Monday, November 22, 2004
Fifty Words for Snow
In a lame attempt to stop obsessing about Pleiades (I will continue to call him that until he comes up with a better name) I’ve started worrying about the coming winter.
All indications are it will be a doozy. The deer are darker than usual this fall. Old times say that means a bad winter, which makes no sense as a biological adaptation. At first glance it would seem if there’s more snow than usual a lighter colored coat makes sense. Then I remembered what deer do in really bad winters. They gather in herd and trample down an area under trees with edible twigs. They stay in this ‘yard’ stripping the trees of bark and twigs in a natural pruning process. It keeps most of the deer alive and forces the tree into producing more fruit the following spring.
Deer did this in an ancient orchard nearby a few years ago during a particularly bad winter. The following spring there were apples on trees I thought were dead. We had 17 storms that winter. “Amateurish,” a Swedish friend of ours said. When I complained we couldn’t see out some of our living room windows she came back with the fact that she was entering and exiting her home via a second floor doorway. And I’d always thought Swedish cabins with the decorative tiny porches on the second level were cute. Duh!
People who live in snow belts or the mountains understand snow differently from those nearer the equator. People who live in the Arctic Circle are even more cognizant of the nuances.
Did you know the Inuit have over fifty words for snow? I thought it redundant until a winter when we had seventeen snowstorms, one of them officially a blizzard. It gave me new insight. Besides numerous words defining types of snow they can refine descriptions with another 20 or 30 words meaning ‘white’. Inuit people know their snow.
Some storms start sneaky; flakes sifting down while your attention is diverted. Blinking for instance. You may have to squint to be sure it's snowing. Trust me, it is.
Roiling dark clouds and wind herald other storms. That’s when to fill containers with water and bring in extra wood. This is a time travel storm; you're about to experience the 19th century.
During the winter of 17 storms I learned snow evolves according to temperature. Extreme cold makes snow that burns your face. Warmer conditions produce slushy stuff that clings to anything trees, power lines, roofs, and eyelashes. It brings down power lines and glues your eyes closed if you blink.
Then there’s wind driven sleet. That can blast the skin right off your knuckles if your snowblower stalls. It’s a well-known fact that snowblowers will not restart if the operator is wearing gloves. It's in the fine print on the last page of your operator's manual, right under the Chinese word for "Gotcha!"
Friends laughed when we bought a snowblower after five or six practically snowless winters. But we’d been listening to old-timers talk about the winter of '88. They meant 1888. These were really old old-timers. Like them, we knew a winter of relentless storms was inevitable. Weather patterns change.
According to the latest demise-of-humanity sci-fi genre the weather is due to change so radically it will threaten life on the whole planet. The idea is drawn from real life scientists insisting global warming is already disrupting our weather. We were prepared. We bought our snowblower two weeks before the blizzard of '93. We were among the elite few during that storm with a passable driveway. Our driveway was clear but we couldn’t go anywhere. The roads weren't open. There is an Inuit word for that. It sounds like laughter.
Being closer to the environment like Inuit, even yuppie kids are more aware of snow classifications than adults. They speak of sledding snow, packing snow, fort-building snow, snowball snow, crusty snow, and skiing snow. They never speak of shoveling snow.
But they’re right; most winter activities depend on snow type. Cross-country skiing is best on slightly packed snow. Snowshoes will handle almost anything but softening ice crust. Inuit know all about this stuff. They invented snowshoes. They also invented dog sleds. Merlot would rather laze around by the woodstove than pull a sled. He’s deaf remember?
But when Owl and Thunder were little we had a Great Dane named Sky. He loved pulling sleds. The problem was he didn’t understand speed. He moved faster than his brain worked causing some spectacular crashes. Inuit probably have 20 words for dog sled crashes.
They probably also have a word meaning “snow a snowblower can't budge”. There would be several subdivisions in that category, each requiring it’s own nuance: more than six inches, wet snow, slush, ice, slush and ice mixed, you know, anything you couldn’t easily shovel anyway.
Although a snowblower will not throw slush, it will throw a forty-pound rock at least a hundred yards. You’ll find this out if your driveway borders a bay window. Breaking glass is clearly a warning from Snowblower Above. Pay attention here: Never walk in front of a snowblower unless you seek visions. Even a small rock lobbed at sixty miles an hour can knock you out.
Snow thrown from a snowblower deserves it's own classification. Natural snow movement is down. Snowblower- propelled snow defies gravity. It moves up, then down in a graceful arch unless the wind is against you. Then it blows straight back on you.
Trust me, in any given snowstorm the wind is against you sixty percent of the time. There is a word for that kind of snow too, drawn from the phrase “accelerated by machine to twice light speed”. I’d share it with you, but it definitely isn't printable.
Facing the onset of winter is always an ordeal for us. Once it’s underway there’s not much you can do but ride it out and enjoy those rare warm, sunny days. The shortening days of fall are a hazard to our mental well being even when we aren’t working through something like we are now. Raking leaves is a harbinger of worse things ahead. Leaves are a lot more manageable than snow. I forget sometimes that no matter what’s ahead we no longer need to face it alone or endure it in silence. We have people who care about us.
