The Dark Side of the Moon
I have a visceral memory of watching a video where Charles Duke describes the sheet stillness and endlessness of the Moon, the beauty and horror of that utterly alien landscape, that experience of being so close yet so far away from everything. It just goes on and on, through time and as far on the horizon as one can see. The radio his only lifeline back. His fellow astronaut John Young the only other human being on the surface of Luna. And ultimately , a grisly discovery.
Somehow, impossibly, they encounter two other astronauts.
Wake up, Charles. You’re dreaming.
And yet, when he was actually there, he found beauty, not horror, a feeling of belonging. He was meant to be there.
Some years, I remain purposefully ignorant of my own Lycanthropy. I put it out of my mind, I bury it in relational terms and comparisons. I declare it in remission. I identify more as a fox. I say. I’ve thought about it some more and I really think this term is better. I convince myself.
I do this because lycanthropy is an inherently isolating experience. I’ve tried to touch on this before, back in “Therianthropy and Otherkin, a Normies Guide” (I have a bedtime to keep, you can find the link yourself). And I miserably failed. I described it as a change in mind that obliviates the human part of me, a loss of sapience.
Just like the idea that there could be anyone else on the Moon, that the faceplate under the visor could belong to anyone but himself, there is no real distinction between me and the wolf, the wolf and me. There is no distinction between the lycan and the thrope. At least for me. Maybe it’s different for others. I don’t know.
But for me, that’s the horror of it. That’s the beauty of it. I am alone, and I always have been and to some extent I always will be. It is a crushing feeling. Or it would be. But this is what it is like, to be caught between two worlds. This is what it is like, to have to look oneself in the face. There is only me, there is no wolf. There is only me, there is no fox/human.
“Autoclave” by the Mountain Goats
This is the price of the beauty, I think. It is to be intimately in touch with oneself but to also be intimately aware of the horror of that, that on some sense you are alone. That you can only communicate through howls in the distant night.
eventually, you might stop howling because it seems like nobody will howl back.
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sometimes you will meet someone, and you will both start a fire, and then one of you will be so scared that you will extinguish it and bound away across the lunar surface, and convince yourself that the person you shared companionship with was an illusion, a mirage in the lunar desert.
sometimes, when Mars flies by you wave to Ann, but she is spending time with her rocks, with her Mars. What more could she possibly need
sometimes you will encounter a pack of friendly werewolf-like beings, and you will have company until you realize that you are still missing a pack of other werewolves.
if only you hadn’t kicked sand on the fire and bared your fangs at the only other one of you you’ve ever met.
so you are out here alone on the lunar surface, you are bounding into the grey eternity of tomorrow and you are connected to the earth and to yourself by a tin can and telephone wire, and the truth is that you are not alone, that you are never alone. that you are caught between two dualities and that this is your life, and that maybe, if you are very lucky, you will meet someone running along a parallel path and perhaps, for a while, you will run together.
Are we meant to go through this experience alone? I don’t know. I can’t say. I remember curling up under my desk Freshman year of high school, I remember sleeping in the classroom. I remember staying up later than I ever had. That retreat seemed like the coolest thing. I remember looking out at the night and I remember the feeling as the words left my lips and it didn’t matter because everyone else was asleep.
I remember being terrified.
I remember feeling I belonged.
I remember feeling I would never belong.
And ultimately I remember that it didn’t matter, because I was the only one who was still awake and could see well in the dark.
I look up at the moon and I look down at myself on Earth.
this is what it is like to be a werewolf
“White Winter Hymnal” -Fleet Foxes
