Homologies

Sep. 29th, 2023 10:07 pm
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Homologies


In predawn glow alone, I take off at a brisk trot, floating in diagonal symmetry.

It’s about the closest I can come to peace in my body.  Homologies are apparent – and there are many. Vertebrates are all built off the same body plan, the sum of modifications to the same blueprint.  Natural selection guides our forms purposefully toward better survival and reproduction, crafting multitudes of shapes.  But look closely and it’s recognizable we’re all cut from the same cloth, running on variations of the same foot.

Padded metatarsals.  Digitigrade, at least for now. 

Bipedalism, still half-baked evolutionarily, feels dissociated from the physical.  I want to drop, feel the ground push back, engage my back.  Dorso-ventral flattening of the rib cage is all wrong. I’m scrunched and stretched into a size and shape that can feel bizarre. But I’ve done the best I could with it.  When the body discomfort peaked, I knew things might never be perfect, but they could be better. So I got fit, as close to the human equivalent of a coyote’s lean-muscled form as possible. 

Latissimus dorsi, serratus, obliques, the sleek torso definition of a canid or hominid.  Functional strength. 

I hit the transition from pavement to packed dirt.  Dawn warms the horizon with rosy glow. Liminal space, liminal time, somewhere human and animal. The pond will be frozen soon. My legs power on.

Soleus, gastrocnemius.  Achilles tendons springing.  Calcaneus, that hammer of civilization that beats ungracefully, ungratefully, on soil dense with death. 

My breath floats to frost my hair and neck warmer, that makeshift ruff. I let my jaw open to pull in more air, smelling frost and decay.

Temporalis.  But what are they without a sagittal crest as anchor?  Rostrum nearly absent, nasals truncated. Canines a bit ironic. Pinnae pitiful.

But the pieces are mostly there. And it’s possible, even with limited hardware, to catch a vole, a whiff of old cottonwood, a rustle of magpies. As I crest the highest ridge, the sun strikes just the treetops. I take it in with eyes lacking the tapetum lucidum, that eye-mirror that would catch more dusky pre-dawn light, but with the cones to appreciate red and orange and peach hues of daybreak. My breath ragged from climb, I pause to savor the instant before treading on.

The path forks and I take the overgrown one littered with detritus.  Here the tall grasses ripple along ribcage, and the vegetation is thick even when barren.  It’s here we cross paths.

A flash of motion. Slipping through the brush, a wraith in every shade of dust and senescent grass.  A pause.  Molten gold gaze. Just that moment, and then he’s gone, winding between the blades to become invisible again. 

I pad along, striding over familiar roots and ducking overgrown branches.  Muscle memory.  I know he’s still in the field somewhere, also running, sharing this cursorial lifestyle molded by evolution.  But I keep moving.  People will be awake soon, and here with their dogs, and we both would like to be gone by then.  The sun spreads across the tips of the grass just as I turn back into the neighborhood, back into shadows. 

By the time I return, the morning is in full swing.  Slowing to a walk, I take a few deep breaths.  

I shed down to skin and step inside, civilized enough for now.





[identity profile] sonne-windsoul.livejournal.com
It's been months since anyone has posted in this community, and except for the essay I'm posting now, I haven't completed any therianthropy or otherwise relevant writings for this group's subject focus (though I have been writing, just on other topics).  It offers up a more sufficient explanation of how I view my therianthropy, not in the sense of causes, but in how I view and feel about myself as being an "animal-human", especially about that notable human aspect of having a human body and thus a human brain.  The title ("Skin Deep") is basically a play on words that seemed oddly fitting.  I sought to describe me being human and non-human without restraining the associations of body with just outward appearance, or the faults and negativities of the human species in general (nor simply the good of that species), and took the route of noting things about body that are important to who, how, and what I am, not just as human but as non-human.  And it portrays for me, my view of how my own human body is not a superficial thing, vessel, or cage.

essay under cut )

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Animal Quills is a creative community for animal-people to share and discuss their written works. Over a hundred essays are archived here (many of which in locked entries). We focus on the concrete "here and now" experience of being animal inside, and other related musings (see our About page if you want to post).

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