Saturday, morning. Strange dream: fieldwork in unfamiliar place, stumble across carven stone – obviously fragment of something larger, with low reliefs (animal figures, floral motifs – palm fronds?) impossibly on all sides. Lifting the stone I feel unusually strong. Movements carefree, uncharacteristically limber, expansive, even Whitmanesque. Lean against doorframe (where?) watching the world go by, then approached by a lovestruck boy. Regards me earnestly: I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you.
Meaning of dream: some combination of relational properties arising from my interaction with the stone (I have been one-handedly tossing it up in the air & catching it like a ball) constrained my behaviour in such a way that the lovestruck boy misconstrued their cumulative effect as “beauty”. E.g., the mysterious lightness of the stone may have caused me to behave as if I was physically strong, or carrying it in public may have caused me to behave as if I was confident in my personal eccentricities, &c.
Moral evaluation: the boy was deceived.
Woke guilty. Epsom salts, tea. Nervous aversion to textiles & softness – scraped tablecloth with fingernail at breakfast. Nausea. Consulted ethnological notes, cave art mimeographs. The point is to identify general, transhistorical pattern in therianthropic practices. Wrote diary waiting for train. Reflected on necessity of consolidating all aspects of thought & experience into integrated whole for staying on top of things – must not fall out of good habits.
◆
Saturday, afternoon. Tired & demoralised. Checked in early – rooms inevitably mixed up. Two single beds & disagreeable smell. Dismal view of courtyard. Defunct water feature. Consulted notes – surge of confidence in hypothesis & ethnology in general. Sense I am actually at work & in my element & that I should be doing this. Went down into lobby, submitted ticket, received wristband (weak emic signifier) & programme (“conbook”) – this document would really reward closer analysis. Then waited for informants.
Informants mostly young, mostly male, varied backgrounds – some displaying ceremonial accoutrements (otic & caudal prostheses, varicoloured). Impression of community, many small reunions. First contact difficult to describe. I honestly still do not know how I feel about these people. Approached with openness, curiosity, transparent motivations – professorial affect. Most rather receptive, even welcoming – some reserved. Deflated by minor, incidental rejections. Fear perhaps I am old.
Enquiry about totem objects & images fruitful for establishing rapport. Totemic representations (“‘sonas”) are abundant (plush effigies, artworks, accessories). “‘Sona” is a contraction of “fursona”, a pun on persona, whence “person”, but literally (Latin) “theatrical mask”. Considered extreme prevalence of paronomasia in furry sociolect. Does logic of semantic superposition (pun) reflect logic of therianthropy (i.e., superposition of human & animal forms)? “Fursona/persona” case particularly interesting – question of whether animal or human is seen as logically prior (“persona” implies the human substratum is always already a kind of animal costume). Asked prospective informant (pink otter) if one’s fursona could be human. Conversation ended. Taboo violation? Regret loss of prospective informant.
Met Stephanie, first real informant. Asked about totem (Arctic fox named “Trinket”). Effusive if not eloquent – many pictures on phone. Discussed genealogy of past totems (diverse species). Then asked about life outside community. She is a veterinary nurse in Newcastle – intriguing! Asked about connection between professional & therianthropic practices:
| S: | ‘There’s no connection, really. Except I’ve always loved animals.’ |
| R.S: | ‘What do you love about animals?’ |
| S: | ‘I’m… not sure exactly. It’s hard to say.’ |
| R.S: | ‘But you’ve always felt some kind of attraction?’ |
| S: | ‘Yeah! Or at least since I was eight or nine. I remember watching Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets. Have you seen it? Well, there’s this scene where Hermione drinks a Polyjuice Potion attempting to disguise herself as another student [lengthy digression on mechanics of “Polyjuice Potion” here omitted] but accidentally ends up disguising herself as a cat, & the others find her hiding in a bathroom stall, & there’s like a few frames where you get to see her, I guess, anthro-feline transformation… have you really not seen this movie? One sec [Stephanie plays the clip on her “YouTube”]. See what I mean? Like, why does the shot cut away so quickly? & why does she look so bashful? Like, at the time, me & my primary school friends were obsessed with playing pretend – we would act out all sorts of crazy fantastical stuff, & I just couldn’t understand why Hermione was so embarrassed about turning into a cat? I remember thinking, “if that happened to me, I would be so happy!” & now it can! Except, well, I’m a fox – lol.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Are you a fox in the same way Hermione is a cat?’ |
| S: | ‘Um, I don’t think so? I mean, there’s no potion involved. [She laughs]. & by the way – did you catch what Ron says at the end there? [She replays the video]. “Look at your tail.” Your tail! Why did they have to specify that she has a tail now? You can’t see one in the scene – but for some reason they decided to make a million young minds imagine what it would feel like to grow a tail… hey – actually, yeah! I guess that’s what I love about animals, pretty much. I mean – the feel of them.’ |
Thought about furryism as infantile regression. Is a child a kind of animal?
