Greenstorm's Journal

Every election a different group of people turns into preppers, as if social support and the standard of living isn't drifting downwards so slowly the whole time.

There's so much I feel I can't say to folks around this: how exactly their responses echo the other side's responses on my off-grid etc groups four years ago, what access to medical care and standard of living and stability during climate events looks like over time, the complete symmetry in discussions on how to protect oneself from the other side.

I just removed the "" from the other side. It's like twisting a ripe peach with your hands and it comes apart into two halves and the pit pops out.

Someone on a local group -- in Canada -- just posted that they couldn't get a family doctor or dermatologist appointment in a reasonable time, and did anyone have tips for handling some skin issue. Everyone did have tips: keto, gut health, essential oils, various potions and amulets. Again I think about how if you can't personally access the benefit of something you need a reason why it's not really a banafit, you need to justify in your own head that it's better this way-- or if you don't, I would imagine that's when the torches come out? I've never seen that happen.

Even in myself, when I wait for a specialists appointment for long months to years, I begin to think that surely they couldn't do that much anyhow. Which is, of course, ascientific. But the feeling is there.

Everything was ultra muddy yesterday and the day before, things had thawed. I put down woodchips since I had access to them, though that means I need to keep the geese off long enough to establish a vegetation cover or it'll just break down into soil and more mud.

Last night it froze. I still need to plant my variety of sunchokes that I got from a semi-local tiny shop, one of these people who posts a couple videos on youtube of their garden and collects rare things. I ended up with skorospelka, stampede, red fuseau, clearwater, corlis bolton haynes, and beaver valley. May have to break through a frozen crust to get them in.

The peonies are in, and a ton of bulbs. This long slow fall has been a blessing for my body and my hope as I was able to put a little in the ground at a time for so long.

Assuming I achieve some sort of stable financial situation where I'm not doing paperwork all the time-all the time, I'm curious about whether I can write poetry still. My mind is so different from what it was, but poetry still feels like a mother tongue. It's just that my tongue is more often feeling silent these days, replaced by the experience at the inside of my eyes. Either way, these are times that call for poets and I feel the call, whether or not I can answeer.

Two moments from the last few days that require some observation:

One of the willow volunteers does a ton of physical outdoorsy sportsy stuff in his free time: climbing, snowshoeing, hiking, etc. It's been suggested to me that he handles his emotions by doing a ton of physical stuff (like my mom) though this is the first time I met him. He also has a lot of charisma, and it's funny because his charisma was 100% similar to mine in the way it operated: that sort of warm attentive twinkle, the sense of focus, the type of question, the type of approval offered. I know a couple people who operate like that and it's always odd to be on the other side. He was also trying to make eye contact and I was doing the ultra-autistic zero eye contact. I make eye contact to ramp up intimacy, and he was already doing attentive intimacy so it would have felt super odd to meet his eyes in that situation. This is not someone I'm interested in going there with.

This morning I heard someone shouting so I ambled outside. I have a neighbour two down who has a pair of absolutely magnificent guardian-breed dogs (I don't know what breed specifically, maybe pyrenees, but the size, coat, colouring, and carriage are unmistakable). He's had them for maybe a year, or almost a year, and they're always immaculately groomed and he's constantly walking them and working on either boundary training or invisible fence training with them, they seem incredibly well taken care of. I was therefore surprised when one of the dogs was, in true guardian fashion, standing at the edge of his property looking down the road and the owner was repeatedly yelling at him to come back, sounding upset/angry. The other dog was, also in true guardian fashion, ambling back towards his owner.

I did a lot of research on guardian breeds and a lot of research on training when I got my pups. It was all just words until we spent some time together, at which point it became so ingrained into me that I don't think about it anymore.

Guardian breeds have a job. They know their job, and they have moral certainty that they should do it and do it well. They're smart, determined, problem-solving, and driven. They're also generally very confident, to different levels based somewhat on breed (independent vs partnered-with-humans workers) and somewhat on personality. Trying to make them not-guard when they think there's a problem is setting everyone involved up for trouble and conflict both external and internal. LGDs can often be convinced (by a trusted person) that something is safe and doesn't need to be guarded against, but they can't be convinced to respond without thinking in the same way that so many other dogs can. They're always evaluating the best way to do their job. Thea has come to get me when there was a wolf she couldn't handle. Avallu has slowly learned I'd prefer he get me if there are humans at the gate, instead of feeling like he has to deal with it himself (Tornjaks are one of the more people-oriented LGD breeds).

Plus, dog training isn't separate from life. Every thing I do is feedback for my dogs, and likewise everything they do is feedback for me. Training isn't about forcing them to do something, disciplining them if they don't, or imposing my will on them. It's just figuring out the most effective interspecies communication, and making sure that my behaviour consistently aligns their interests with mine.