Earlier today Eyvonne was working on the prayer pole we plan to install in the center of the labyrinth. We obtained the pole through a short commando foray onto neighboring property. The aspens over there were just the right size. The ones on our land are either too young or too old. There is a cycle to everything, even aspen trees.
Aspen trees in a given area are all interconnected by a system of tiny rootlets. So in a very real sense they aren’t trees, they’re a tree. If only humans could see the web of connections that binds us together like that.
Eyvonne and I wandered around until the right tree was apparent. It wouldn’t do to cut the wrong one. We cut it down and she carried it back, hefting it to feel the balance of it.
Eyvonne dug a hole in the center of the labyrinth and we placed it to see how it looked.
“It’s already growing,” she said. “It’s alive. I mean not like it was, like it’s supposed to become.”
I nodded. El was ecstatic. We can visualize how it looks when it’s done, prayer feathers spinning in the wind.
It still needed its bark peeled off and it needed to dry for a while before we could paint it. This morning Eyvonne started peeling bark. Soon her daughter Sarah joined her. I wandered out too. We sat contentedly working together, telling stories, jokes.
“You know Sarah this is how it used to be,” I said.
“Lots of people working together makes it go fast,” she agreed.
“There’s that, but there’s more too. When people are working together, talking, sharing things, that’s how culture gets transferred,” I said.
“I can’t wait to go to a pow-wow,” she said.
We plan to put the prayer pole up to celebrate winter solstice. That’s only a month away, but we finished peeling the pole. It’s drying now stretched across the roof of an old chicken coop. Waiting. I have the feeling that like the labyrinth it will bring people into our lives. New blessings. I look forward to installing it more than a kid looks forward to Christmas. Lots of things will resolve then. Like Hamlet told Horatio, there are more things under the sun than I can even dream of and I can dream of quite a few.
The phone rang. I answered it and found myself talking with an old friend. Eyvonne and I had spoken of her earlier in the day wondering how she was doing. It never seemed to fail that she called when we thought about her.
She poured out an epic tale of misfortune. It made me wonder if she was really a family member. She’d found some peace last summer in the labyrinth when things were just starting to go awry for her. I felt the prayer pole tug. I explained about it and invited her to be part of installing it on the solstice.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
It was happening already and the pole was barely an infant.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
All indications are it will be a doozy. The deer are darker than usual this fall. Old times say that means a bad winter, which makes no sense as a biological adaptation. At first glance it would seem if there’s more snow than usual a lighter colored coat makes sense. Then I remembered what deer do in really bad winters. They gather in herd and trample down an area under trees with edible twigs. They stay in this ‘yard’ stripping the trees of bark and twigs in a natural pruning process. It keeps most of the deer alive and forces the tree into producing more fruit the following spring.
Deer did this in an ancient orchard nearby a few years ago during a particularly bad winter. The following spring there were apples on trees I thought were dead. We had 17 storms that winter. “Amateurish,” a Swedish friend of ours said. When I complained we couldn’t see out some of our living room windows she came back with the fact that she was entering and exiting her home via a second floor doorway. And I’d always thought Swedish cabins with the decorative tiny porches on the second level were cute. Duh!
People who live in snow belts or the mountains understand snow differently from those nearer the equator. People who live in the Arctic Circle are even more cognizant of the nuances.
Did you know the Inuit have over fifty words for snow? I thought it redundant until a winter when we had seventeen snowstorms, one of them officially a blizzard. It gave me new insight. Besides numerous words defining types of snow they can refine descriptions with another 20 or 30 words meaning ‘white’. Inuit people know their snow.
Some storms start sneaky; flakes sifting down while your attention is diverted. Blinking for instance. You may have to squint to be sure it's snowing. Trust me, it is.
Roiling dark clouds and wind herald other storms. That’s when to fill containers with water and bring in extra wood. This is a time travel storm; you're about to experience the 19th century.
During the winter of 17 storms I learned snow evolves according to temperature. Extreme cold makes snow that burns your face. Warmer conditions produce slushy stuff that clings to anything trees, power lines, roofs, and eyelashes. It brings down power lines and glues your eyes closed if you blink.
Then there’s wind driven sleet. That can blast the skin right off your knuckles if your snowblower stalls. It’s a well-known fact that snowblowers will not restart if the operator is wearing gloves. It's in the fine print on the last page of your operator's manual, right under the Chinese word for "Gotcha!"
Friends laughed when we bought a snowblower after five or six practically snowless winters. But we’d been listening to old-timers talk about the winter of '88. They meant 1888. These were really old old-timers. Like them, we knew a winter of relentless storms was inevitable. Weather patterns change.
According to the latest demise-of-humanity sci-fi genre the weather is due to change so radically it will threaten life on the whole planet. The idea is drawn from real life scientists insisting global warming is already disrupting our weather. We were prepared. We bought our snowblower two weeks before the blizzard of '93. We were among the elite few during that storm with a passable driveway. Our driveway was clear but we couldn’t go anywhere. The roads weren't open. There is an Inuit word for that. It sounds like laughter.
Being closer to the environment like Inuit, even yuppie kids are more aware of snow classifications than adults. They speak of sledding snow, packing snow, fort-building snow, snowball snow, crusty snow, and skiing snow. They never speak of shoveling snow.
