The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

I've traveled well. I look to the sky and visit the moons and planets. I spent awhile on Pluto and did some close orbits around Jupiter, but I avert my gaze from Venus.

I've dropped to part its thick clouds with my hands. I was burned. I waited, re-ascended, reached out again and was burned again. We repeated this with a celestial regularity. I had to patch my suit. Scars accumulated. The last two stretches failed to yield the stink of burning flesh but a void and a word from a fellow drifting astronaut or two. But the damage is/was there.

I accumulate survey data indirectly, listening patiently to spacer yarns regarding the surface: molten lead or jungle paradise.

Little has happened since. Wheels turn within wheels. A stable but distant orbit. A rendezvous fails to line up. The planet spins beneath me.

"What makes you tick? What makes your world turn? What drives you?"

If I was a plush toy, I'd be stuffed with projects. Vast and intricate, spanning years. Five year plans. Novels. RPG books. Hand-drawn maps. Philosophical questions. Having completed a student election and my degrees as well as finding something resembling a theological conclusion in the last year, I must say that I'm a little alarmed at the rewards of closure. These include: not having a project. And sometimes praise that sounds wrong. Or steely silences. Kind of like cutting through the floor you're standing on, then getting a medal.


"What gods do you worship?"

I kneel at the altar of.... Where'd it go? Is it in the storage room? Crap, better find it. I grew up in the United Church, looked for theological answers elsewhere ('cause a child sure isn't going to find supernatural answers in liberal Christianity) and scared the living shit out of myself. The fear's still there but the answers were never around.

I want something to believe in and I may have just found a glimmer of it in COPE. That's a first. There must be a dark-robed figure that preys on the blood of children somewhere in there, but until then, I might just be happy. I hope I can be.


"What do you care about? What makes you lie awake at night?"

There's this theory that people spend their lives seeking what they lacked in adolescence. I was isolated and now I look for a social life. I think I found one.

I worry about the future: what it means, sorrows over the horizon; mine, the world's.

I wonder if I'm ever going to find something that feels right. Or maybe I'm going in the wrong direction.


"Do you run on gas, or love or hate or ambition?"

Plans. Camaraderie. Searching. Imagination. Dread.


"If an actor plays you, what is their motivation?"

You must remodel the world. You know that California could make an excellent walk-in closet. You are also moderately but comprehensively frustrated.


"Who are you?

A friend. A confidante. A counselor. An artist. A writer. A politics fan. A hobbit. A social scientist... sort of. A stander in the shadow af psychiatry. Not quite a criminal mastermind. A dog person. Other things.


"What are you?"

An ape that can do mental long division and draw.