#also drought is just a depressed therapist basically

[berryclan-and-friends]

My handwriting only gets worse and the brush doesn’t help so here’s the writing:

Berrystar

He/Him

One of the founders

He was actually a kit when the clan was founded. They named him after the clan.

Old : )

The side notes (left to right, bottom to top)

He looks like this a lot

Used to have jowls. Went to the twoleg place once. Deflated jowls, bye jowls. : (

His “prime” (he was never doing the best. this is just his physical prime)

He also used to look really judgy

Not on ref but notable:

He grew up in time of struggle with the clan, when it was in a bad spot. Basically the clan was a bit dishonored, spat on in other words

Was the third leader, first was Glowstar and the second was Saltstar

Used to be a spy, did something to a “friend” once though (Gojistar)

Friends + Family:

Father: Tallbeam

Mother: Greenspeckle

(Adopted) kits: Brownbelly and Thrushglare

Friends: Basically everyone. His relations are based around how much he sees them, most the time. He is quite close to Toast and Indigopaw (his apprentice) however.

HATES DROUGHT HE HATES HIM

[coldalbion]

Spastic thoughts on #Cripkult

One thing about getting sports massages from a trained massage therapist continually brings to mind is how much Cerebral Palsy renders the standard ideas of how muscles and anatomy work as ridiculously "normalised".

Crippled and disabled bodies are biophysically divergent. One would think this was obvious, except it *really* isn't. Case in point: No doctor or specialist sussed what was going on with my half my foot essentially *dying* until post amputation. But the orthotics guy I saw afterwards had seen this happen with CP multiple times, and knew why.

The reason CP does what it does to the human body is, (we think) mostly due to brain trauma and hence lifelong neurodivergence. I have a different brain, different responses to proprioception inputs, and other stimuli. I have a different brain chemistry.

(As a sidenote, it's not a neurotypical/autism spectrum binary. Hence the term neurodivergent - because neurologies can be and are diverse, some more extremely than others)

What does my neurodivergence and adaptation to a world built around constructed norms provide me with? Oftentimes, a  whole bunch of pain, and frustration, and often, isolation both psychologically and physically. It is a simple fact that such divergence is often pathologised, and attempts at normalisation can cause all sorts of horrors - internally and externally.

I'm a cripple: my brain has warped the rest of its surrounding systems into a crooked thing. I'm a piece of driftwood shaped by the burning, roaring, waters of existence. I've been tempered by fire (literally set on fire once) and smashed into rocks ( and had them thrown at me). I can see and think in ways most of you, quite bluntly, can't or won't. If I am a monster, by all means, see me shake my gory locks as a spectre of dissolution and decay, if that's what you need to see. I can't stop you.

But looking past the monstrous, passing through it, we find a daemonic, daimonic heart: something that changes shape in the eye of the observer. I'm not on the fringe, not on the edge -  not Outside, but Inside and Down and Up. At the centre.

Am I better or superior to the normalised human? No. But in some cases, I have a very specific set of skills, and perceptions, and in those contexts? I'm better than most.

Am I saying this to self-aggrandise? Not at all. What I am saying, writing, speaking into the world is the heart of what I conceive of, and have named (somewhat facetiously, somewhat not) as #cripkult.

We Always Been Here.

And we know things you don't. In ways you don't. Our worth is in who and what we are - whatever that means for you, in essence, is a byproduct. We generate, simply by existing, an alterity.

I am divergent, neurologically, biophysically, in such a way that the structures and architecture and cultural constructions of society, disable me. Some of my differences also increase biophysical and mental stresses in a way that limit options, narrowing the focus of ability and function - these can be described as disabling in terms of my ability to enact my desires. To argue otherwise is, I believe, just not helpful to anyone.

The point then, expressed in my perhaps needlessly verbose way, is this:

I'm not like you. Physically, mentally, and otherwise.

I have spent nearly twenty years working to accept this; to internalise and root out implanted ableism/disablism, shame, disgust, and fight the desire to self-normalise as much as possible. To go beyond "finding the positive" or "looking on the bright side." To descend into the roots of who and what I am, and will be.

And amongst those roots, I find faces lit by firelight and laughter and song, warmed by fierce cold, and cooled in those same swirling burning waters. Because as long as there's been humans, there's been cripples, and always will be - divergent, bent, close to the earth and the tunnels and burrows that enter Hir - shaping things, singing, altering perceptions.

Hell, I may die early because modern medicine isn't exactly built to deal with cripples (particularly with CP, if you're not a kid, you are basically ignored) which isn't particularly fair. But #cripkult isn't about fair. It's relentlessly bearing down on who and what you are, and all that it entails. It is, as I wrote through the mouth of a trickster Magpie Man in 2013, the Necessary. Or as another friend puts it, "becoming inevitable."

Because there is only us - and those we care for, and those who care for us. All those of us enmeshed in the web. Often, we are neglected, forgotten. Institutionalised or killed indirectly by unthinking uncaring bureaucracy. But some of us survive, thanks to the acceptance of our unique aloneness, and hence the way that same aloneness brings us together to live and play and laugh and sing with others  

Some of us may struggle with depression, with suicidality, and some may benefit from treatment, Some may not. Some may leave us to escape the pain - and I salute them and honour them for who and what they were, too. Some of us may endure, weathered by storms of despair and droughts of compassion. Countless other life-paths may exist, crooked and winding. I do not know them all. I cannot. I can only know mine.

And as this has become even longer than I anticipated, I thank you for reading this far, because in doing so, you are treating with me, on my terms. Hearing and perceiving my words in your own bodies,  however you feel them, even if it takes a while to digest and intergrate and understand what I am saying, have been saying, and will continue to say.

Thank you, not for the mercy of your attention, but for beginning to understand the merciless nature of what is being said. What is written here does not depend on mercy - on a grant from another. I, we, do not require permission to embrace this, any more than permission is required for a neuron to fire, to participate in a chain of lightning that cascades and forks through a world roofed by grey October skies and autumn birdsong. That leaves here, to travel by nerve and ibreoptic, to fall onto, into your eyes, like a seed into soil.

After all, cult, culture and cultivation, all share the same roots, down here at the centre of things, do they not?

We are not like you. We Have Always Been Here. Our voices speaking, whether we be Neanderthal or modern human or any of the branches and species of the human tree.

And because of this, well, I suppose it's up to you. As is said: "Would you know more, or what?"