But they’re right; most winter activities depend on snow type. Cross-country skiing is best on slightly packed snow. Snowshoes will handle almost anything but softening ice crust. Inuit know all about this stuff. They invented snowshoes. They also invented dog sleds. Merlot would rather laze around by the woodstove than pull a sled. He’s deaf remember?
But when Owl and Thunder were little we had a Great Dane named Sky. He loved pulling sleds. The problem was he didn’t understand speed. He moved faster than his brain worked causing some spectacular crashes. Inuit probably have 20 words for dog sled crashes.
They probably also have a word meaning “snow a snowblower can't budge”. There would be several subdivisions in that category, each requiring it’s own nuance: more than six inches, wet snow, slush, ice, slush and ice mixed, you know, anything you couldn’t easily shovel anyway.
Although a snowblower will not throw slush, it will throw a forty-pound rock at least a hundred yards. You’ll find this out if your driveway borders a bay window. Breaking glass is clearly a warning from Snowblower Above. Pay attention here: Never walk in front of a snowblower unless you seek visions. Even a small rock lobbed at sixty miles an hour can knock you out.
Snow thrown from a snowblower deserves it's own classification. Natural snow movement is down. Snowblower- propelled snow defies gravity. It moves up, then down in a graceful arch unless the wind is against you. Then it blows straight back on you.
Trust me, in any given snowstorm the wind is against you sixty percent of the time. There is a word for that kind of snow too, drawn from the phrase “accelerated by machine to twice light speed”. I’d share it with you, but it definitely isn't printable.
Facing the onset of winter is always an ordeal for us. Once it’s underway there’s not much you can do but ride it out and enjoy those rare warm, sunny days. The shortening days of fall are a hazard to our mental well being even when we aren’t working through something like we are now. Raking leaves is a harbinger of worse things ahead. Leaves are a lot more manageable than snow. I forget sometimes that no matter what’s ahead we no longer need to face it alone or endure it in silence. We have people who care about us.
Earlier today Eyvonne was working on the prayer pole we plan to install in the center of the labyrinth. We obtained the pole through a short commando foray onto neighboring property. The aspens over there were just the right size. The ones on our land are either too young or too old. There is a cycle to everything, even aspen trees.
Aspen trees in a given area are all interconnected by a system of tiny rootlets. So in a very real sense they aren’t trees, they’re a tree. If only humans could see the web of connections that binds us together like that.
Eyvonne and I wandered around until the right tree was apparent. It wouldn’t do to cut the wrong one. We cut it down and she carried it back, hefting it to feel the balance of it.
Eyvonne dug a hole in the center of the labyrinth and we placed it to see how it looked.
“It’s already growing,” she said. “It’s alive. I mean not like it was, like it’s supposed to become.”
I nodded. El was ecstatic. We can visualize how it looks when it’s done, prayer feathers spinning in the wind.
It still needed its bark peeled off and it needed to dry for a while before we could paint it. This morning Eyvonne started peeling bark. Soon her daughter Sarah joined her. I wandered out too. We sat contentedly working together, telling stories, jokes.
“You know Sarah this is how it used to be,” I said.
“Lots of people working together makes it go fast,” she agreed.
“There’s that, but there’s more too. When people are working together, talking, sharing things, that’s how culture gets transferred,” I said.
“I can’t wait to go to a pow-wow,” she said.
We plan to put the prayer pole up to celebrate winter solstice. That’s only a month away, but we finished peeling the pole. It’s drying now stretched across the roof of an old chicken coop. Waiting. I have the feeling that like the labyrinth it will bring people into our lives. New blessings. I look forward to installing it more than a kid looks forward to Christmas. Lots of things will resolve then. Like Hamlet told Horatio, there are more things under the sun than I can even dream of and I can dream of quite a few.
The phone rang. I answered it and found myself talking with an old friend. Eyvonne and I had spoken of her earlier in the day wondering how she was doing. It never seemed to fail that she called when we thought about her.
She poured out an epic tale of misfortune. It made me wonder if she was really a family member. She’d found some peace last summer in the labyrinth when things were just starting to go awry for her. I felt the prayer pole tug. I explained about it and invited her to be part of installing it on the solstice.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
It was happening already and the pole was barely an infant.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
The 'I' Word
Pleiades’ presence is making me think long and hard about integration.
In true dissociative fashion I am alternately worried sick about the fact that we’re deaf to each other and uncharacteristically unconcerned about it.
Even though I can see him and he can see me I can’t hear anything he mindtouches, not to anyone else or to me.
el and all his alters who step in and out from time to time can communicate with him. Ian can, ‘rion, Lillie, Gwen, Baby, Flinch, Trekker, Keeper, One and all the resident tribe of l’ilones have no problem communicating with him now that he’s finally stepped into the system. Everyone assures me I’m not missing much, he’s very quiet. So far he’s said nothing to explain his presence, where he’s been hiding out or why he surfaced at just this point in time.
Eyvonne told me he told her he has no name “But he isn’t a star system.”
At least he has a sense of humor. He claims to know everything any of us know and be able to use any skill any of us have.
He could tap system resources and have any skill stored there. But he couldn’t have access to all our memories. No one but Shadow has that talent. Time will tell.
