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Birds, bit more general stuff.

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*December 29, 2013:*
First of all, let me state that I'm feeling pretty good as I write this. I feel
the need to state such because a lot of my tweets and a lot of my previous
entries could be construed as worrisome, and probably legitimately so, because I
have the tendency to vent freely. If I feel bad, I write, and if I'm not at a
computer, sometimes that ends up on Twitter. It's never my goal to freak anyone
out, so much as to simply cope with what's going on. Writing, putting things in
words and stringing those words together into some form meaningful to others, is
a good way for me to cope with what's happening in my life. That said, although
I try to be frank about symptoms, I know that some are disturbing taken at face
value or to their logical extremes, so I promise: I'm feeling pretty good now!
I'm torn.
I feel as though one of the most important things in my life is ritual, process,
or repetition. It's not so much that these things are comforting in isolation,
as that there is a certain feeling of being tethered to reality in them that
comforts in its own way.
I've been asked what I mean by reality, or what I mean when I say "that makes me
feel real" or "it's important to me that I feel real". A lot of my response
must, by necessity, rely on analogy, by its very surreality - there's no way I
can describe how I feel without using metaphors and similes.
In short, it's part of life that we sort of perceive the world around us as a
spatial, temporal thing. There are three axes of movement, one axis of time
(though sometimes it gets a little twisted up), and that's just sort of how we
interface with much of the world. The feeling of surreality, then, is a
pulling away on some fifth dimension, a cocooning, a means by which one has or
has been made to withdraw from the rest of reality. From the inside, it feels
like being wrapped up in cotton. Senses aren't dulled, as that might imply, so
much as that all connections through reality, all input must pass through a
high-latency barrier that introduces its own artifacts, requires its own
decoding. Again, it's not that I can't *hear*, it's that the words that are
coming in must be run through an additional filter to associate them first with
meanings, and then to tie them back through the perception of reality (the rest
of which must, of course, go through its own decoding process).
This surreality is, of course, nothing more than anxiety. I talk often in terms
of bandwidth, and that's rather applicable here. If I am spending all of my
emotional and intellectual energy on cycling over counterfactual universes that
I've constructed in my consciousness, then I have little energy left to deal
with the one I'm actually living in. My doctor insists, and I heartily agree,
that I not think of this as anything other than anxiety and panic, which I'll
get to in a moment.
I said that I'm torn above because the result of this is a desire to get back to
reality. The problem is that the anxiety gets in the way quite a bit. I think,
"There must be a way back to clarity and reality, there has to be some sort of
path or action I can take." That, too, is anxiety, but it's as yet too subtle
to recognize as such unless I'm holding still and doing very little else (which
is hardly productive).
As a result, a lot of my day-to-day life is spent focusing on the idea of
ritual. Ritual is the one thing that my mind has latched onto as some sort of
way through or way out, and I think it plays a large role in the events of my
past, though I was less conscious of it at the time - such is life, when it
comes to any sort of personal advancement. I ritually check the stove to make
sure it's off. I check the doors and windows. I get up once a night and check
on JD and the two pups to make sure they're inside (just in case Falcon has
rappelled out the window and is terrorizing the neighborhood - seriously).
It's not just checking that drives me, though. Anyone who has been to my house
knows that it's not cleaning, of course, but, well, it all comes back to the
audible aberrations that I'd mentioned before.
For a few months now, I've been 'hearing' voices, but I'm always careful to
mention that they're not audible hallucinations. They're not. They're what's
called expansion: the inner dialog that goes on in our brains as we go about
life is usually one that takes place in abstract images. In this case, however,
that has broken down into something more simplistic, as though I'm telling
myself a story. The voices have character and gender (though they're usually
boring), and hover *just* below the level of hearing, something closer to
remembering that I had *just heard* someone say something.
It's fantastically hard for me to write about this in any sort of open way. I
want to hide it. It's fucking ridiculous. I hate it, and I want it gone, and
it's embarrassing. Embarrassment is, however, a primarily social reaction, and
a harmful one in this case (after all, this is a health problem). That is, more
than I want to hide all of this, I want to tell that embarrassment to get fucked
and talk openly and freely about all this, because it's even *more* ridiculous
that I feel I can't.
Anyway, as I listened to someone drone on tonight about how I should cut my hair
off, how it would hurt in just the right way, how that would be my penance, and
that would be just what I needed to gain touch with reality again, I think I
finally understood the tie to ritual. This was all I had to do. In fact, this
was all these stupid aberrations were ever 'urging' me to do. It was this sense
of ritual become words. When I feel as though I'm instructed to tease apart my
skin like burlap cloth with a knife-point, to solve a cramp or a gas-pain with
violence, to kill myself before an upcoming trip to London, that's not just an
expansion of some random, totally out there thought, that's the feeling of
ritual, the "there must be something I can do to stop this panic" sense expanded
from an abstract concept back into language.
I've been shifting wildly along the spectrum of following these rituals to the
letter to outright ignoring them. As I said, I feel good: I'm not going to kill
myself before London or stab myself with a syringe to ease gas-pains. However,
I'm still getting up to check on the windows and doors and stove and dogs. In
the middle, I've taken to trying to subvert the desire for ritual with other
rituals: rather than tease apart my skin like lose-woven cloth with the tip of a
knife, I use a pen and just kind of draw on myself. It offers enough catharsis
for me to get to the point to realize that it's actually really, really
ludicrous; that I'm drawing symbols or lines of the utmost importance on my
limbs with a pen pilfered from my bank. That's usually enough to break through
the panicked ritual and leave me just feeling silly (which is, while
uncomfortable, still a million times better than that inner tension that
required the ritual in the first place).
Ritual is a salve. It's an ice cube held against a burn. It's something that
provides instant relief, but only so long as it's present. I can't *solve* any
of these problems by acting out a ritual. Checking on the dogs does not
ultimately leave me satisfied that they're all comfortably asleep, because then
I need to make sure the windows and doors are shut to ensure that they don't
float away. That done, I need to check the stove to make sure that it's off,
because if it's on and the windows are shut, how will we escape when the house
burns down?
You see, there's no solution. There's no ritual to make me feel good, or real,
or better, or not-anxious. There's only anxiety, and coping, and panic, and
sleep. There's reality, and that's where I dwell, and then there's my
perception of reality, which drifts rather more than perhaps it ought. Cutting
my hair wouldn't hurt - it's hair, for Pete's sake - and it would not be the
penance I need, the right amount of pain to bring me back to reality. It's
hair! I know that. That's the case I argue to the voice demanding such.
That's what makes it panic, and not psychosis: ultimately, there **is no break
from reality**. There's none. I know these aberrations aren't real; I know the
dogs aren't going to go carousing out the windows; I know, for sure, that
cutting my hair is not going to stop any of this. I know it. The voices are a
nuisance, the panic is a problem, but it doesn't control me. There is *no*
ritual that will solve anything: the ritual is a symptom. It's important, yes;
I live my life by process. But it's a symptom.
That's why I'm torn.

