Temperance
Letting my writing mind warm up after a long period of disuse.
It's been a long run up to this point. I can't bow out just yet.
I've learned to curtail my hubris ever so slightly, and I've learned to hold my ideals tight, but to carefully assess.
The fantasy utopias we dream up have a dark anti-side like a capsizing boat, and it's crucial that we understand why we make the move we do, and wish the wishes we wish.
I've ascertained that I bear a grudge for human pride, an realize that I have a blind spot.
The idea of old was to kneel before a form I adored, and to sink wholly into it, becoming at home as some whiskered, padfooted alien.
The idea of old was to be as simple as a babe, and just sleep in primal urges at last.
But I went through a gauntlet of hallucinations, pain, and scarcity, to get to the conclusion, that I am already the beast I seek to become, and that this beast requires grooming.
I am an unruly mess of late, ill from confinement and isolation, sleepless with agitation from machines.
How I would love to howl at the moon, completely naked--a tailed beast with a keen but slight countenance.
But even magic foxes must concern themselves with meals and safety, shelter and sanity...
Health has become a greater concern for me... I've ingrained many self-destructive patterns into my being, out of the attitude of awaiting an apocalyptic moment of explosive change.
I had hoped that a tidal wave of magic would whisk me away to a new form and calling, a new world, and a new chance.
But I have been reckless, foolish. I should not cast away the chance at a good human life, simply because I crave to masquerade on two legs, in a living wrapper of canine hide.
For one thing, I prefer cartoon wildlife to the real thing, starving and stinking up the road as corpses...
Sometimes I think: "The idealized world of the transformed human, that you seek to live on dopamine and serotonin, and this cynical, solid world of gristle and adrenaline, they do not look alike."
I'll confess I'd pass on looking like one of the dogs I see every day, in this place. Commissioned cartoons paint a more pleasing visual.
...still, I don't quite feel right abandoning that fantasy.
I still feel the most euphoric satisfaction sometimes, when my mind plays tricks on me, and I am flung into an ulterior realm, sporting a wagging tail, and shreds of human clothing--mere vestiges of my man-soul left, awaiting eagerly my full rebirth into that mental realm.
It doesn't feel like madness. More like I found a backdoor in reality, into the life I should be living.
Guess I should toughen up, and see what I can do in this gristle-land, and await the next shift into the daemon world, where I'm a horned vixen in maid's garments, regurgitating tendrils and cavorting before unearthly beings that seek to guide me to family.
...I wonder if I belong in this place--sometimes I feel like an object that's being wedged into a gap too tight--a key that doesn't quite fit the lock it's being inserted into.
I like the idea of growing stronger in this world by approaching responsibility and duty, but at the same time... it's exhausting... that other realm feels restorative, even self-perpetuating and transcendental, by contrast.
I wonder if this is simply the workings of neurotransmitters and neurons firing, or something more.
I guess it would be a convenient bias to cling to, to just assume magic in the world. Perhaps I should keep this discovery behind tighter lips, and play the part of any other being in this world, just for the fun of keeping it secret, that I walk in dreams, knowing I am dreaming.
I'd better not spin it so much that I get poor bystanders overly excited or scared... I'm already bad enough about that, as is.
Anyways, enough musings. Let whoever finds this diary, find it.