Author: Giggleklutz

Gamer mom to the fabulous Honeyshuckleex and Sackbotbbq. Keeper of the blog. Lover of puzzle games of many types. Keep up with our adventures on our podcast: Collab Not Multiplayer.

Fledgling

The itching and resulting scratching, maddening
blaze in two patches on my back
two, one on each side of my spine

Inverted teardrops
Blood colored and raw

The itching and scratch fighting continue.
Mind recoils at the signs of impending transformation.

Pain, release of pressure
a small birth of mirrored twins

Returning to my true form.
Have been called an angel (a daemon)
Fae is a more welcoming philosophy, though a more isolated one.
What do you call a person (if that’s what I am) with wings?
Feathered wings of mottled pigeon grey
Flecked with iridescent in the right light
Immaterial and solidly with purpose simultaneously

Does this being, this becoming portend some greater purpose?
Do I have to choose sides, loyalties again?
If so, this time I choose me
To fill my own cup
Take my own space
If my wings bother you, there is an exit in the back.

No one is asking you to bear witness.
I am my own witness.
My wings are what they are
no opinion will change or invalidate what is.

Your blessings and curses just noise
deflected easily with a swish of motion
a feather may brush your face like a kiss.

Becoming is all I have room for
Becoming is all that I am
All that I will be

And before you tell me what you see
what you want,
what you know

Let me just be.
I am almost ready to fly.

Sauce Saturday: FlOw

FlOw is a video game where you play as basically a microscopic water creature. Info about the game and it’s history here. It is a game, an art piece, and an experience.

Image is a screen capture from the game FlOw. Image is white microscopic creatures swimming through a dark space. Larger white creature blurry in the background.
Beautiful game in visuals and sound. Note: the creature in the background is on another level.

You move through your two dimensional playing area as a microscopic water creature. You eat and defend yourself and grow and evolve. The mechanic that really changed the way I relate to my thinking though, was the change in dimension. The level up. There is a spot in each level where if you touch it you will jump dimensions in scope and scale. (You will hang out with bigger or smaller creatures.) The game will still show the other levels very subtly in the fore and background.

Years after playing this game I found myself thinking about how our lives have different dimensions, and the concerns and details of each don’t necessarily overlap, so you aren’t always aware of how each effects the life as a whole. Visualizing changing the scope and scale of my observance, like the mechanic of this game really helped me find my own tools for checking in with my big picture.

I started realizing I concern myself a lot with things that just don’t matter on other scales, both too large and too small. For example, the checker at the grocery store doesn’t need to know anything about my thought experiments on the concept of self, nor my opinions the differences in the seasons of The Witcher. In the now of buying my groceries we gotta keep it simple and in the most common language. Though they may also be Witcher fans.

I just use small talk as a neutral example. I use this concept of adjusting scope and scale when I am caught in a feeling also. If I feel stuck, I try to adjust the scope and scale of my thinking. How long are the effects of whatever is bothering me going to last? Which parts of my life are affected? I can make choices without putting a hierarchy on facts over feelings. I find ways to deal with facts including my feelings. I can look out for myself and my goals, by adjusting my scope and scale.

Embrace Meh

In getting to a better understanding of the shared reality, the closer and also the more distant you look the more you can’t really define anything in life via a binary.

What about good and bad? Well first of all most things are neutral or meh. Most things are just fun or functional or useful or not. The lines between them are often labeled as a moral division, but usually upon closer inspection they are a cultural distinction or just an opinion. Very few things in life really cross the line to where they need a moral distinction, and those distinctions are going to vary based on those exact cultural influences.

What about night and day? That seems pretty binary, right? That doesn’t take into account twilight. Or leaving Earth entirely. Once you are in space the notion of night and day is one that no longer has to apply to you. So even night and day are less of a binary than they seem. Hmmm.

I was raised in a Christian society where things were explained to me as right or wrong. Everything went into one box or the other and as I grew and changed my thinking some things would move from one box to the other. Now I am trying to change my thinking again to remove the boxes entirely, unravel the binaries where I find them. Usually while I do this I find that the binaries only pointed out differences that didn’t matter to me anyway. They were arbitrary at best and hurtful at worst. I don’t need them anymore.

I embrace meh instead. Meh is the idea that most things in life just are. Most people in life are just doing their thing, they don’t have an agenda, they are not trying to change the world. Some are of course, but most are not. It’s not a morality thing at all. It is ok to just live your life.

I do not deny that there is real good and evil in the world. Contrary to what my cultural upbringing taught me most things do not fall into those categories, I don’t need to search for the right thing to do, or look for the evil in things I don’t like. Most of the time there is no right thing to do, just options, and most times my dislikes are a matter of opinion. Applying morality is inappropriate.

As I have started this work on myself, I have so much less stress. My feelings run away from me less. I spend less time defensive, less time judgemental. I create a safer space for my own odd existence. I also found counterintuitively, that I have more space for doing good, validating the effects of evil so I can stop contributing to it, and just peace. Once I stopped looking for a judgement that wasn’t there I got to use my personal judgement to decide where I want to put my support and energy, and where I wanted to draw my boundaries. Meh has been more peaceful than I imagined life could be.