He and I still have an uncomfortable a barrier between us. We’ve temporarily solved the problem by not being in each other’s space, or at least trying not to be. But we keep ending up face to face. It’s wearing me out. And it’s making me think the answer may be for him and I to integrate. But the problems involved with this may be pretty profound.
First of all he may not actually be who he’s presenting as, although his image feels right. When Shadow first showed up in the system he appeared to us as a BIG Black dude wearing chamo and a black beret. He scared the crap out of me. We soon discovered he was trying to project his name and purpose while at the same time cover his apprehension. It’s funny now but it wasn’t then. I was convinced he was the alter Dr. Dwon warned us about, bent on taking over the Q and perpetrating a crime spree to act out his rage.
Geeze. At least I’m not really worried about that anymore. It’s only a residual niggling little fear, not an overwhelming crippling one.
Evidence for this newbie being ‘of’ me is pretty strong. Everyone in the system perceives him as protector. He looks like me. I have this sense of him even though we can’t directly talk. And I believe he perpetrated the dream where we danced together. In fact I suspect that dream was a veiled plea for us to integrate.
The real wild card is not knowing why he split off from me in the first place. It must have happened when we were fairly young because he demonstrates a well-rounded understanding of how things are inside and outside.
No one needed to explain that we’re multiple. He can mindtouch. He is familiar with most of us in the system, even some who integrated with el or me a long time ago.
He asked Eyvonne “Do you know Shadow? Do you know Dakota?”
He knows how to do things that aren’t in the system resources databank. No one had to say ‘this is a dishwasher, it works like this’. He displays a normal range of emotions. All of these are attributes seldom displayed by recently spawned alters. And it is usually recently spawned alters who desire to integrate soon after they show up. So he is definitely not normal. But which Q is? I defy you to define normal and not include us in that range.
In the beginning of our therapy with Dr. Dwon we were dead set against integrating. But over the years we learned sometimes it’s the only way to save our sanity. Somehow el looms over that thought. Sanity is, after all, his turf.
After realizing he was inadvertently terrorizing us Shadow abandoned his projection inside as a Big Black guy. Then he was so much like el we nicknamed him el’s shadow. Eventually we just called him Shadow. Shadow broke away from el because el was experiencing deeper emotions. Once el started feeling love, it was inevitable that he know hate. Joy brought him anger. While he was going through a rocky adjustment to deeper emotions Shadow broke away to man the Q helm. He knew very little about the outside world since he was a recent split, spawned by a need of our adulthood. Recently spawned alters seldom have much depth. They have a job to do and they do it. I could never be sure what exactly enticed Shadow outside on his own but I suspected it was Eyvonne. We Qs are practically pre-programmed to love her. Shadow was very childlike. He took everything literally leaving himself wide open to pranks perpetrated by other Qs.
Once el was comfortable again he and Shadow reintegrated but it’s a loose association. Eyvonne says el is a multiple within a multiple. She’s probably right. Intellectually I understand this experientially mirrors our common experience. Like many of ‘the els’ Shadow sometimes steps out for a while. I’m never sure why. Maybe it’s just for R&R.
There is one el-alter who never steps out. Ember. Ember was the most damaged child alter we’ve ever discovered. He was blind and lost. His whole existence was pain. He knew nothing else. He was the repository for the cumulative pain of el’s existence. Nothing eased Ember’s pain except being held by el. el was distraught that this l’ilone existed solely to keep him from knowing pain. Holding Ember made it impossible for el to do his job. He was terrified of integrating with Ember but he had no choice.
I remember now, that was when we all lost contact with each other inside. It was because of Ember’s pain and fear. When el integrated with Ember it became his pain and fear again, but he had adult resources to own and process it. After that el could feel pain in the outside world. Dr. Dwon would have been proud.
Why did our experience with Ember resonate through me when I thought of Pleiades?
I remember when ‘rion and Twelve integrated. They melted one into the other, child and man. Then his blind female twin Star did the same, blending with him until she saw through his eyes. ‘rion called Star his heart, Twelve his anger. He was at peace with Twelve’s anger and secrets acknowledged. Star made him quieter, more mature. We saw their integration as a rebirth, not a death.
I wondered if that was what Dr. Dwon was driving at all those years ago. But the solution was far too simplistic to serve us all. We’d never become a singleton. Dissociation is far too ingrained in us.
In the simplistic model of multiplicity each alter is supposed to hold an incident of abuse, or contain one emotion. Integrating is supposed to heal them into a whole. That worked for ‘rion, Star and twelve.
But many of us are far too organized, too complete to consider blending. We’ve gone past some unseen border into uncharted diagnostic territory.
How could any of the other Qs be my heart, express my anger, my joy?
For a long time I struggled to understand the nuances of our system. I repeatedly mapped our complex inner system and connections without success
“Don’t work so hard at it Shell,” Eyvonne advised. “When you’re ready it will be there.”
She was right. It took many more alters coming in from the cold to understand how we were interrelated. Obviously the process is still going on.
Although we take it more or less in stride now, it’s still nerve wracking. Like with Pleiades, things are easily misunderstood. He told Eyvonne he would apologize to me for taking ops the way he did. Until then none of us realized he and I couldn’t mindtouch.
Until we figured this out and told Eyvonne she was pissed at him for saying he’d apologized to me. How could he or she know I hadn’t heard him?
