who decides what’s nice

#121 awareness of self & others , repair vs create

Morning you,

Now typing… during breakfast instead of my usual post-dinner. While reviewing a video I made yesterday, Lunarian told me it is the kind of company one might want for a Sunday breakfast, otherwise alone.

Emergency making

It has been longer than i can remember, how long i have stopped making beakies. I couldn’t will myself to want something someone new. There was already too much new. Until recently.

Elsie was against the wall. I picked her up gently, she refused, with her head between bags of donated scraps, and the piles of explorations, I nudged her a little, coaxed her, and she did not respond. I yanked. In my hands was a listless body, big and soft, ELSIEEEEEEEEEE! Oh no and her head dangling.

Uh-oh. Medic!

We need a medic. I live close to a hospital, but I doubt hey would admit her even though my medicare card has no photos. Somehow i don’t think they would recognise her as human.

I am the closest thing to a beaky medic. I am the only thing actually.

Holding her broken neck, I examined her for protruding wires, where skin did not adequately cover her bones, sort of slide round and shrinking away.

That is because she was constructed this way, with highly flexible 2 way stretchy fabric and also fabric on bias are twisted around her, head, neck and body.

Strength is weakness is strength

She is flexible, she is flexibility. I did it that way, for her long slender goose neck literally, the fabric in the area was only very lightly attached with clusters of 2-3 stitches. One of the clusters broke upon years of movement, her curiosity.

Different paths to the same place

If i were to redo what was done. She might break again, same way, same place or a different place different way. I had to do something different. I decided to embed her wires deeper, doubled up that thread to lower risk of a single thread breaking. But kept the radius of the stitches the same.

What afforded her the flexibility was her weakness. Her strength was also a weakness a vulnerability. So I am just strengthening the thread, like levelling up her skill, without changing who she is, or needing her to be someone else.

After the surgery, she has been sitting by the window, quiet, just like Elsie I know, watchful, curious, sticking her neck into everything.

Better knowing what made me worse

My health started improving a lot this year, the sensory problems are still all there, at least i know the causes of my pain. And i can manage them, mostly. I’m able to sit near the window in the day, and my eyes can tolerate artificial light long enough to take photos and capture videos again.

Finally I’ve come to face the lot of half made beaks. None unkind, coz they have no face.

Then lunarian picked a lump of bear and questioned me, why are they not finished. I swallowed and cringed and rolled my eyes left and right up and down and I croaked, ‘because it doesn’t feel right.’

What is right? Who decides?

Perhaps i meant ‘not right for me’, like this person is a fine person as far as i can tell in a date, but not for me thank you bye.

Unlike humans, with creations, i have to cast them in the shape of my bias, to how i want them to be, at least my current view of the world.

Give them legs, let them run

I’ve always struggled. I couldn’t decide the poses i want beakies to be in, what if they want to raise their right hand the next moment, and keep their hands on their lap next. I’ve always made their limbs swivel, the mighty folks especially. And with the babimals, whose limbs are so short they move the way doorknobs do, swivel, and not even all the way. But they were given agency.

Perhaps i made them in a time shortly out of a period i felt agency has been taken from me. I gave them what I didn’t have. Now that I do, and i feel it, and believe it, some beakies are not swivelling. They remain flexible, but more still. Because they already know that they could, if they wanted to, be anything.

And they might choose to sit

This moment they choose stillness. Breathe out, and know who they are on the inside, and that it’s really important to not snap their necks.

Me too. You too. Protect that neck of yours. Keep sticking them out like else though.

Wishing you a fresh Spring or Autumn wherever you are. Marn