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animal_quills2007-12-30 03:18 pm
streetjaguar.livejournal.com) wrote in animal_quills2007-12-30 03:18 pm
The City prompt
Not late yet, but coming towards the end of the year. I hope everyone's been enjoying their holiday season :] This is not yet finished and refined, so if you'd like to crit please do so with this in mind - I'm trying to tell what and why I feel the way I do about City, it's definition and my sensory perception of it. This correlates to where I grew up and where I live now, how I feel about it, and it's more creative than academic. This is a first draft, and I take any thoughts/questions to it. I'll respond by editing and posting a finished version later.
I think in my head The City is wild and unpredicatble like a jungle is; a very complex ecosystem. Uncountable is the number of other life forms beneath and part of the canopy, like the citizens and their pets, and wild animals. The City itself is life. Jungle cat is essentially Alley cat; perfectly suited for the shadows of the city, explorative, a hunter of small things, little victories.
I recently moved to Boston (in september) and while I do come from a city, it isn't a city at all like Boston. My city is tribal - people don't like change, they like what they know and they think they understand what they know. It's not an environment where asking questions and wanting to grow is honored - instead, leaving is a sign of growing to 'big' for where I live. I don't think of it as a sweet small town because it isn't - it's a city with lower to middle middle class citizens, commuters and minimum wage workers. The people who stay tend to stay, the people who leave tend to rarely come back. This city has never been anything but a disgusting urban mess to me, not the jungle of Boston that I have with higher regard - instead, it's just a wasteland.
I barely explored my own city until last year so my experience with people, cities, and culture has been limited to what I have read. There is no reading or imagining that I could have done to prepare me for what I was going to experience. Not only was this a very specific experience (I'm living at a college) it was an eye opening experience. Moving to boston has been one of the greatest decisions I've made for myself so far and I know what while I live here for the next four years I'm going to learn, explore, and feel like never before (or even possible in taunton?)
What mostly has caught my interest was just how animal I feel in such a seemingly robotic, mechanical world. Ever since I moved cat has been breathing out of my skin, affects my mind, and not a moment goes by where I can recall feeling dead to this feeling or it leaving me. The intensity of this feeling and mentality is something unparalleled to previous therianthropic experiences - red wolf and fox never roused such true intensity and I wonder if this is related to simply the animal in question. While I do remember early on in my years realizing that I felt these experiences, I don't remember feeling like this on a day to day basis. My therianthropy for a long time was shift-like and wolfish, in some ways very different to now. Now I experience some fluctuations in intensity, mostly from high to general 'alert'.
Despite the noise outside, the roar of the T coming to the station outside, cars at all hours, red sox fans, and other sorts of mechanical nuances that pollute nature's sounds, I feel a sense of home. I have been calling myself streetjaguar online for a few months because back in may I had a dream about becoming a jaguar. I went from the jungle into the city and since I've been here I think of this as an urban jungle, the perfect place for a human cat. While I have the familiar technology and danger and challenge that human would want, I also have this world of epic proportions where I am at the uppermost part of the food chain exploring and claiming territory like cat would. My 'hunting' is searching for more alleyways and shops and people hangouts, statues and places where stickers cover and say more than the street sign.
My move to Boston made me realize just how much I love to explore and learn - cat whiskers feel along the sides of buildings and paws tread lightly on concrete, conquer each moment. I can walk outside and go anywhere on foot - find new things every time. In my city, there is nothing worth exploring. Here, there are always side streets and cafes and neighborhoods with people and dogs and children you haven't met yet. I merely wish to be a shadow that comes and passes, observing and learning. I'm a cat stalking an invisible prey, I'm careful not to leave too many marks.
But when I come into the light, it's as if I've walked into a ray of sunshine - cat lays out in the sun to warm up and relax. I feel comfortable enough to speak to others, meet lots of people, and in general socialize wherever I go, even on the T (subway.) The jungle is my home - I can walk with confidence and inspire confidence in those who might spot me coming down the street sipping coffee. And that's important, the ability to feel free. No where else have I yet stepped outside into bustling traffic, smoggy air with people shouting and running to catch their bus and felt 'this is where I belong'.
Of course, Boston is just one patch of wood amongst a sea of urban jungle, sprawling across the earth. I, just one animal-person trying to learn and know what it means to care for one's territory and hunger. I yearn for a place to roam and know as mine, to hunt and not worry that there isn't any prey - because it is in cities I find there is knowledge of all kinds, everywhere. There is food, there are friendly people, there are kin and there are strangers; there is uncharted but chartable territory, and I want to overlook it all.