Once a child emerged who told Eyvonne his name was Die-die. She freaked out, believing he was suicidal. It turned out his name was descriptive. When confronted with abuse this little one went catatonic. He ‘died’.
True integration to me is what ‘rion accomplished with Star and Twelve. We no longer heard their separate voices, only ‘rion’s voice. It didn’t seem strange, nor did we mourn them. ‘rion had always spoken for Star anyway and we’d sensed from the start he was also Twelve. Despite the success and peace integrating had brought ‘rion, overall integration was still not our goal. We neither sought nor expected it.
Alters can emerge very suddenly, drawn from hiding places in a blink by a perceived need. I abruptly lost over an hour in a supermarket once. The last thing I recalled was an exhausted shopper keeping tabs on two active preschoolers. One of her little boys ran past me grinning mischievously.
“Dakota!” his mother called sharply.
The next thing I knew I was in another part of the supermarket and dusk had become night. Several new items were in my cart. I checked the time. Nearly an hour had passed. I paid for the groceries including the items I hadn’t selected. I suspected we’d been ‘raided’ by someone outside the system. Enticing them back would be easier if I honored their choices. I sighed as I looked over the items: juice, apples, sprouts. Things el might have chosen but he hadn’t, I checked. None of us could account for the missing hour. Our only clue was that these were adult choices, no candy bars or cookies.
We found out who it was a few weeks later when we received a threatening phone call in the middle of the night. Eyvonne recognized the caller’s voice and we called the police but there was really nothing they could do. Eyvonne was pretty shaken by the incident. el was holding her close when she sensed a change. Startled, she looked up into the eyes of someone she didn’t know.
“You’re all right. You’re safe,” he said. He looked stern, almost fierce.
“Who are you?”
Eyvonne was a little scared. This was at the height of our expectations that someone inside harbored rage.
“Dakota. I am Gwen’s guardian. She told me you were in danger. She wants me to guard you too. I am here now, you are safe,” he said.
“Dakota,” she whispered as he stroked her hair. “You feel like eliot.”
He smiled at her.
“eliot is my origin and where I rest,” he explained.
“And you guard Gwen?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she ask you to guard me Dakota? What did she say about the danger?”
Dakota glanced around the room.
“You are not part of our system!” he exclaimed. “You are outside!”
It was Eyvonne’s turn to soothe.
“It’s all right. But yes, I am outside.”
“I thought you were part of us, inside,” Dakota said wonderingly. “I have spent very little time outside. I am a watcher, a guardian, not a protector.”
“Well, you’re out here now. And I think you have been before.... the little boy in the supermarket.... his name was Dakota too,” Eyvonne said.
Dakota smiled.
“Yes. That was very strange. Someone called my name and I found myself in a marketplace.... I watched what others did, followed their example. I thought it was a vision, a teaching dream. But I wondered what I was supposed to learn,” Dakota said.
“You’re very like el,” Eyvonne whispered. “Do you look like him like Shadow does?”
Dakota sighed.
“Yes, but I am much older. My braids are nearly white. I would be an elder in your world.”
“And you watch over Gwen?”
“I have been her guardian many years,” Dakota said. “Now I will be your guardian too.”
Dakota was as good as his word. I felt his reassuring presence many times as we escorted Eyvonne to evening performances of the opera, symphony, plays and movies in the city. His watchfulness augmented mine.
Another time I was alerted to an emerging alter by the whisper of a mindtouch. Who guards the guardian? a voice asked.
I looked all around inside and mindtouched each Q to see if this was a prank.
Who guards the guardian? The voice was even more insistent. This time I caught movement inside out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see a child with unkempt hair, dirty face, uncertain smile.
I grinned recognizing a younger version of myself. I knew without asking who this was, in my heart I’d always known. The older and calmer I got, the more this little one needed to be separate. I sensed that time was nearly over.
Hello Wild Child, I said softly.
He grinned and embraced me.
I’m Watcher too, he said.
I know. You watch for me. You guard the Guardian don’t you? I mindtouched.
Wild Child nodded.
For a while Wild Child split and merged with me just as Dakota and Shadow still do with el. I was unaware of his presence unless he was apart from me. We acted autonomously when we were separate but he never blocked me. His actions and memories were readily available to me, his experiences my own. I understood now how it worked that Shadow held our collective memory, which meant el did too.
If any memory, skill or information was el’s he could make it available to anyone in the system or keep it private.
He developed our system resources that facilitated things for emerging alters. If they wanted to learn skills any one of us had already mastered, they could do so by tapping directly into the stored data. No one needed to be present for someone else inside to use our typing skills. Unfortunately making our typing skills available meant our typos were shared too.
I knew firsthand that integration made sense sometimes. After I found Wild Child I couldn’t sleep, inside or out. Wild Child’s duty to watch mandated that I did so too because Wild Child was singularly unconvinced we were no longer in danger. The body was physically exhausted from me sleeping with one eye open. Wild Child frequently woke Eyvonne in the dead of night.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“It’s just a plane,” she reassured for the hundredth time.
Trucks coming down the mountain, owls hooting, mice rustling in the attic and wind creaking the trees outside our window all spelled danger to Wild Child.