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*February 13, 2014:*
<div class="verse">I wonder if the snow loves the trees and
fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you
know, with a white quilt, and perhaps it says, "Go to sleep,
darlings, till the summer comes again."
<em>- Lewis Carroll</em></div>
I've mentioned ritual before, but I think that's tied into the larger feeing
of portentousness. Ritual is one way to sate that sense of intense meaning
surrounding an act or an object.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A goose is dumb. A thousand geese
darkening the horizon is a portent. Mindless honking, individually
directionless, collectively unstoppable</p>&mdash; Makyo (@drab_makyo) <a
href="https://twitter.com/drab_makyo/statuses/433658156988628992">February 12,
2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Any little thing can carry meaning for one person far outweighing what it
might mean to others. Something about flocks of geese terrifies me. It's not a
logical fear, it's a sense of foreboding. It's not the geese themselves, it's
the concept of geese, the lack of any ritual to solve the problem of geese.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>A goose is tasty. Geese taste
like horror. Acrid tang of ill omens *froth*</p>&mdash; Makyo
(@drab_makyo) <a
href="https://twitter.com/drab_makyo/statuses/433658390103879680">February 12,
2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
It's dumb. Geese are dumb. There's no reason I should feel any sort of
emotion at all surrounding geese, but I do.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Why are geese so portentous? Why
do they cause anxiety? Did I take my meds this morning?</p>&mdash; Makyo
(@drab_makyo) <a
href="https://twitter.com/drab_makyo/statuses/433658641384607744">February 12,
2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Ritual is like that. There is some level of meaning that's inexpressible
except if you can find a way to come at it from the side. Use words like
'portent'. Describe it as an odor, a sense, a mystery. Ritual and sensation
are wily and wary critters that want nothing less than to be identified, pointed
out, made plain. You're supposed to just go along with the ritual and accept
the portentous as fact.