Attended morning panels. Copious notes & new terminology: “OC”, “snoot”, “twink” (see notes) – no immediate empathy or comprehension. Gloomy sense that knowledge is actually impediment to learning.
Cafeteria, lunch. Visited “Dealer’s Den” & “Artist’s Alley” (bazaar of folk art & crafts). Atmosphere manic; everything garish, even music. Near impossible to avoid brushing textiles – everywhere sense of rough, coarse hair. Flinch at slightest notion. Brief interview with vendor of amateur cartoons, “Lavandula Balefang” (totem indeterminate):
| R.S: | ‘Do you depict furry intercourse?’ |
| L.B: | ‘Anything in particular you want to see?’ |
| R.S: | ‘Verbal confirmation will be adequate.’ |
Impression that erotic material restricted to “view on request” or “afterhours events” for legal reasons, not taboo or repression. Relation between totemic “fetish” & sexual “fetishism”? Therianthrope as figure of interspecies desire & interspecies desire as symbolic displacement of all desire excluded by heteronormative binary? Should have asked about homo. sex.
Interrupted while filling out diary. New informant – mufti except headdress (black cat). Thoughts of old superstition & shuddersome antiquity – vision of Löwenmensch figurine. Removes headdress. Disturbing interaction:
| A: | ‘Professor? Fancy seeing you off the verandah!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Lewis?’ |
| A: | ‘I go by Aven these days – don’t worry, any pronouns are fine. It’s so good to see you! I hope you didn’t think AnthroCon was an anthropology conference.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Yes, indeed – no, of course not. I’m actually doing fieldwork. How are you?’ |
| A: | ‘Never better. I overheard your conversation earlier & was delighted to learn your therianthropy project is still going! My whole cohort adored your seminars – just amazing how much you can achieve with so little. That kind of work just isn’t done anymore.’ |
| R.S: | ‘I am glad you found them edifying.’ |
| A: | ‘Like stepping into Robert Graves’ drawing room!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Well – thank you. But Graves was a poet. & as you know, any rigorous comparative study of human culture must derive its deep structures from the thoroughgoing analysis of ethnographic data.’ |
| A: | ‘Which is why you are at a furry convention.’ | R.S: | ‘& yourself?’ |
| A: | ‘Because I’m a furry!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Of course. Do you mind if I ask about that?’ |
| A: | ‘Not at all.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Are there any connections between your professional & therianthropic practices?’ |
| A: | ‘Many! I’m an anthropologist.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Excuse me?’ |
| A: | ‘& by the way, it’s alright – you can just say “furry.”’ |
| R.S: | ‘You’re… an anthropologist?’ |
| A: | ‘Assistant Lecturer in Ontoanthropology! At the Other Place, for all my sins. But unless you’ve developed an unlikely sympathy for the “ontological turn” in the years since I took your module, I’m afraid you’ll find my research tedious at best.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Anthropology…’ |
| A: | ‘Are you alright, Professor?’ |
| R.S: | ‘What devil persuaded you down such a path?’ |
| A: | ‘Like I said – your work was a major inspiration.’ |
| R.S: | ‘…& the “ontological turn?”’ |
| A: | ‘Yes! Although that’s slightly different. Let me try & explain. You know the Bioanthropology building? With the entrance on Pembroke Street?’ |
| R.S: | ‘Of course.’ |
