#empathy
Continuing from Part 1, where I explained how we came to keep Stiles, and his relationships with our other cats… Kiki loves elephants and whales, and especially loves watching them if David Attenborough is narrating. She taught Stiles this love of whales, elephants, and David Attenborough from an early age. He’s particularly fond of baby elephants. He hops up on my desk to watch the You Tube…
Today is Stiles’s 2nd birthday. I’ve tried so many different times to figure out how to tell Stiles’s story, and how much he has come to mean to me. I touched on his story a bit when I wrote about his mother, Freya, and also when I wrote about Kagetora. But those mentions barely scratch the surface. I’m going to break this up into several parts since it would make a blog post that is way too…
Q&A: Can Cats Become Affectionate?
Q: I adopted a stray cat a couple months ago. The only thing is that he doesn’t seem to like me at all: he doesn’t like it when I pet him (he attacks me most of the time), he completely ignores me (except when he’s hungry, then he will rub against my legs), and he won’t sit on my lap.
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Why You Should Never Punish a Cat
I’ve seen so many people talk about punishing their cats, and I am shocked every time. Even yelling at a cat is detrimental—they will think you are insane, and they will lose some trust in you—they don’t understand it, it means nothing to them, so you’re making your cat feel less safe without doing anything to change the behavior. Every time you yell at or punish a cat, you are putting your…
Q&A: Are Cats Underrated or Misunderstood?
Q: Are cats the most underrated pet? A: I don’t think they are underrated per se, but they are the most misunderstood pets. When you regularly hear veterinarians and other animal experts repeating myths about cats, it is a sign that those of us who have dedicated our lives studying the little floofy predators have our work cut out for us. I’ve had to correct my cats’ veterinarians on several…
They say write what you know. Dredge your life, find the appropriate pieces and graft them into your writing. If you’re lucky, no one will even notice the scars. If you’re lucky, it’ll all flow smoothly, and no one will be able to tell the fiction from the fact. That’s hardly the point, anyway. Who wants to look for scars?
They’re wrong, though. It’s not about writing what you know. It’s about writing what you find interesting, what you can use as fuel to throw into that big old ugly furnace that you call an imagination. It’s about what’s coal and what’s paper, what will sustain you and what will just give you a momentary flare. There’s overlap, of course. What you know is what you’re interested in, by and large. It’s just not that simple.
I don’t write from a Dominant’s perspective a whole lot of the time. I’m writing a little more, lately, perhaps, but by and large I’m almost entirely focused on the other half of the D/s divide. I’m focusing on her, on you, because that’s what I’m interested in. I’m selfish; the things that I write aren’t for anyone, in particular, and I’m by no means about to start cowing to any demands to the contrary. The thing is, my mind isn’t all that interesting to me. Not the way it is, anyway, not in the way I see it as it works, here and now.
The parts of it that interest me are the mechanical functions of it. What it’s capable of, rather than what it is, per say. That’s where the lens comes in. I call it a lens because I’m a sucker for a metaphor, but what I’m really talking about is empathy. I don’t think I’m especially empathetic, at least in its usual use, although that certainly doesn’t mean I’m not capable of care, and strong emotion.
No, what I mean is that I’m in the possession of the ability to place myself within another’s shoes, and analyse things from that perspective. That’s the good stuff, that’s what interests me. It’s the reason I write from her view for the most part. It’s why I focus on her feelings,her sensations, rather than my own. I already know mine. I’ve got intimate experience of them. I’d almost go as far as to say that they bore me, but that’s not really the truth. The fact is that they’re there, and they’re fine. But they’re not interesting. They’re a by-product of what really fascinates.
So what does this mean?
That I’ll carry on the way I have, I’d imagine. I’m having a lot of fun getting into that imaginary she’s head, and if I’m lucky some of that fun is coming through in the writing. And, as I spend more time there, figuring it all out, I’m getting some knowledge. Little bits here and there. Seeing what resonates, what falls flat. It’s an ongoing experiment, these little bits of writing, but the fact I’m getting more positive results than negatives is more than enough reason to keep on testing.
The fact is I’m discovering a lot of things, just through the writing of them. Ideas that were half formed crystalise on the page, and new ones sprout from the words as they settle. I’m getting a whole load of understanding, building on a base that was already pretty well established.
So maybe they were right. You do write what you know. It’s just that you don’t really know it until it’s left your head.
gffa:
gffa:
One of my favorite underutilized bits of Star Wars worldbuilding is how feelings literally soak into the physical world around you, if you’re Force-sensitive.