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[![1](/bird/1.jpg)](/bird/1.jpg)
```
Is this a thing for Imgur? Most certainly not! It's perfect for shouting into a vasty nothingness, though. It's just One Of Those Things. I'd say votes don't matter, since they don't, but Lord knows I'll be back to check on this at some point. If nothing else, maybe folks with similar experiences will have info, hopes, and thoughts to add.
```
[![1](/bird/2.jpg)](/bird/2.jpg)
```
This, er...human hygiene infopamphlet strongly evokes the sensation of the destabilization that comes along with going off of antipsychotics (see: http://imgur.com/a/vtulA ). There’s a certain type of magical, ritualistic thinking that comes with the (near-)psychosis of withdrawal. The kind that comes on you like a compulsion, or like your gag reflex being triggered, and makes you feel like your skin no longer fits.
```
[![1](/bird/3.jpg)](/bird/3.jpg)
```
For me, it’s frequently about birds. For a long while, it was geese. A goose is dumb. A thousand geese darkening the horizon is a portent. Mindless honking, individually directionless, collectively unstoppable. A goose is tasty. Geese taste like horror. Acrid tang of ill omens. Or so it felt at the time.
Then it was owls. It was my duty to think about owls, to encourage others to think about owls. In and of themselves, owls are alright, kind of a take-it-or-leave-it bird, but one must think about them, because the consequences of not thinking about them are beyond imagining. Or so it felt at the time.
And for a bit, it was incantations. “Get fucked,” I’d tell the clouds. I’d tell my thoughts to get fucked, I’d tell sleep to get fucked, I’d tell the tic to get fucked. I had to. I couldn’t not. Or so it felt at the time.
```
[![1](/bird/4.jpg)](/bird/4.jpg)
```
Birds and incantations, it turns out, are common in magical thinking and intrusive thoughts, as well as grids, parallel lines, and food. The comic is a prime example of that. There are aspects of OCD, sure, but it’s beyond just the obsessions and the compulsions, it’s the way that that is expressed in ritual and dire need, the fact that one cannot bear the consequences of NOT performing the ritual. There’s nothing wrong with ritual or magical thinking, nor even birds, incantations, grids, or food. The problem lies in when those are forced on you by your hindbrain until you’re sick.
```
[![1](/bird/5.jpg)](/bird/5.jpg)
```
A friend calls it ‘bruise vision’, and while I can’t explain why, that’s 100% accurate.
```
[![1](/bird/6.jpg)](/bird/6.jpg)
```
I couldn't create this sort of thing, so I'm glad that someone did for me. Here's the original source: http://adactivity.tumblr.com/post/73552347250/here-are-the-raw-images-which-make-up-the-eat-no - support artists doing neat things! And take care of yourselves :)
```

