Madison Rye Progress

No apologia, no exegeses will explain sinkdog. The apophatic definition of sinkdog is a being of thirst and of grime. Do you see? The insight such theologies as those of the sages provide offer us no salve, bring us no closer to enlightenment.

You know, when I started working on @post-self, it was in the context of kink. The idea was, if I could fork, create however many copies of myself that I wanted, I could more efficiently give blowjobs in parallel. When Qoheleth came out, despite the relatively un-kinky plot, that remained at the core of my mind as I wrote it.

The reception to the project was startling. It touched in a chord with plural folks in particular and left them feeling all sorts of ways. Hell, it left me feeling in all sorts of ways! I went into writing these works singular, and came out something else. I wrote Toledot and my fursoña changed from a snow leopard to a skunk. I wrote Nevi'im and my style changed dramatically. I wrote Mitzvot to round out the cycle and, suddenly I was no longer singular. I was one partner richer (or perhaps several, depending on your conception of plurality).

Suddenly this project was more than just myself. Others started writing in the space. Others started calling their systems "clades". So many others became skunks that we joked about Post-Self Induced Skunk Syndrome.

At the core, however, remained the kink. I expanded on it. Others expanded on it. It is just that the project is larger than me, and the kernel of kink that was at its heart is no longer the sole defining feature. I am uninterested in "the death of the artist" except as a descriptive term, watching this world grow larger than I had ever dreamed.

So, yes. Reduce the concept of sinkdog to its barest edges and discard the feelings it engenders in others. Take shootposts too seriously. Lift your nose snootily up into the air as though to escape some rancid smell. It will never not be true that, for some unknown reason, I and so many others have taken from it more than the artist intended.^{1, 2}

1. https://cohost.org/makyo/post/5005430-i-do-not-know-why-a

2. https://cohost.org/makyo/post/5009684-i-am-continuing-to-h

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Patrons get the whole of part 2 here!

End Of Endings — 2403

The Woman decided to go walking one day. Perhaps she was driven by restlessness. She had an errand to run, sure, but this day she decided to go out rather than perform this task at home. Perhaps she was bored! I do not know.

Either way, she was feeling good and she was feeling stable and she was feeling feline, so she found herself a nice set of slacks to wear over her legs, ones that looped up over the base of her tail in such a way that the same would be just as possible with a skunk's tail, and yet which would not fall down for those moments when she does not have a tail.

She found herself a nice shirt that felt good on the fur and which would not look too weird if she poofed out into a skunk. It was not her favorite shirt, I am sure, otherwise maybe she would wear it every day, but it was good enough. It had the word 'fiend' scribbled across it in angular, glitchy graffiti, and The Woman is absolutely allowed to feel like a fiend some days.

Thus clothed, The Woman stood for a while in front of the mirror and admired herself. She felt good. She felt good, reader! It was not often that she felt more than just okay. Because even with all that I wrote about before, her life was not bad. It was an okay life. She liked this life in her own way. Her thoughts on unbecoming were not thoughts on suicide, I do not think.

She stood before the mirror and preened for a moment, adjusting the way her shirt sat and fluffing out her slacks to see how they might fit with a thicker coat. She combed her claws through her short fur to straighten out some mussed-up spots and ensured that her whiskers were all neat and in those rows that cats have that she always found fascinating.

The trip to the city was as it ever was. She said to herself a little prayer and opened the door to her closet. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through, and as she did so, she brushed her fingertips against the jamb as ever, and today it felt right enough that she stepped lively out onto the city streets, out where the leaves skittered anxiously around her footpaws in the faint February breeze.

Stuffing her paws into her pockets, she made her way down the street, where her entrance was located, to the main drag. The city was on the small end — more large town than full on city — and so it was still the type of place to have a main drag, a street built for cars that it does not actually have, with wide sidewalks paved in brick and a trolley that ran down the middle.

The Woman waited for the next trolley car to come and stepped aboard, tucking her tail down and around her leg as she held onto one of the railings — she never sat, and never could tell you why — to ride it for three stops. This was part of the ritual. Even when the car was busy and she was not feeling so good, there was a part of her that was happy that she got to stand on this trolley and hold onto this railing and feel this rattle-buzz of the wheels rolling along the track through her feet or paws. It was not even particularly pleasant for her, I think, but it was fulfilling.

She made it her three stops and stepped easily from the trolley to find herself before her usual coffee shop. There was so much comfort in routine sometimes. Not all routines are rituals, after all, sometimes there was just a coffee shop that you really like because it makes good mochas and always gives you extra whipped cream without being asked.

And so that was just the routine that she engaged with.

Once The Woman had her mocha with extra whip, once she had one of her usual tables over by the windows, once she had taken a seat, then at last she let her shoulders relax, let the tension drain out of the small of her back, let her tail curl around a leg of the chair so that she could simply exist out in public, just sit in her chair by the window and watch the life of the city roll by outside and listen to the rumble-chatter of the coffee shop and, in turn, be watched, be heard, be witnessed.

Suddenly having memories of a relationship nearly a decade old with someone who had to that point been only an acquaintance~ Marsh comes out this summer!

But not as much as this woman loves kettle corn.

“Therapy!” A Finger Pointing exclaimed, waving a hand at nothing in particular. “What a lovely idea.”

“After all that?” Beholden said, smirking. “I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something.”

“I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that.”

“You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange.”

She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, some queer thing too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. “Yes. Busy.”

Motes Played will be out late summer~