Sometimes in really awful ways–Maul’s rage is still radiating off the walls in the Theed hangar 30 years later, because nobody goes in there to put new feelings into the walls, Luke can still feel Rey’s imprint on the meditation stone on Ahch-To after she leaves, Anakin and Ahsoka can still hear the screams of the dying in the Jedi hangar after the bombing–but that would also be there in good ways.
Imagine walking into the Room of a Thousand Fountains where you touch a stone bench where Master Yoda was just meditating on, you’re not even psychometric, you can just feel the warmth and calm he left behind while he sat there. Imagine walking into the the Temple gardens where a Jedi Master was watering their space azalea bushes and you can feel their contentment radiating off the walls. Imagine walking into the refectory and feeling last week’s younglings class’ excitement over their upcoming field trip, how golden and glowing it is in the Force. Imagine walking into the Jedi Temple aviary, where they keep their pet birds, hearing the gentle cooing of the convors, but also feeling the connection all the Jedi before you have had with these animals, the joy that’s been permeated into the floor and walls with how much they’ve loved their time spent there.
Imagine how being a psychic space wizard that can soak feelings into the world around you would change how you interact with that physical world. Imagine how giving a river stone isn’t just giving a neat rock, but giving someone the ability to hold affection and care literally right there in your hand, because you focused on putting all those feelings into the rock beforehand. Imagine how art performances would change, if you’re psychic and your audience is psychic, how you can literally hand them feelings or sit them on a cushion that you put a specific feeling into it, when you get to the climatic part of your play.
Imagine how being able to put feelings into physical objects and then hand them to someone would play out!!!!Imagine how long it would take for that feeling to leave, and imagine how it would feel when Obi-Wan realizes he can no longer sense his Master’s presence on the teapot or his cloak
That’s the sad shit I’m talking about, yes! I mean, I love celebration of how this would change Jedi art classes and stuff, but also think about Yoda on Dagobah where he wraps up every night in Qui-Gon’s cloak that he uses as a blanket, using the warmth of Qui-Gon’s feelings as a comfort after everything he’d lost, until his own feelings soak into the blanket and he can no longer feel Qui-Gon’s warmth, only his own sadness.
This about the pot that Obi-Wan made that Yoda took with him to Dagobah, the one he had to shatter to protect himself from a probe droid, was it easier or harder to let it go, knowing that only a few faint traces of bb!Obi-Wan’s warm and golden concentration that were baked into the pot were left? That it was mostly only Yoda’s own loss?
He’s a Jedi Master, he lets these feelings go, he doesn’t let them bite into his heart, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel them in the first place, it doesn’t mean he isn’t mindful of them, acknowledging them and then letting them go, but they still brush a fine mist of his sadness over the pot, layer after layer after layer until there’s so little of the grandkids left in his things.
Or think about Obi-Wan with Anakin’s lightsaber, that he doesn’t have to be psychometric to feel the sheer intensity of what Anakin poured into both the crystal and the metal of the saber, the hate and rage and pain and suffering as he killed the younglings, as he helped kill Mace Windu, as he killed everyone in his path, all while knowing it was wrong, but refusing to admit it, refusing to turn back, all while he attacked Padme, all while he attacked Obi-Wan, the people he loved most, Anakin was holding that saber while he did all that, every feeling is just soaked into that saber. Every time Obi-Wan picks it up, of course he feels those traces and they’re so powerfully intense, how long would it take for that to dissipate, especially with his own sadness piled on top of it, each time it was held in his hand?
Just imagine how careful Jedi have to be about the feelings they project out into the Force because that shit doesn’t just go out into the ether!!! That stuff stays in the walls and gets screamed back into your face, not just through the Force echoing it back at you but ALSO that the WALLS AND FLOOR AND CHAIR YOU’RE SITTING ON are all soaked with whatever feeling you’re leaking out.
Do you want that feeling to be screaming anger or a gentle calm?
ALTWe all love tea. But have you ever appreciated your teacup?
This is a poem where your teacup complaints about you.
Thecomplaints are funny and it would be better not to read it while drinking the tea. Because laughing while reading the poem might increase the anger of your teacup.
Your teacup is angry at you and has expressed his anger through this poem. I think you must read it otherwise your teacup might rebel against you!
My thoughts go out to the families who have lost somebody during the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. I hope you can find peace.
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