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date: 2019-08-19
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<style>
.row {
display: block;
vertical-align: top;
}
.col-md-4 {
width: 30%;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: top;
padding: 0.5rem;
}
.text-right {
text-align: right;
}
.col-md-8 {
width: 60%;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: top;
padding: 0.5rem;
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 500px) {
.col-md-4, .col-md-8 {
width: 100%;
display: block;
}
}
</style>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>I</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Unnerving</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
Anxiety</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
A hundred geese overhead —
A thousand —
A million —
Heady scent of premonition.
Acrid tang of ill omens.
Portents.
Too much meaning
In too small a space.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>II</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Noise-Cancelling Headphones</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
auditory aberrations</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
Geese are a byproduct of laminar shear stress
Of two layers of phantasmagorical
Newtonian fluids,
Which is why they’re often seen on a plane.
A thin, sort-of Truth
From a sort of thin layer
geese chromatography.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>III</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Eldrich</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
red tint to vision; hot flashes</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
As the dove bears the olive branch,
so too the goose bears the wand
that withers all it touches.
A wand of nightshade,
Core of tainted silver.
A wand of obscure origin,
The goose surely stole it.
Malice begets malice.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>IV</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Beyond Comprehension</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
confusion; nausea; sweating; racing pulse</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
We know not the transgression,
the origin -
We know not the punishment,
only the terror.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>V</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Excruciating</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
pounding heart; tunnel vision; racing thoughts; black outs;
blood pouring from ears</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
Geas
Wing
Dark
Horizon
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>VI</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Terrifying</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
tinnitus; piloerection; shortness of breath; uneven gait</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
I’d rather owls.
Owls, as though geese were turned inside out,
made less evil.
Still portentous,
Still momentous,
Just less terrifying.
Owls are okay.
I can think about owls.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>VII</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Uncomfortable</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
subdermal itching; formication</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
Life within a comfortable grid.
Parallel lines
Interrupting narrowing circles
Of birds in flight.
Travel in straight lines.
Turn at right angles.
Trace the roof of your mouth
With wet tongue.
I’m not afraid of geese anymore
Because I can step on them now.
I’m big enough.
</div>
</div>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-4 text-right">
<h3>VIII</h3>
<p><em>Geese Level:</em><br />
Birds</p>
<p><em>Expect:</em><br />
birds</p>
</div>
<div class="col-md-8 verse">
Ritual thinking
Driven by geese —
By lines, by grids, by food —
By numbers and neat delineation.
And I’m left with questions:
Why the portents?
Why the anxiety?
Or maybe:
Did I take my meds this morning?
Failing that,
Can I just have the comfort of prayer
Or the ecstasy of signs
Without bleak paranoia
Over circling birds?
</div>
</div>

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[![Geese](/bird/geese.jpg)](/bird/geese.jpg)

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I took a sleep aid. I'm not getting into this now. I was all prepped to write about poly stuff, but you started banging on the door.
[Read](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/omens-and-portents/) [what](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/on-ritual/) [I've](https://imgur.com/gallery/fkrQc) [already](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/poetry/bruise-vision/) [written](/page/8).
<a class="pulse" href="/birds">Read what I've already written</a>.
> I was there when you wrote those.

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Is it weird for me to be streaming writing like this?
> I don't know. Does it feel weird to you?
I guess. I feel like maybe it's weird to be writing for an audience (even if it's only theoretical). What sort of information can be gleaned from watching someone write in a word-processor? Method? Insight?
> Entertainment?
I don't know about that.
> Validation?
That's more like it, I suppose. It's a way to prove to others that I actually sit down and write these things. That there's someone there.
> That there's someone behind a memoir? How novel.
Well, yes. But that they take time, that they take energy. That it's a process and not a product.
> Is there some sense of validity that is lacking from simply publishing? Posting?
I don't know.
> You set up analytics on this site. And on your writing site.
I set up analytics on a lot of sites.
> But these in particular. Do you need to see that others see you?
I suppose I do. It's important to be recognized.
> Are you also doing this to get me to leave you alone about heavier topics?
Yes.