The solution was simple. I invited to come home. I simply opened my arms and accepted him. My growing maturity and self-confidence was balanced by his energy and wacky sense of humor. Wow. Happy ending. It isn’t always like that.
Integrating with alters Vinnie and Dani was much harder for me and the rest of the Qs. The twins were a strong part of our inner system for a couple of years. Then they matured from children to young adults in a matter of weeks. Vinnie lost his impishness and became almost serious. Dani grew bolder, more sure of herself, although her speech remained difficult to understand.
I welcomed them as I had Wild Child. But this merging was painful. Every horrible experience they’d endured became mine.
“Oh god, not that too,” I said to Eyvonne. “I never expected it to be this hard, it wasn’t for ‘rion.”
“Shel, don’t fight it,” Eyvonne whispered. “Let it happen.”
I went limp, sobbing in her arms.
“Shel, Star and Twelve were already part of ‘rion. Dani and Vinnie aren’t part of you like Wild Child,” she said.
Her voice cracked as she spoke names of l’ilones grown and now lost to her. She accepted, even rejoiced in our choice to integrate, but she missed them intensely.
I writhed in pain absorbing their pieces of our collective past. When it was done I felt giddy, laughing and crying at the same time.
Inside Dani and Vinnie’s voices, like Wild Child’s became mine. Others heard their inflections when I mindtouched. Flashes of them ran through me like quicksilver.
But Gwen wept in the nursery next to their empty cots. Lillie hid in her cottage, curtains drawn and el wept alone on a rock ledge high in our inner mountains. Outside Eyvonne mourned too. She could never be sure who she might lose next. I know she is still terrified sometimes it will be el. I don’t know how she has the courage to live with us.
Everyone knew the twins still existed inside me. We understood intellectually this was best for all of us. It had been their choice and mine.
But el also knew he would never again heft Dani to his shoulders and hike with her into his beloved mountains. No one would see Vinnie grow up except through my maturity. Dani gifted me compassion, Vinnie gave me a broader grin and self-confidence.
As we fell as asleep that night we slept entirely, all of us at once for the first time, with no presence watching over us.
Who guards the guardian? I thought smiling through tears. Wild Child’s tour of duty was finally over.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
In true dissociative fashion I am alternately worried sick about the fact that we’re deaf to each other and uncharacteristically unconcerned about it.
Even though I can see him and he can see me I can’t hear anything he mindtouches, not to anyone else or to me.
el and all his alters who step in and out from time to time can communicate with him. Ian can, ‘rion, Lillie, Gwen, Baby, Flinch, Trekker, Keeper, One and all the resident tribe of l’ilones have no problem communicating with him now that he’s finally stepped into the system. Everyone assures me I’m not missing much, he’s very quiet. So far he’s said nothing to explain his presence, where he’s been hiding out or why he surfaced at just this point in time.
Eyvonne told me he told her he has no name “But he isn’t a star system.”
At least he has a sense of humor. He claims to know everything any of us know and be able to use any skill any of us have.
He could tap system resources and have any skill stored there. But he couldn’t have access to all our memories. No one but Shadow has that talent. Time will tell.
He and I still have an uncomfortable a barrier between us. We’ve temporarily solved the problem by not being in each other’s space, or at least trying not to be. But we keep ending up face to face. It’s wearing me out. And it’s making me think the answer may be for him and I to integrate. But the problems involved with this may be pretty profound.
First of all he may not actually be who he’s presenting as, although his image feels right. When Shadow first showed up in the system he appeared to us as a BIG Black dude wearing chamo and a black beret. He scared the crap out of me. We soon discovered he was trying to project his name and purpose while at the same time cover his apprehension. It’s funny now but it wasn’t then. I was convinced he was the alter Dr. Dwon warned us about, bent on taking over the Q and perpetrating a crime spree to act out his rage.
Geeze. At least I’m not really worried about that anymore. It’s only a residual niggling little fear, not an overwhelming crippling one.
Evidence for this newbie being ‘of’ me is pretty strong. Everyone in the system perceives him as protector. He looks like me. I have this sense of him even though we can’t directly talk. And I believe he perpetrated the dream where we danced together. In fact I suspect that dream was a veiled plea for us to integrate.
The real wild card is not knowing why he split off from me in the first place. It must have happened when we were fairly young because he demonstrates a well-rounded understanding of how things are inside and outside.
No one needed to explain that we’re multiple. He can mindtouch. He is familiar with most of us in the system, even some who integrated with el or me a long time ago.
He asked Eyvonne “Do you know Shadow? Do you know Dakota?”
He knows how to do things that aren’t in the system resources databank. No one had to say ‘this is a dishwasher, it works like this’. He displays a normal range of emotions. All of these are attributes seldom displayed by recently spawned alters. And it is usually recently spawned alters who desire to integrate soon after they show up. So he is definitely not normal. But which Q is? I defy you to define normal and not include us in that range.
In the beginning of our therapy with Dr. Dwon we were dead set against integrating. But over the years we learned sometimes it’s the only way to save our sanity. Somehow el looms over that thought. Sanity is, after all, his turf.