Expertly walking through littered streets and crowds of people, jungle cat evades trees and plants and other animals; I look around and wonder if I'll ever brush my whiskers against every nook, every cranny. A quick cat-like smile then I'm on my way.
I think in my head The City is wild and unpredicatble like a jungle is; a very complex ecosystem. Uncountable is the number of other life forms beneath and part of the canopy, like the citizens and their pets, and wild animals. The City itself is life. Jungle cat is essentially Alley cat; perfectly suited for the shadows of the city, explorative, a hunter of small things, little victories.
I recently moved to Boston (in september) and while I do come from a city, it isn't a city at all like Boston. My city is tribal - people don't like change, they like what they know and they think they understand what they know. It's not an environment where asking questions and wanting to grow is honored - instead, leaving is a sign of growing to 'big' for where I live. I don't think of it as a sweet small town because it isn't - it's a city with lower to middle middle class citizens, commuters and minimum wage workers. The people who stay tend to stay, the people who leave tend to rarely come back. This city has never been anything but a disgusting urban mess to me, not the jungle of Boston that I have with higher regard - instead, it's just a wasteland.
I barely explored my own city until last year so my experience with people, cities, and culture has been limited to what I have read. There is no reading or imagining that I could have done to prepare me for what I was going to experience. Not only was this a very specific experience (I'm living at a college) it was an eye opening experience. Moving to boston has been one of the greatest decisions I've made for myself so far and I know what while I live here for the next four years I'm going to learn, explore, and feel like never before (or even possible in taunton?)
What mostly has caught my interest was just how animal I feel in such a seemingly robotic, mechanical world. Ever since I moved cat has been breathing out of my skin, affects my mind, and not a moment goes by where I can recall feeling dead to this feeling or it leaving me. The intensity of this feeling and mentality is something unparalleled to previous therianthropic experiences - red wolf and fox never roused such true intensity and I wonder if this is related to simply the animal in question. While I do remember early on in my years realizing that I felt these experiences, I don't remember feeling like this on a day to day basis. My therianthropy for a long time was shift-like and wolfish, in some ways very different to now. Now I experience some fluctuations in intensity, mostly from high to general 'alert'.
Despite the noise outside, the roar of the T coming to the station outside, cars at all hours, red sox fans, and other sorts of mechanical nuances that pollute nature's sounds, I feel a sense of home. I have been calling myself streetjaguar online for a few months because back in may I had a dream about becoming a jaguar. I went from the jungle into the city and since I've been here I think of this as an urban jungle, the perfect place for a human cat. While I have the familiar technology and danger and challenge that human would want, I also have this world of epic proportions where I am at the uppermost part of the food chain exploring and claiming territory like cat would. My 'hunting' is searching for more alleyways and shops and people hangouts, statues and places where stickers cover and say more than the street sign.
My move to Boston made me realize just how much I love to explore and learn - cat whiskers feel along the sides of buildings and paws tread lightly on concrete, conquer each moment. I can walk outside and go anywhere on foot - find new things every time. In my city, there is nothing worth exploring. Here, there are always side streets and cafes and neighborhoods with people and dogs and children you haven't met yet. I merely wish to be a shadow that comes and passes, observing and learning. I'm a cat stalking an invisible prey, I'm careful not to leave too many marks.
But when I come into the light, it's as if I've walked into a ray of sunshine - cat lays out in the sun to warm up and relax. I feel comfortable enough to speak to others, meet lots of people, and in general socialize wherever I go, even on the T (subway.) The jungle is my home - I can walk with confidence and inspire confidence in those who might spot me coming down the street sipping coffee. And that's important, the ability to feel free. No where else have I yet stepped outside into bustling traffic, smoggy air with people shouting and running to catch their bus and felt 'this is where I belong'.
Of course, Boston is just one patch of wood amongst a sea of urban jungle, sprawling across the earth. I, just one animal-person trying to learn and know what it means to care for one's territory and hunger. I yearn for a place to roam and know as mine, to hunt and not worry that there isn't any prey - because it is in cities I find there is knowledge of all kinds, everywhere. There is food, there are friendly people, there are kin and there are strangers; there is uncharted but chartable territory, and I want to overlook it all.
Expertly walking through littered streets and crowds of people, jungle cat evades trees and plants and other animals; I look around and wonder if I'll ever brush my whiskers against every nook, every cranny. A quick cat-like smile then I'm on my way.
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My feelings are somewhat similar to yours. The city is its own sort of wilderness, one that I enjoy exploring and one that keeps me on my toes.
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Too much traffic is what really gets me. I've never been good crossing streets and always worry about getting stuck in the middle or separated from whoever is guiding me if I get stuck on one side. =D Bit silly really.