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> If Matthew died on September 6th, 2012, was Madison born then?
No, I don't think so. Madison was born some years later. Maybe at some point in 2014. The years in between were a sort of liminal time.
> You found yourself in a place between.
I did. There was this time in my life when I was figuring out gender. I was figuring out poly. I was figuring out working. I was figuring out not being at school and moving away from music and learning to write and all the interstices of alcoholism. Those little nooks and crannies you never know about until you start drinking in earnest.
It was like a second period of growing up. Something more refined than a rebirth. Something less grand. Something subtler.
> You also learned the term 'hendiatris'.
I have a style, alright?
> Right.
It's the time when I started [a][s], the time when I started to look at my life in earnest, to give thought to the fact that one might actually enjoy things, have opinions. It was the time I started to let go of irony, bit by bit.
> It was the time you started to own yourself.
Maybe. Maybe not. I'm still working on that one. It feels like an ongoing struggle.
> What's the old saw? You'll finally perfect it six months after death?
I think that was about when men leave puberty.
> Let's talk about TIASAP.
No more, please.
> Let's talk about puberty.
That first exploration? I don't know if I'm ready for that, yet.
> So what **are** you talking about?
Well, I was going to talk about that liminal phase, but you seem to have other ideas.
> That just means you're unfocused.
Well, yes.
> Tell me about that place in between, then.

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Shortly after we learned that Margaras died--
> Less than twenty-four hours. That's pretty short.
--I wound up in Montreal on the first of many work 'sprints'. These were to become a common fixture for the next six years. After all, working from home only gets you so far. Gotta get together, actually learn how the others on your team work. Meet.
> You had just started at Canonical. Are you sure that wasn't the death of Matthew? Or maybe it was getting married? Creating Younes?
Matthew was sick for a while. Can we put it that way? He was struggling to hold on, his time was at an end, he was looking rather pale.
> He was fading.
Yes.
> And Madison faded in in 2014.
I was a transparent person. I was less than real. I was empty, unable to contain an identity. I was a fetch. I was held together with Blu-Tack and paperclips. I was not myself.
> Are you now?
Held together with Blu-Tack? I like to think I'm moderately better put together these days.
> No, yourself. Are you yourself yet?
Six months after death, remember?
> Fair. What did you do during your two years as a half-entity?
Failed. Like, a lot. I failed like it was my job. I failed friends when we moved to Loveland and effectively disappeared from their lives. I failed work when I burned so hard that I burnt out. I failed at communicating. I failed in a lot of ways.
I drank, too. I stopped composing.
> Was it so negative a time?
No, of course not. I'm still here. A lot of that failure was the valuable sort. I failed my years at university when I stopped composing, but found that I could still be creative when writing. I failed work when I burned out, but I also learned how to pace myself better (something I definitely hadn't learned up until that point). I learned how to talk, how to listen. At least, how to listen better, how to express myself better.
There's a lot of folks to whom I could credit those being successful failures, if there is such a thing. In a round about way, my boss from the job prior kicking my ass and making me go to therapy, even if not to the ideal therapist, set me on the path to learning how to slow down when I needed to and speed up when that was called for. Writing got me better at putting my ideas --- and, at times, emotions --- into words. Friends, countless friends, helped me become who I am.
> What's that I'm tasting? Sweet'n Low?
Is it really that saccharine to be able to look back and say that you sucked, and that you're getting better?
<div class="verse">She wears a pendant of stamped brass
Saying "Non sum qualis eram."</div>
Like, obviously, it sucks to get that regretrospect feeling of looking back and realizing that you were a terrible person, but it's also a good sign that you've improved. If you don't like who you were, at least it's good that you're not that, now.
> Unless you don't like who you are now.
That's a different problem. Same class of problem, maybe, but a different problem.

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