| A: | ‘I had an introductory class in there, my first Michaelmas of undergrad. At that time, I was – & you might even remember this – barely functional: poorly socialised, impostor syndromed, closeted, undiagnosed, unmedicated, the full package. & there was something about the door of that building that filled me with dread – its gratuitous, imposing proportions, perhaps, or sinister excess of ornamentation, hoary age, patriarchal authority… or whatever. In any case, although the time of my class was approaching, I simply couldn’t bring myself to grasp the handle & go inside. I kept waiting for somebody else to enter or exit so I could slip after them, but naturally, nobody did. Soon enough it was clear that I would be late, which made me even more anxious. So I just kept waiting – rooted to the spot outside that door. At some point I began to feel as if I had to make a choice. I began to feel this choice was absolutely necessary & that it would define the trajectory of my entire life. Somehow I knew with total certitude that turning around & walking away would entail a complete renunciation not only of my degree but of some bespoke & exceptional future which I could even then feel swelling & budding & bubbling in the dark possibility space beyond that terrible door. I could not bring myself to go inside. I could not bring myself to leave. I could only watch dumbly as my two fates teetered on the scales of Anubis. Then a honeybee started hovering by the doorhandle. I struggle to articulate this even to myself, but somehow, in my state of extremity, this incidental detail – this one tiny bee – grew to encompass my entire perceptual field. For a few seconds – which felt like a few hours – I could do nothing but trace its movements, nonchalantly adept & clear as arithmetical notation, marvelling every time they totalled to a perfectly executed intention. This honeybee took me halfway out of my own body & I’m not sure I ever returned. I watched it alight on the old brass escutcheon. Then I watched it crawl through the keyhole. & I knew then & there I had the power to follow it – because, in crawling through the keyhole, the honeybee had taught me this power. So I opened the door & followed it into my future. Every time I had a doubt, I thought about that honeybee. & eventually I understood that a single world – however deep its structure – was wholly insufficient to account for the infinitely complicated adventures, phenomena, accidents, occurrences, & carnivals of Life. That despite our shared environment, myself & the honeybee inhabited vastly different worlds, & that, for a fleeting moment, those worlds had made contact. I think anthropology can say something about this kind of contact – even if it means rethinking the meaning of “Anthropos” in strange & radical ways. So that’s the connection. Of course, you will dismiss this as a newfangled flavour of essentialism, which it isn’t – or, more likely, refer me to your old friends Bicorp Man & the bee-headed shaman of Tassili cave.’ |
| R.S: | ‘If I may – the identification of that petroglyph is quite vigorously debated’. |
| A: | ‘Then I hope you’ve corrected your old handouts & slides.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Right. Yes. The debate was less vigorous, then.’ |
| A: | ‘I’m sure.’ |
| R.S: | ‘You know, this is all rather a lot to take in.’ |
| A: | ‘Yup.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Can I ask one final question?’ |
| A: | ‘Fire away.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Why a black cat?’ |
| A: | ‘Ah, Professor! Do you like it? My partner is really a generational talent. You’ve probably already seen a few of his pieces floating around the con – not to mention the grand prize of the charity raffle! Generic by design, but a masterpiece nonetheless. If you’re coming to the party tonight or the rave tomorrow, I’d be glad to introduce you – a spot of specialist insight into the technicity of our therianthropic practices would doubtless exalt your investigation!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Thank you, Lewis. Aven. I have never… it was nice to see you again.’ |
| A: | ‘Meow meow meow!’ |
Replaces headdress. Offers hand. Handshake. Static shock. Charge buildup from synthetic fur? Cold spasm… O god – like actually touching headdress!!!