So to come back to the neighbour and a bit of foreboding I had: my dogs really like to mark right outside my gate, so when I open my gate to drive the truck in they go out. At first they would run down the road, I'd call them (Avallu is moderately deaf, so I'd sign to him, but he's also more headstrong) they would keep running down the road to clear and mark the area (because disincentivizing things they're guarding against is best done further away, it's safer from their POV), I'd go get them, bring them in, and ignore them because they'd done the bad thing of running too far. This was not working for anyone. I'd read that every recall is a training session, and that dogs won't come to someone who primarily yells at them, but at some point it clicked. Instead of ignoring them when I got them back in, I had a little hug-and-pet party with them. Now as soon as the motor turns off on the truck they run back and find me for hugs, after having done close-by marking as I pull in. I'd changed from a disciplinary mindset to a teamwork mindset and it made a huge quality-of-life difference to everyone.

That's why I feel a little uneasy when I hear my neighbour yelling at his pups for recall. This is the first time I've heard that, but: they're coming up on the big shift that happens around 2, when their guardian instincts kick in and they become more independent. They are never going to be a dog like a herding dog which lives to instantly obey: they will always think it through first. There are two of them and they probably almost outweigh him individually: these aren't dogs that can be physically controlled or disciplined (not that any dog should be physically disciplined, eep). They can also be very dangerous dogs. So I hope he sorts out a good way to communicate with them, and also that they don't, for instance decide to guard his home from other humans. I am wishing him the best of luck, they are glorious dogs.

Kinda speaking of dating, a PDA friend of mine on the internet uses this as a dating screen question: "if this doesn't work out and I'm not feeling it a couple weeks or months in, how would you prefer I let you know?"

He says it's the magic question for him.

I'm currently incredibly frustrated by the number of close people who seem totally puzzled by the question "what response would you like, or do you expect, from this communication" in my life right now. I bet that magic question would have weeded them out.

Those basic concepts: communication exists to serve a purpose; people have different purposes for different communications; the person you're communicating with can use cues but can't really know what you want out of the experience if you don't tell them; you will probably not be happy with every type of possible response; some sort of mindfulness when interacting with other humans. They're not rocket science, right?

Right?

I was talking to my therapist today and proposed what felt like a super transgressive thought: I could ask people what they wanted from a communication, and if they went all blank-eyed and refused to answer I could just tell them to give me a shout when they figured it out and go do something else with my life. This feels mean and incorrect, right? As if it crosses the line between screening folks out and being mean to them?

I think I'm in the prickly part of my pill-muffled cycle.

But also I think I'll put that question beside what do you like about yourself? which is the most heartbreaking thing to ask people on dating apps, as a good screen for people who might be suitable for me. Since do you have self-esteem? and are you capable of day-to-day functional introspection? are unlikely to get useful answers.

You've flipped it. It used to be that you huddled in community against the big bad dark forces of nature. Now you imagine we can huddle in the safe embrace of nurturing simple nature against your forsaken communities.

You are in for a shock.

Since you're human you're probably also in for a pendulum swing, probably to bemoaning the destructive forces of climate. When you come from the city you're used to having humans, usually just one or two, to blame. The landlord did this. The other driver did that. If only he hadn't been elected all would be well. You don't believe humans to be part of the natural order so you don't relate to humans as a natural system.

When you go to the country you bring your sense of blame. If only that storm hadn't taken down the power (or if only those damn humans had built an uninterruptible power grid). If only it hadn't got so hot that day. If only the well hadn't dried up.

When you go to the country we bring your sense of entitlement, the world should be there to serve you. It fails to do so. It rains twice on our picnic and dries up when your garden is thirsty. The trees are in the wrong place and the ants eat your structural beams. Unbidden also it serves you a gorgeous rainbow with your breakfast and a patch of ripe, improbably huge berries in the evening and sends the perfect cool breeze across your skin.

If you leave community because lack of control over humans scares you, because human behaviours feel like a runaway train over which you have no control, I have bad news for you about nature. Nothing there is designed for you; you merely can live within it if you learn to accommodate and band together with other people. If you observe very closely and learn very well you may be able to steer with a tremendous amount of work.

In the city it's easy to forget that food and water are prone both to great abundance and to great scarcity. It's easy to forget that trees both grow fruit and fall-- fall across your driveway and where are you without a chainsaw then? You're used to being able to plug in an air conditioner, flood another valley for electricity, and channel that power into surviving the summer heat with maybe only a second thought.

For all your wailing about climate these days none of that has changed.