon: a blunt, toothy head with long delicate ears, a long maned neck, long thin legs ending in deft and ankled paws, a barrel chest, arching hip, matriarchal social structure, and vastly bushy striped tail. When I made prints at the local Staples they knew me as "the girl with the bunnyhorses".
My ex-girlfriend called me a lion, and it perplexed and somehow hurt me - I did not feel, at the time, like lion was anything pleasant - entitled, possessive, lazily male. She had meant it lightly, a pet name referring to my then-spiky mane and boyishness, but I was doubtful for a long time before embracing it as a sleepy, possessive, protective, and sexually starved identity of the adolescent lion with half-grown mane, lanky legs and stark ribcage, of not-there-yet, of waiting.
Deer had been building slowly for years and then came to the surface all at once. One of my favorite books as a child was about deer; at home in northern New England the white-tail and its tracks and bones were a common finding; across the road a hunting camp had a buck every season and brought venison to my parents which I refused to eat; I found a skeleton of a doe the first winter after leaving home and cleaned and disassembled it and reassembled it in sections - it hangs in my bedroom at my apartment. Deer was woken up within me by another animal-person who was living as such, while I had been tucking away any animality for years. It was pointed out to me that I was doe, skittish with a long, quiveringly sensitive neck, long thin legs, alternating indignation and readiness to flee. I have heard "You really are a deer" numerous times from numerous people over the past year.
At the present juncture I let these all flow through me as distillations of the aspects of my character, I am each at different times. Sometimes it is the stress and strength and powerful destructive jaws of the hyena that I feel; sometimes the deft paws, mischief, indignity and confidence of the raccoon; sometimes the willingness to pull for another, the heavy hoofs, steady gate and flat teeth of the horse; sometimes the desire, entitlement and sleepy possessiveness of the lion; usually the swiveling ears, skittishness, the long neck and the quiet of the doe.
My parents, Polish immigrants, call me Mania (Mah-nyah); it is my nickname since childhood. As a little thing my fingers were always bent to form hands into paws, arms spread as wings, toes pointed into hoofs - I was any animal, all the animals; I could find a home in cat, dog, mouse, horse, hawk. I remember my mother urging me to uncurl my fingers and hold my hands normally, her discomfort with my need for paws. I remember my dad helping me make a jumping course in the backyard by hammering nails into picket stakes that I could force into the ground and place a dowel across and gallop around, leaping over, whinnying.
My childhood friends christened me Mare - with my deep love of horses - drawing, riding, pride in imitating snorts and whinnies, it was naturally what made sense when we sought nicknames in a childish pledge of eternal friendship.
My best friend, and I in our quiet teenage mischief lived in the symbols of fox and raccoon - she with her quiet rage, pride in her tail, and physical playfulness, me a little more friendly with stripes and little deft hands and curious nose, we gave testament to this with countless drawings, figurines, and matching fox and raccoon plushies.
I wrote a lot of stories in high school, and found it easy as one heavily invested in fantasy novels to create a species that would be the focal point for my drawings and fictions for four years: a patchwork and exaggerated combination of horse, deer, hyena, and raccoon: a blunt, toothy head with long delicate ears, a long maned neck, long thin legs ending in deft and ankled paws, a barrel chest, arching hip, matriarchal social structure, and vastly bushy striped tail. When I made prints at the local Staples they knew me as "the girl with the bunnyhorses".
My ex-girlfriend called me a lion, and it perplexed and somehow hurt me - I did not feel, at the time, like lion was anything pleasant - entitled, possessive, lazily male. She had meant it lightly, a pet name referring to my then-spiky mane and boyishness, but I was doubtful for a long time before embracing it as a sleepy, possessive, protective, and sexually starved identity of the adolescent lion with half-grown mane, lanky legs and stark ribcage, of not-there-yet, of waiting.
Deer had been building slowly for years and then came to the surface all at once. One of my favorite books as a child was about deer; at home in northern New England the white-tail and its tracks and bones were a common finding; across the road a hunting camp had a buck every season and brought venison to my parents which I refused to eat; I found a skeleton of a doe the first winter after leaving home and cleaned and disassembled it and reassembled it in sections - it hangs in my bedroom at my apartment. Deer was woken up within me by another animal-person who was living as such, while I had been tucking away any animality for years. It was pointed out to me that I was doe, skittish with a long, quiveringly sensitive neck, long thin legs, alternating indignation and readiness to flee. I have heard "You really are a deer" numerous times from numerous people over the past year.
At the present juncture I let these all flow through me as distillations of the aspects of my character, I am each at different times. Sometimes it is the stress and strength and powerful destructive jaws of the hyena that I feel; sometimes the deft paws, mischief, indignity and confidence of the raccoon; sometimes the willingness to pull for another, the heavy hoofs, steady gate and flat teeth of the horse; sometimes the desire, entitlement and sleepy possessiveness of the lion; usually the swiveling ears, skittishness, the long neck and the quiet of the doe.