Finished diary, recording encounter in mixed bewilderment, embarrassment & inferiority. Tormented by own fraudulence & ineptitude & other strange feelings. Of all questions, one inexplicably insistent: why not honeybee totem? Why so few invertebrate “‘sonas” in general? Probably matter of texture (c.f., Stephanie’s stress on “feeling”). Bees fuzzy but wrong scale for tactile interaction? (Dread to think about tarantulas, &c). Perhaps superposition merely unaccommodated by dominant sociolect? Paronomasia for theoretical invertebrate therianthrope: carapaçade? Must review Tassili petroglyph slides. Will attend afternoon panels & then retire. Did I really turn former student into furry?
Moral evaluation: not enough time & I am wasting it.
◆
Saturday, evening. Low spirits. Sleeplessness & agitation. Quinine, magnesium, valerian. Typical quinine headache – increasingly unconvinced of efficacy against nocturnal cramp. Feeling of congestion between brain & optic nerve – buzzing cloud of interlaced imagery washing over mind in regular pulses. Sense of watching wave troughs lunging from below, or rhythmically contracting muscles used for focusing vision while feverish. Disturbed by spare bed but scared to rearrange furniture (would disrupt other guests & inconvenience staff).
Sat in armchair beside window. Mental fogginess. Leafed through notes, not reading but merely looking at words. Distracted by sounds of party & intensification of disagreeable odour wafting from courtyard… unmistakeably MARIJUANA. Strong memory of Marrakech souks & ambivalent associations – those days hardly seem to concern me now. Shut window but still pervasive. Probably drawn through ventilation.
Attempted sleep (bed furthest from window). Disgusted by unfamiliar bedclothes; took them all off & lay on bare mattress using overcoat as cover. Woefully underprepared for this & troubled with excessive thinking – frustratingly incapable of integrating impressions of the day. Party noises faint but continuous: music, laughter, chattering, &c. Complex guilty feelings & impulse toward self-reprimand – should be out collecting data, &c.
Retrieved laptop computer & hunted for Internet code (laminated card on coffee table). Opened “YouTube”, found Stephanie’s video: “Hermione drank the potion & turned into a cat man.” Watched again. Uncomfortable sense of voyeurism now, in solitary darkness. Actors so young – do they know they are acting? Can they really have known? Cannot look away. Major discovery at 0:35 – tip of Hermione’s tail clearly visible in bottom right-hand corner of frame! Stephanie specifically said you can’t see tail… but she was wrong. Presumably she has watched this scene hundreds of times & yet every time failed to notice the tail. How is this possible – to construct entire identity around one single idée fixe & dedicate entire life to it & yet nonetheless completely miss the obvious?
Oppressed by sudden ache of melancholy. Stopped video & searched for old favourite: Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune. Quiet & tinny from laptop speaker. Strain to hear – struggle for beauty somehow very moving. Sound of flute so frail & so far away. Beauty so tenuous & vulnerable & perhaps it always is like this. Sank into nostalgia, gently sobbing about small lost things. Tears comforting, vacuous, warm – could stop at any moment if I wanted but did not. Limerence over forgotten childhood & also counterfactual childhoods filled with experiences I cannot name but will have never had. Feeling I would not really have been proud of what I have become. What does it feel like to dissolve into brightness? Is there passive ecstasy or caressing without bodies? Compassion, pure compassion, like cool breeze or sunny meadow. At its worst the world enfolds us. Tenderness belongs to the world.
Thought about lovestruck boy. Thought about meeting with Aven. Thought about half-abandoned fancies & Prélude which doesn’t lead anywhere & concludes forever waiting…
Aimai-je un rêve?
Impure thoughts & temptation to make beast with one back.
Moral evaluation: –––––––
Attempted sleep again. Heartbeat resonant through cavernous interior of mattress (one ear pressed against its surface) like ticking of clocks underwater. Visions of dark cathedral with columns made of bedsprings & something ferreting in silken darkness.
