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animal_quills2007-11-26 07:38 pm
streetjaguar.livejournal.com) wrote in animal_quills2007-11-26 07:38 pm
Entry tags:
late prompt and introduction
Hey everyone :] I'm Ruth, though I'm not new to animal-quills. It's been a rough year for me but things are getting better. I've been around a few times under a few names and a list of those few names are in my profile. I'm hesitant to define myself at the moment because within the past two years I have been seriously questioning/doubting/dealing with a lot of identity issues, but I've been identifying with cat for about two years. Eventually I'll be writing more about my experiences but I'm currently at finals time in college and I've got lots of other things on my mind. I appreciate understanding my situation and not being able to fully describe my animalness.
Regardless, I've been thinking about this place since it's been around. I'm happy to see this place continue to grow, we need places where we can share our experiences and art. Glad to be back and writing again. Below is my response to an older prompt as I had some notes on it already and I'd like to share it with you. This has been edited and compiled over months of writing. Keeping a notebook on hand has been one of the smartest decisions I've made!
I've taken a dramatic shift in my life concerning how I choose to represent myself. When I was younger, I had a very unloving relationship with my body; my mind was where I believed I could find anything of self-worth. I drew what I felt, what I saw on the inside, what I dreamed and what I wished I could be. I was very preoccupied most days with perfecting my creations to best represent every new installment of understanding. Today I would be lying if I spent a great deal in drawing myself; instead I find I am preoccupied with studying my behaviors and feelings and suiting my appearance to fit my mind's vision of myself. I never believed I would ever slow down or become frustrated with drawing what I see because it has always been so vividly clear.
What instigated this change and left me disheveled for years about my identity was that it changes. I am always going and I frequently forget to stop, think, recall the past and take advice I'm always hearing, "One day at a time." Such a simple concept continues to elude me time and time again! When I first discovered that there were other animal-people I had not experienced much soul-searching. From that moment on everything I felt or did that deviated from what I was convinced was set in stone was most definitely a deviation and had to have an explanation. Rationalization led to doubt, doubt led insecurity, I ended up not being able to sit with anything I had previously believed. How could I have been so wrong, am I wrong, what do I feel? I remember asking myself daily. As I continued to ignore what I was becoming, I was trying desperately to remain what I had been (or felt I had been, perfect) in that moment of self-discovery years before.
Fast-forward to now: I enrolled in an art college; I moved to Boston; I'm taking big steps to 'growing up'. I do not go a day without tripping however, and there are plenty of moments spent wondering if this is where I belong. I'm comfortable saying that what I have been (re)learning about myself is relieving, but because some of it isn't clear I haven't transfered it to paper yet. In my notebooks and sketchbooks there are traces of my deeper thoughts. I experience and understand myself with what I like to think of as a complex web of symbols and associations. Unfortunately because I am changing, it's hard to say I am 'this or that' indefinitely. This which is not that is resistant and different than that, and they cannot reside in the same sector of reality at the same time, based on their definitions. I won't call myself a contradiction - therefore I am what I feel at the time. Knowing what you feel and believe is a whole other matter, but I digress. I've moved on to expressing myself more openly and I do it in a number of ways.
I don't have a system and I currently don't have the money to alter my body as I wish, but clothes, scent, jewelry, and makeup (or lack thereof) all help me express how I see myself better. I like concealing my body in public for the most part because if I want to be seen I'll come out of my metaphorical 'shadows'. I don't dress particularly feminine or masculine, but the way clothes hang on me or the jewelry I wear remind me of certain textures of fur. There's something great when you find the right perfume to compliment your body chemistry, too - I can feel like I stepped out of the city and into the wood, into the umbra cast by hundreds of trees; the crunching of leaves calls up thoughts of four paws making their way through the bramble on the forest floor. I smell me, I can feel me and hear me; I shouldn't ignore my choice in what I am. My ways of representing myself have been somewhat unconscious, but I've been taking steps to make this a more active and involved process. I suppose that I believed my body was simply a shell that the 'true me' had to deal with - now I understand that I am just as much my body as I am my mind, and the two 'divided cannot stand'. When I can look in the mirror and see myself, recognizable, I can walk outside with confidence.
Lately I've been curious about why I'm preoccupied with smelling like damp earth and ashes, spice; why my clothes need to be tight fitting and make me feel sleek; I wear jewelry now all the time instead of just during the day, a collection of things little jungle cat has found in her travels; why I feel Boston isn't a city but an urban jungle that's fostering this little, wild cat in me. I can't seem to draw it because I can't see it, I feel it. Perhaps in the future I'll understand finer details, but for now I'll brush my whiskers against whatever I can come across until the sun comes up and illuminates my inner vision. I'll see what this dark silhouette in my mind really looks like. I can't say that by the time it's very clear it will be the same as it is now, but it's safe to say that from now on I'll trust myself to know that what I feel is valid and worth describing, worth discovering.
Regardless, I've been thinking about this place since it's been around. I'm happy to see this place continue to grow, we need places where we can share our experiences and art. Glad to be back and writing again. Below is my response to an older prompt as I had some notes on it already and I'd like to share it with you. This has been edited and compiled over months of writing. Keeping a notebook on hand has been one of the smartest decisions I've made!
