Social Media and Self Responsible Action. May 21st 2025

Over the last few years I have been experimenting with new ways of managing my creativity and balance with things like daily physical needs, household needs and a 9-5 full time, all coupled with some aforementioned struggles with health and managing those conditions.

It can seem a gargantuan task to get from bed to shower to car to work and back some days. I sometimes feel that just those simple actions are all I can give.

But as I hone my skills and simplify my approaches, it has uncluttered my mind and freed up my spirit to recognize some very glaring “Parasites” in my daily life.

These parasites not only affect my time and sense of self, they affect my relationships, my creativity, my spirit and even the planet I inhabit.

Mammals are generally very good at identifying threats and at avoiding and escaping them….usually. My species though, has done something strange enough that it has become difficult to describe what it we have done that puts us in danger.

Through a desire for ease, efficiency, comfort and convenience we have crafted systems that adjudicate our problems and threats into nebulous and less clear distillations.

We no longer are able to clearly see “what” the problem or dangers are, in our society and day to day lives.

Working a full time position, dealing with medical, financial, home life and social stresses are the usual suspects and easy enough to identify, but all the while we are also being completely consumed with vague and poorly focused entities like: advertising, social media, product, social expectations, stress, work life balance, television, smartphones and their host off apps and distrations, politics, religion…the list goes on and ranges from wildly huge concepts to deceptively small ones….like sitting here at my desk job blogging on a 15 min. break…..it all just becomes noise and we suddenly loose track of these “dangers” because they don’t come at us from out of the darkness with claws and teeth and knives anymore….no, now our dangers are those we are not completely aware we permit...We may be slightly aware, but we don’t understand the full scope of these parasitic and constant entities, try going anywhere “societal” and not being emotional manipulated or sold something. Maybe we don’t think we have a choice, or maybe we think “That’s just how things are now”, maybe we truly have no scope of those secret forces that are stealing from us because we are so deeply mired in them and the stress, the sickness the fear that they create.

I can only speak for myself, but when I began to recognize some of these dangers and parasites, the masks that concealed so many other false needs and parasites slowly started to fall away. It was shocking how many of these “masked” perils surrounded me that I had simply complied with over years of being worn down by them and allowing them. But why had I allowed them? Why had I not seen them before? Because they are purposefully and insidiously designed to create a sense of dependency and compliance from us while integrating, manipulating and diffusing into our self made systems with little friction.

A perfect example of this is social media.

In recent years I took a retreat from “socials”, I left the big three of social media after severe spiritual and mental burn out. Their algorithms and campaigns, propaganda and political leanings, scams, spams, creeps, sellers, users, abusers and outrage engines along with the monumental “doom scroll” all became a little too clear a “danger” to me, so I left. It was difficult, I had quite a good base of followers, nice online galleries and connections, but I gave my farewell post...and pulled the plug. Soon after, my creativity and life/ spiritual activity soared, it was phenomenal how much ground I covered in the season. However I soon found myself wanting that old poison of validation and praise, I tried to set out on the then invite only and much smaller scale blue-sky, I missed engaging with peers and audience, friends from afar, and yes ,I missed the dopamine of “I like your work”.

The problem is, if it’s built like a leech, it might just work like the leech it was built like.

I started to realize just how much of my time was absentmindedly spent with my phone in my hand, if we were driving and I was passenger side, I was checking socials and sites, emails, watching videos etc.

family gathering? On the phone.

Feeling awkward in a place? On the phone.

Conversation drifting away from me at a friends gathering? On the phone.

Bored with a movie? On the phone.

At the park but anxious? On the phone.

Vacations, events, at work, before bed, in the bathroom, upon waking up, sitting on thwe edge of the shower, …..while I was supposed to be writing or painting…at the altars..if I needed to distract myself from my own thoughts...my fears….it never stopped. It knew exactly how to get me.

I usually made excuses like” well I’m talking with friends!” or worse, the lie “It’s for my art!” “It’s so I can stay connected to my community”….But I wasn’t making art and I had never felt so utterly lost and alone.

That’s what it was engineered to do, make you think you are doing things…while it injects you with anger, outrage, fear, manipulation, huge highs and devastating lows...it can make you think you are changing the world, or that the world is utterly against you...and it’s all false to some degree, all manufactured, so that when you hit those lows, you come crawling back to it, maybe to post something about how terrible you feel. In fact though they do their own work with ads and algorithms and systems, they actually rely on us.. each other, ourselves….to deal the addictive cyclical damage...Why work hard to snare emotions and attentions when we will fill in the blanks ourselves and keep the fear, anger and excitement flowing. If you’re afraid, if you’re upset, your wallet and your time are loose, cheap and they literally Factually profit off of both.