Rise & return computer. Hesitated by window. Sense of light behind drawn blinds, limning interstices with faint glow. Party sounds like jungle in dream. Urge to peek outside:
Movement in courtyard. Two silhouettes. Backlit by row of ground floor windows like ancient bonfires. Therianthropes. Utterly in thrall to their transformations. Prancing & frisking & capering in orgiastic dance; in deadly, sensuous bacchanal out of time. One distinctly feline – glossy black fur & flowing black tail. Feline even in posture, horribly lithe & supple despite bipedalism. Queasy feeling & tension in larynx. Fighting or playing? Fascination. Other half-obscured by fountain – discernible only in darting flashes. Totem indeterminate. Evidently another therianthrope… but something wrong. Surely it cannot be so tall? Towering over feline by three/four ft. – & fearfully thin; improbably so for a costume, assuming average proportions of wearer. Head, briefly lowered against windowlight, reveals only beastly narrow snout & jaws lasciviously agape – arm raised, extends to horrible length; sinewy muscles flexing & shifting beneath haze of swart hair, & fingers – tendinous & hideously taloned – grasping end of long, leathern cord… no, long, leathern leash. Trailing across courtyard. Connecting to collar of catlike figure. Flicks & twitches – wielder part Anubis, part infernal picador – black cat leaps & whirls & feints in… pain? Perverse abandon? In windowlight, I notice it too grasps the handle of a leash. It too taunts & tugs the throat of its tormentor & tethered thus they spin & dance to carnal yelps & howls of pagan revelry…
Retreat from window – & from sudden gleam of eyeshine.
Thoughts preoccupied with passage from Eiseley: ‘it is as if at our backs, masked and demonic, moved the trickster as I have seen his role performed among the remnant of a savage people long ago […] this creature never laughed; he never made a sound. Painted in black, he followed silently behind the officiating priest, mimicking, with the added flourish of a little whip, the gestures of the devout one. His timed & stylised posturings conveyed a derision infinitely more formidable than actual laughter.’
Feelings & impressions impossible to record.
◆
Sunday, afternoon. Woke with feeling of having overslept.
Horrible realisation of having overslept.
Hastily tidied tumbled heap of bedclothes, performed ablutions, ran downstairs. Missed morning activities & presentations – intense regret.
Informants wave from cafeteria. Compose myself & greet them. Aven, Stephanie, pink otter, & others sitting on padded bench behind tables pushed together. Breakfast foods, though past lunchtime. Dreamy, bohemian dishevelment. Passing around pungent jar & openly pawing contents into grinders. Immediate impression: photograph of the great Malinowski during ethnographic expedition to Kiriwina. Sitting amidst line of Trobrianders cradling shiny gourds & inserting limesticks (for chewing betel nut); linen suit ghostly against bare dark skin of man beside him, the sorcerer Togugu’a, looking solemn with downcast eyes while the ethnographer (posed in perfect three-quarter profile) fondles whalebone baton, wryly smiling…
Secondary impression: I am a stupid ridiculous old fool.
Accept invitation to sit – informants all shuffle along bench. Hailed by Aven:
| A: | ‘We missed you last night, Professor!’ ’ |
| R.S: | ‘Yes – likewise. My apologies. I’m afraid I was somewhat indisposed.’ |
| A: | ‘I told my partner about your research – he was really looking forward to meeting you! I hope there’ll be another opportunity tonight… though right now, I’m afraid he’s also “somewhat indisposed” – poor devil.’ |
Aven mimes intoxication. Groaning & laughter from other party survivors. Conceal awkwardness with sympathetic expression. Did I dream glimpse of eyeshine – indeed, how could effect be achieved? Not sure what or how much they know or have been told. Avoiding eye contact. Notice design on Aven’s crumpled t-shirt (pyjamas?). Furry character – golden retriever totem? – with crossed arms & pixellated sunglasses, endorsing motto in bold lettering:
“I AM CRINGE BUT I AM FREE.”
