Lunation

Had an amusing dream last week, where a bunch of animal folk and I were hiking in the mountains. We reached a gigantic lake, and a pack of wolves lived in the water with a grizzly bear. Apparently water was their true habitat. Despite the fur, they were aquatic mammals. We watched as they circled on the lake like ducks, and we tossed them crumbs. The wolves howled on the hour as if they contained an internal alarm clock. Suddenly I grabbed Sevian by the scruff and tossed him into the lake. I joined him, and told him to look up. Above us on a cliff's edge was a mountain lion.

So, this afternoon's dream:

My parents and I purchased a cute, smaller house. We had three cats, two that were our old cats Pye and Peeper, and the other was a gorgeous long hair, though instead of fur it had feathers. Turkey feathers, eagle feathers, peacock and peahen feathers, blackbird feathers, and goose feathers. I marveled at its coat, until it turned its face to me. It had an ugly pushed-in pug face. Miffed, I flopped down in the most comfortable chair in front of my TV. I turned on a channel showing my favorite cartoons of all time, Loony Toons' Merry Melodies from the '40s and '50s. The episodes all had the theme of Hitler being turned into a girl(!). Hilarity ensued, and I laughed hard until I woke up.

---

Being an animal person is improbably rare. It saddens me. A dying breed. I never used to think so; I'm normally optimistic about such things, making others feel at ease and positive about the existence of the phenomenon.

No, not physical shape-shifters or "therians". The shared mental/spiritual/emotional shifters, animal folk. Looks like roleplaying to some, and if you want to look at it that way that's fine. If it makes you uncomfortable because it seems too much like a posession or an invocation, that's fine too. But to think in arrogance that you're somehow more 'advanced' or 'normal' or 'better than' because you don't believe in or have the desire to shift among those who also shift, well... heh, I know, it really shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter what my peers, my friends, or my pack thinks.

So why does it leave me with this pit in my stomach?

For 22 years prior to getting a computer I was completely alone in my animalness, and I was happy. Then I met my first pack in Boulder through LARPing, which led to serious spiritual talk outside of gaming, which led to admitting our animal selves to one another. The pack dissolved beneath its own emotional incest. At 23 I got a computer, and I joined alt.horror.werewolves. I leaped into that, happy to find older animal people with full lives and a center. Over the years I became used to it -- used to the notion of having a pack, both locally and an extended 'cyberpack'. I forgot what it was like before that, what I was like before that.

It spoiled me. I sacrificed the passion of my conviction, my roots, and I still do in the face of those with conflicting thoughts or sheer dismissal. Those who I respect, or admire, who are animal people.

Which brings me back to being one of the last of the shifting kind. I am forever grateful for those of you I've found, and hold dear. Yes, there are still a pawful of us, and I can only hope there will always be. This is probably how it always was: there were never hundreds or thousands of were-creatures roaming the world. There were very few. It was very secretive.

Now I know why.

Took a much needed nap today and awoke from a powerful, vivid dream:

It was Christmas and I was at a family reunion. Cyberwolf was my brother, my deadbeat uncle was there, my young womanizing cousin, my Mom, and Lily Tomlin was my aunt (!).

The atmosphere was comforting, except for my deadbeat uncle. We knew he would have a heart attack soon because of his weight and his temper. He had difficulty speaking because of a "worm" in his neck (!).

It was snowing heavily outside, and the snow on the ground was deep. I made some nutmeg tea and ate some Christmas cookies while a cartoon about Rudolph played on the TV.

Some packages were delivered by sleigh to the house, and Cyberwolf recieved two packages sent post-dated from Reemul. One was a pretty sparkling gold necklace with an odd-shaped key attached to it. The other was a thick, locked and hinged book. I told Cyber to use the key to unlock the book. He did so, and we opened the book together.

Suddenly I was alone in a big, cozy bedroom reading the book by candlelight. It was a memoir of sorts, detailing everything in his life; his observations, his feelings, and wonderful illustrations. Photos as well.

It was captivating. Then I felt a pang of shame as I read an entry that I remember word for word: "I fought all of my life, but with no one to fight for I couldn't hold on." I cried, shaken, cursing myself for being gay and wishing I'd slept with him, given myself to him, to keep him here.