Refreshing a feed and checking DMs or scrolling are not “action” for all the sickening hours I gave to it

I am no richer.

The concept of social media may have started off as a way to connect, but I found myself feeling powerfully alone BECAUSE of social media and its strange tendrils of expectation.

I go out in nature, I want to post about it, but why? Am I really celebrating my time out there? Or is there an ego mark attached to it? And if so what is pleasing about stroking that ego mark? Who am I trying to impress? What am I trying to prove? So often my posts and reactions did not stem from a genuinely understood place, they stemmed from a “desire” for some sort of point proving, or point receiving system. I wanted to post things so I could either be validated in my doing of them or to get kudos for doing them or to reinforce my place in whatever area I was attempting to make my “mark” in…. “To make sure everyone on here knows “THIS” is what I’m all about” etc.

In truth,

you are being scrolled passed by people just like you,

people trying to be the reason you stop scrolling.

The profiteers of the social industry realize that and capitalize on it.

manipulation and subversive tactics are used to drive attention back to the platforms so that its users are on it.

To the point its not thought about, maybe it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

Then when there is enough capitol and power, once they have enough of us these parasitic entities branch out.

Search engines, other social media platforms, marketplaces, sharing apps, dating apps, website hosts they even move off the web to infiltrate political institutions, courthouses and our laws. The public facilities are on facebook, the church is on insta and twitter is in the whitehouse.

The pool grows smaller and smaller until the ecosystem is completely poisoned and controlled by a handful of profit makers

Throw in now, the absolute chaos of AI, the strange world of content farming, bootlegging, shovelware (in any media genre now), drop shipping and general non transparency/ brokenness of the internet and its a complete poison playground. Booming Trends like short videos/ memes where an armchair expert asks “did you know?” and then rapid fires half truths, falsehoods or skewed information often while a funny or purposefully bizarre clip is played with a witty song to accompany it...is an example of the sort of “nebulous misinformation” that poses a danger to us.

Go on any of the major websites today and it becomes quite clear with any search result pull

just how beyond the pale and systemically manipulative/ broken the internet has become.

But I submerge myself in this mire, I sell so much of my time to it that I begin to think like it

begin to sound like it, I mimic a processed me fed back to me.

Such is the tricks of AI as well.

I have worked with art most of my life. A few years ago when AI generated images began to creep up I explained to my family how AI images are not “art” but a tool, and how AI, if used irresponsibly can be incredibly unhealthy. I asked them not to share AI images and taught them how to spot them.

At first there was shock, “This is strange and horrifying” there were apologies when they were sent accidentally, an “oops! Is that...I can’t tell?? WOW that’s crazy...It’s getting scary good” Cut to a few years later and they fully disregard my requests not to share AI images with me and generate images purposefully.

They send them to me,

they don’t care, and many days I don’t care enough to protest.

Their capacity to care is broken, and so mine becomes broken in time.

This is how it gets us, how it has been getting us.

We keep our eyes glued to the screen-the screen shows us family and friends-the screen shows us art and nature and animals-just beyond the screen, the forests are cleared-the animals die in droves-art and quality works are lost-and we are alone, with our smartphone, our tablet.

The internet and social acceptability/ stress has snuck in and phantomly broken us.

When confronted with it, it’s much easier to say “there are more pressing things in my life to worry about than this, sorry” and in that, and so many other ways, our “dangers” these misty nebulous parasites “win”.

They win the same way the corporations and stores and bastards that profit off the destruction of the earth “win” they provide us with a “fix” when we worry about it, they tell us, frankly...”Don’t worry about it, there are bigger more important problems at hand...you’ve got too much going on….you can’t handle that...not right now...not with all this, besides there will be time...but for now, look at this, maybe buy it, you’ll feel better .

These parasites make us slower, they make us blind, less able, less aware. It makes sense that these sort of things are able to sneak up, get so close and take us down in broad daylight while everyone else of our species sits there at the proverbial watering hole and just lets it happen, we aren’t shocked.

It’s similar to the reason that were complacent to the earths death

we don’t see it as IMMEDIATELY painful, disadvantageous or present in the room.