After realizing he was inadvertently terrorizing us Shadow abandoned his projection inside as a Big Black guy. Then he was so much like el we nicknamed him el’s shadow. Eventually we just called him Shadow. Shadow broke away from el because el was experiencing deeper emotions. Once el started feeling love, it was inevitable that he know hate. Joy brought him anger. While he was going through a rocky adjustment to deeper emotions Shadow broke away to man the Q helm. He knew very little about the outside world since he was a recent split, spawned by a need of our adulthood. Recently spawned alters seldom have much depth. They have a job to do and they do it. I could never be sure what exactly enticed Shadow outside on his own but I suspected it was Eyvonne. We Qs are practically pre-programmed to love her. Shadow was very childlike. He took everything literally leaving himself wide open to pranks perpetrated by other Qs.
Once el was comfortable again he and Shadow reintegrated but it’s a loose association. Eyvonne says el is a multiple within a multiple. She’s probably right. Intellectually I understand this experientially mirrors our common experience. Like many of ‘the els’ Shadow sometimes steps out for a while. I’m never sure why. Maybe it’s just for R&R.
There is one el-alter who never steps out. Ember. Ember was the most damaged child alter we’ve ever discovered. He was blind and lost. His whole existence was pain. He knew nothing else. He was the repository for the cumulative pain of el’s existence. Nothing eased Ember’s pain except being held by el. el was distraught that this l’ilone existed solely to keep him from knowing pain. Holding Ember made it impossible for el to do his job. He was terrified of integrating with Ember but he had no choice.
I remember now, that was when we all lost contact with each other inside. It was because of Ember’s pain and fear. When el integrated with Ember it became his pain and fear again, but he had adult resources to own and process it. After that el could feel pain in the outside world. Dr. Dwon would have been proud.
Why did our experience with Ember resonate through me when I thought of Pleiades?
I remember when ‘rion and Twelve integrated. They melted one into the other, child and man. Then his blind female twin Star did the same, blending with him until she saw through his eyes. ‘rion called Star his heart, Twelve his anger. He was at peace with Twelve’s anger and secrets acknowledged. Star made him quieter, more mature. We saw their integration as a rebirth, not a death.
I wondered if that was what Dr. Dwon was driving at all those years ago. But the solution was far too simplistic to serve us all. We’d never become a singleton. Dissociation is far too ingrained in us.
In the simplistic model of multiplicity each alter is supposed to hold an incident of abuse, or contain one emotion. Integrating is supposed to heal them into a whole. That worked for ‘rion, Star and twelve.
But many of us are far too organized, too complete to consider blending. We’ve gone past some unseen border into uncharted diagnostic territory.
How could any of the other Qs be my heart, express my anger, my joy?
For a long time I struggled to understand the nuances of our system. I repeatedly mapped our complex inner system and connections without success
“Don’t work so hard at it Shell,” Eyvonne advised. “When you’re ready it will be there.”
She was right. It took many more alters coming in from the cold to understand how we were interrelated. Obviously the process is still going on.
Although we take it more or less in stride now, it’s still nerve wracking. Like with Pleiades, things are easily misunderstood. He told Eyvonne he would apologize to me for taking ops the way he did. Until then none of us realized he and I couldn’t mindtouch.
Until we figured this out and told Eyvonne she was pissed at him for saying he’d apologized to me. How could he or she know I hadn’t heard him?
Once a child emerged who told Eyvonne his name was Die-die. She freaked out, believing he was suicidal. It turned out his name was descriptive. When confronted with abuse this little one went catatonic. He ‘died’.
True integration to me is what ‘rion accomplished with Star and Twelve. We no longer heard their separate voices, only ‘rion’s voice. It didn’t seem strange, nor did we mourn them. ‘rion had always spoken for Star anyway and we’d sensed from the start he was also Twelve. Despite the success and peace integrating had brought ‘rion, overall integration was still not our goal. We neither sought nor expected it.
Alters can emerge very suddenly, drawn from hiding places in a blink by a perceived need. I abruptly lost over an hour in a supermarket once. The last thing I recalled was an exhausted shopper keeping tabs on two active preschoolers. One of her little boys ran past me grinning mischievously.
“Dakota!” his mother called sharply.
The next thing I knew I was in another part of the supermarket and dusk had become night. Several new items were in my cart. I checked the time. Nearly an hour had passed. I paid for the groceries including the items I hadn’t selected. I suspected we’d been ‘raided’ by someone outside the system. Enticing them back would be easier if I honored their choices. I sighed as I looked over the items: juice, apples, sprouts. Things el might have chosen but he hadn’t, I checked. None of us could account for the missing hour. Our only clue was that these were adult choices, no candy bars or cookies.
We found out who it was a few weeks later when we received a threatening phone call in the middle of the night. Eyvonne recognized the caller’s voice and we called the police but there was really nothing they could do. Eyvonne was pretty shaken by the incident. el was holding her close when she sensed a change. Startled, she looked up into the eyes of someone she didn’t know.
“You’re all right. You’re safe,” he said. He looked stern, almost fierce.
“Who are you?”
Eyvonne was a little scared. This was at the height of our expectations that someone inside harbored rage.
“Dakota. I am Gwen’s guardian. She told me you were in danger. She wants me to guard you too. I am here now, you are safe,” he said.
“Dakota,” she whispered as he stroked her hair. “You feel like eliot.”
He smiled at her.
“eliot is my origin and where I rest,” he explained.