I've taken a dramatic shift in my life concerning how I choose to represent myself. When I was younger, I had a very unloving relationship with my body; my mind was where I believed I could find anything of self-worth. I drew what I felt, what I saw on the inside, what I dreamed and what I wished I could be. I was very preoccupied most days with perfecting my creations to best represent every new installment of understanding. Today I would be lying if I spent a great deal in drawing myself; instead I find I am preoccupied with studying my behaviors and feelings and suiting my appearance to fit my mind's vision of myself. I never believed I would ever slow down or become frustrated with drawing what I see because it has always been so vividly clear.
What instigated this change and left me disheveled for years about my identity was that it changes. I am always going and I frequently forget to stop, think, recall the past and take advice I'm always hearing, "One day at a time." Such a simple concept continues to elude me time and time again! When I first discovered that there were other animal-people I had not experienced much soul-searching. From that moment on everything I felt or did that deviated from what I was convinced was set in stone was most definitely a deviation and had to have an explanation. Rationalization led to doubt, doubt led insecurity, I ended up not being able to sit with anything I had previously believed. How could I have been so wrong, am I wrong, what do I feel? I remember asking myself daily. As I continued to ignore what I was becoming, I was trying desperately to remain what I had been (or felt I had been, perfect) in that moment of self-discovery years before.
Fast-forward to now: I enrolled in an art college; I moved to Boston; I'm taking big steps to 'growing up'. I do not go a day without tripping however, and there are plenty of moments spent wondering if this is where I belong. I'm comfortable saying that what I have been (re)learning about myself is relieving, but because some of it isn't clear I haven't transfered it to paper yet. In my notebooks and sketchbooks there are traces of my deeper thoughts. I experience and understand myself with what I like to think of as a complex web of symbols and associations. Unfortunately because I am changing, it's hard to say I am 'this or that' indefinitely. This which is not that is resistant and different than that, and they cannot reside in the same sector of reality at the same time, based on their definitions. I won't call myself a contradiction - therefore I am what I feel at the time. Knowing what you feel and believe is a whole other matter, but I digress. I've moved on to expressing myself more openly and I do it in a number of ways.
I don't have a system and I currently don't have the money to alter my body as I wish, but clothes, scent, jewelry, and makeup (or lack thereof) all help me express how I see myself better. I like concealing my body in public for the most part because if I want to be seen I'll come out of my metaphorical 'shadows'. I don't dress particularly feminine or masculine, but the way clothes hang on me or the jewelry I wear remind me of certain textures of fur. There's something great when you find the right perfume to compliment your body chemistry, too - I can feel like I stepped out of the city and into the wood, into the umbra cast by hundreds of trees; the crunching of leaves calls up thoughts of four paws making their way through the bramble on the forest floor. I smell me, I can feel me and hear me; I shouldn't ignore my choice in what I am. My ways of representing myself have been somewhat unconscious, but I've been taking steps to make this a more active and involved process. I suppose that I believed my body was simply a shell that the 'true me' had to deal with - now I understand that I am just as much my body as I am my mind, and the two 'divided cannot stand'. When I can look in the mirror and see myself, recognizable, I can walk outside with confidence.
Lately I've been curious about why I'm preoccupied with smelling like damp earth and ashes, spice; why my clothes need to be tight fitting and make me feel sleek; I wear jewelry now all the time instead of just during the day, a collection of things little jungle cat has found in her travels; why I feel Boston isn't a city but an urban jungle that's fostering this little, wild cat in me. I can't seem to draw it because I can't see it, I feel it. Perhaps in the future I'll understand finer details, but for now I'll brush my whiskers against whatever I can come across until the sun comes up and illuminates my inner vision. I'll see what this dark silhouette in my mind really looks like. I can't say that by the time it's very clear it will be the same as it is now, but it's safe to say that from now on I'll trust myself to know that what I feel is valid and worth describing, worth discovering.
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Well-met! ^_^
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Nice to hear from you again! We haven't discussed animal stuff for a while and I do have a question. ^^ I remember you switching from a wolfish self-representation to a foxish one in the past years, do you feel it's related to your transition from a canine identity to a feline one? Foxes often are considered as quite feline, and I wanted to get your insights on this.
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And I'm glad I'm not the only urban feline around. I hope we'll both get around to write something one the subject next month. :3 You're articulate.
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Wow. :)
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"I can't seem to draw it because I can't see it, I feel it."
That sounds all too familiar.
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"I suppose that I believed my body was simply a shell that the 'true me' had to deal with - now I understand that I am just as much my body as I am my mind, and the two 'divided cannot stand'."
*nods* I feel the same, because there was a point upon acknowledging my therianthropy when I felt my body was a "shell" encasing (if not 'imprisoning') my "true self" when in actuality I came to find out my 'true self' is mental, physical, and beyond that (soulistic, spiritual, if such exist). My body is myself, not in whole but certainly in part (and an important part at that), thus it's not a shell containing me. I also experience what you said about not being able to "see" yourself because you instead "feel" it--that's in large part how my therianthropy manifests, not through clear visuals of appearing this way or that, but through feeling, sensation, thought, and understanding with minor to no imagery.