Epiphany. Titular faun of Debussy’s Prélude – or Mallarmé’s original poem? – marks exact point where “therianthrope” becomes “furry”. Faun as first furry? Relinquishing reality in favour of symbol & daydream, faun discovers sincerity through artifice. Embraces paradox & impossibility & vulgarity of therianthropic condition – its “unnatural” body, passions, senses, &c. – without essentialism or mytho-religious pretension. Just as informants inhabit gaudy cartoonlike “fursonas” without irony or cynicism: statement of faith in unreality. Cringe but free. Honest in delusion & accepted into honest delusion – participants in wonderful, mutual dream. Therianthropy basic condition of all human animals. We have never been “human”. No essence – only hybrid of angel & ape. Transformation not so fundamental as contact between worlds – between incommensurable worlds – & sincerity as technology of contact?
Thoughts interrupted by indeterminate herbivore:
| I.H: | ‘Excuse me – are you Professor Sir Rackstraw Spottiswoode PhD, FRAI, FSA?’ |
| R.S: | ‘Well – those are my postnominals. Have we been introduced?’ |
| I.H: | ‘No, but I heard the announcement. Congratulations, Professor!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Announcement?’ |
| I.H: | ‘Yes! |
| R.S: | ‘For what?’ |
| I.H: | ‘For winning the grand prize in the charity raffle, of course!’ |
| R.S: | ‘I’m sorry?’ |
| A: | ‘Professor! Have you seriously not heard?’ |
| I.H: | ‘You know – the charity raffle?’ |
| R.S: | ‘There has to be some mistake.’ |
| A: | ‘No mistake! We were all there at the draw.’ |
| R.S: | ‘But I never entered a charity raffle!’ |
| A: | ‘No – but I did.’ |
| R.S: | ‘You… did?’ |
| A: | ‘On your behalf! Thank or forgive me later.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Why would you do such a thing?’ |
| A: | ‘Please, Professor! It was for charity.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ |
| I.H: | ‘So you haven’t tried it on yet, Professor?’ |
| R.S: | ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ |
Handed conbook, open to picture of grand prize.
Full body costume, representing muscular grey wolf. Lavishly crafted. Ventilated. Adjustable. Majestic, in its way. Skin prickles. Uncontrollable itching. Sense of sprouting grizzled matted fur. Becoming entombed within a body. Boundaries blurring. Smooth skin & rough pelt. Contact so close & total you would feel it on the inside – then cease to feel it altogether, except perhaps as lycanthropic bliss; as freedom from consensus ontology…
| I.H: | ‘Beautiful, isn’t he? & no better time for a debut than tonight’s fursuit rave!’ |
| R.S: | ‘Please – excuse me for a moment.’ |
| A: | ‘Professor?’ |
| R.S: | ‘I have to go.’ |
| A: | ‘Professor.’ |
| R.S: | ‘Aven?’ |
| A: | ‘It has been an education.’ |
Leaving cafeteria, vision: honeybee crawling through keyhole of heavy, ancient door.
Exit hotel. Wander through carpark. Dim awareness of notes & belongings left in room. Wander into city. Follow canal. Sky overcast. Wander purposefully & without direction. Absentminded thoughts about structuralism: is paradox a valid structure? Absentminded & irrelevant thoughts about anthropology, or whatever I was doing before. Sense of mind as nextdoor neighbour, exchanging empty pleasantries. Lingering impression of Aven, offering farewell salute. Expression strange; crafty but caring, somehow parental – trusting me to understand.
Wander into churchyard. Old flint church – lovely flushwork. Single mourner, alone in contemplation. Look at cenotaph. Look at headstones, reading inscriptions. Patterns in names. Wander into small rose garden. Squeaky wrought iron gate. Cat looks up from low, mossy wall – basking, untroubled by drizzle. Unusually large & fine specimen. Regards me earnestly with golden eyes. Intelligence of a kind in them, beneath beast & beyond man – more like wisdom. Approaches, whiskers trembling. Do not move. Smells palm of hand, then settles, sphinx-like, back onto wall – languorous & vigilant, curiosity satisfied. Heartbeat. Lower hand. Closes eyes, sleepy & indifferent. Hesitate. Black coat silvery, as with dewdrops. Inhale, suppressing shiver. Feeling of fur between fingers. Silky, & with currents. Warm beneath & thrumming. Stroke cat. Purring. Feel cat. Smiling. Whisper: I have never seen anyone as beautiful as you.