“And you guard Gwen?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she ask you to guard me Dakota? What did she say about the danger?”
Dakota glanced around the room.
“You are not part of our system!” he exclaimed. “You are outside!”
It was Eyvonne’s turn to soothe.
“It’s all right. But yes, I am outside.”
“I thought you were part of us, inside,” Dakota said wonderingly. “I have spent very little time outside. I am a watcher, a guardian, not a protector.”
“Well, you’re out here now. And I think you have been before.... the little boy in the supermarket.... his name was Dakota too,” Eyvonne said.
Dakota smiled.
“Yes. That was very strange. Someone called my name and I found myself in a marketplace.... I watched what others did, followed their example. I thought it was a vision, a teaching dream. But I wondered what I was supposed to learn,” Dakota said.
“You’re very like el,” Eyvonne whispered. “Do you look like him like Shadow does?”
Dakota sighed.
“Yes, but I am much older. My braids are nearly white. I would be an elder in your world.”
“And you watch over Gwen?”
“I have been her guardian many years,” Dakota said. “Now I will be your guardian too.”
Dakota was as good as his word. I felt his reassuring presence many times as we escorted Eyvonne to evening performances of the opera, symphony, plays and movies in the city. His watchfulness augmented mine.
Another time I was alerted to an emerging alter by the whisper of a mindtouch. Who guards the guardian? a voice asked.
I looked all around inside and mindtouched each Q to see if this was a prank.
Who guards the guardian? The voice was even more insistent. This time I caught movement inside out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see a child with unkempt hair, dirty face, uncertain smile.
I grinned recognizing a younger version of myself. I knew without asking who this was, in my heart I’d always known. The older and calmer I got, the more this little one needed to be separate. I sensed that time was nearly over.
Hello Wild Child, I said softly.
He grinned and embraced me.
I’m Watcher too, he said.
I know. You watch for me. You guard the Guardian don’t you? I mindtouched.
Wild Child nodded.
For a while Wild Child split and merged with me just as Dakota and Shadow still do with el. I was unaware of his presence unless he was apart from me. We acted autonomously when we were separate but he never blocked me. His actions and memories were readily available to me, his experiences my own. I understood now how it worked that Shadow held our collective memory, which meant el did too.
If any memory, skill or information was el’s he could make it available to anyone in the system or keep it private.
He developed our system resources that facilitated things for emerging alters. If they wanted to learn skills any one of us had already mastered, they could do so by tapping directly into the stored data. No one needed to be present for someone else inside to use our typing skills. Unfortunately making our typing skills available meant our typos were shared too.
I knew firsthand that integration made sense sometimes. After I found Wild Child I couldn’t sleep, inside or out. Wild Child’s duty to watch mandated that I did so too because Wild Child was singularly unconvinced we were no longer in danger. The body was physically exhausted from me sleeping with one eye open. Wild Child frequently woke Eyvonne in the dead of night.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“It’s just a plane,” she reassured for the hundredth time.
Trucks coming down the mountain, owls hooting, mice rustling in the attic and wind creaking the trees outside our window all spelled danger to Wild Child.
The solution was simple. I invited to come home. I simply opened my arms and accepted him. My growing maturity and self-confidence was balanced by his energy and wacky sense of humor. Wow. Happy ending. It isn’t always like that.
Integrating with alters Vinnie and Dani was much harder for me and the rest of the Qs. The twins were a strong part of our inner system for a couple of years. Then they matured from children to young adults in a matter of weeks. Vinnie lost his impishness and became almost serious. Dani grew bolder, more sure of herself, although her speech remained difficult to understand.
I welcomed them as I had Wild Child. But this merging was painful. Every horrible experience they’d endured became mine.
“Oh god, not that too,” I said to Eyvonne. “I never expected it to be this hard, it wasn’t for ‘rion.”
“Shel, don’t fight it,” Eyvonne whispered. “Let it happen.”
I went limp, sobbing in her arms.
“Shel, Star and Twelve were already part of ‘rion. Dani and Vinnie aren’t part of you like Wild Child,” she said.
Her voice cracked as she spoke names of l’ilones grown and now lost to her. She accepted, even rejoiced in our choice to integrate, but she missed them intensely.
I writhed in pain absorbing their pieces of our collective past. When it was done I felt giddy, laughing and crying at the same time.
Inside Dani and Vinnie’s voices, like Wild Child’s became mine. Others heard their inflections when I mindtouched. Flashes of them ran through me like quicksilver.
But Gwen wept in the nursery next to their empty cots. Lillie hid in her cottage, curtains drawn and el wept alone on a rock ledge high in our inner mountains. Outside Eyvonne mourned too. She could never be sure who she might lose next. I know she is still terrified sometimes it will be el. I don’t know how she has the courage to live with us.
Everyone knew the twins still existed inside me. We understood intellectually this was best for all of us. It had been their choice and mine.
But el also knew he would never again heft Dani to his shoulders and hike with her into his beloved mountains. No one would see Vinnie grow up except through my maturity. Dani gifted me compassion, Vinnie gave me a broader grin and self-confidence.
As we fell as asleep that night we slept entirely, all of us at once for the first time, with no presence watching over us.
Who guards the guardian? I thought smiling through tears. Wild Child’s tour of duty was finally over.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