These predators are effective most frighteningly because the damage is allowed, much of it we are helped to design and thus hand tailor a perfect parasite and its by choice, a choice we don’t realize we make every day in hundreds of small ways.

we do it to ourselves

we do it to our planet

we comply

we make excuse after excuse

“My one effort won’t matter”

“If I can successfully blame something evil, I am absolved of responsibility”

Social media lives on excuses...

“I don’t have anything better to do in this hell”

“All my “friends” are on it”

“How else will I share my art”

“How else will I stay connected to my community”

“I’m just too stressed and it distracts me”
I’ve found stepping away brings a sense of freedom but also dread, because as I wake up to my self and world around me, I also become aware of how ensnared socially we all are to it and a rift can be felt.

I have left in the past and come crawling back, I am aware of how insidious and how much of my time and life it takes.

So how will I navigate it all?

I am not leaving it completely, this is a sharp contrast perhaps to the tone of this writing...good. Easy answers are an internet staple...be done with them.

In the past when I hit these points of realization, I would burn every account and messenger and gallery and disappear for months.

I recognize that this method always made me come back and as bad as I’ve painted it (because it is that bad) social media and the internet unfortunately or fortunately are integral to some extent to modern life as I live it. Social media does give an opportunity to reach other people I’d not normally be able to, to share my work to a larger audience and to participate in events and have some connections. However, setting up a minimal allowance of exposure based on necessity is the recipe.

It will be hard work, and without hard work, it will fail, but if I am going to use it, I have to use it responsibly, stay aware of its dangers and be the one in control of it and limit its influence by refusing to give it my time.

So I’m keeping the door open but leaving the room.

I’m leaving the phone in the bedroom if I’m painting.

I’m turning it off and leaving it out of the room with the altars.

I’m turning off notifications, e-mails, deleting homescreen apps, logging out of accounts etc. etc.

and yes, a few accounts did go, but I’m not going scorched earth.

Why is that stressful? Because I can go back into the room at any time…..and I still want to.

Since I was a teenager the internet has always been THE platform for art, sexual expression and sharing interests with friends, it was where I’d go to post my work and since the early days a huge motivator for my work and sharing it has been positive feedback given on the internet: a like, a comment, a share a follower...

all those dopamine things

But whats the worth? Especially if the work is not being done as I hunt for those dopamine things?

If I was no longer able to share on the internet would I loose my will to create? Where can I garner a sense of worth that stems from myself and the act of creating the work solely? With sharing and its motivations only acting as a secondary and non essential but pleasant aside? That is what I will be exploring during this time.

I will still be “uploading” work on social media, but my main focus will be on this, my personal website. The goal with social media is to “post and RUN!” don’t wait around for a like, a follow, a share or a DM...because the trap is set like this….I make my work, I wait for those things and then while waiting I see things on the feed that anger, worry, excite and distract me, sometimes for hours, sometimes the anger and worry is so extreme I have a “bad day” and a “bad day” often results in no life activities, no creativity and this is not ok.

Time spent on social media builds phantom ideas and people, you get these fake people in your head that don’t really exist and you play the comparison game with them, some control their persona so you end up comparing yourself to a false facade. The act of comparing the worth of my work to what I see on the internet, the act of longing for the friendships and freedoms and opportunities I think I see on the internet, is comparing myself to a mirage built in my own head.

Steeping in it constantly I get influenced by all of it, emotionally, politically, socially, spiritually, mentally, physically (my back has hurt from inactivity hunched over the device)

It’s not a good thing, and I’ve chosen to leave it as much as I possibly can. This is the last I’ll be writing on social media for awhile. I have better things to put my time to now!

~Brotherrat

The dark nimbus, the rosary of unknowing

The I an animal:

For so long have I been dominated by fear, placed in there, in the marrow ,by systemic poisons.

Poured cup to cup, through the leaking vaults of years.

Formed from the offal of violence, into this writhing, pained and wrathful thing...

it is still living.

Its name was my mothers religion, my fathers laws.

There in the churches was I offered up to this virus light.

My young animal heart wanted nothing of it, but it was given my blood.

Through my lips, for many a year came its voice and in time the thoughts of my very heart could not be distinguished from the voice of this god.

I was lost in the buzzing, itching glory, blind and wet.

Fear ruled, judgement, hate, violence, but above all fear.

That fear, that virus still dully aches and burns in my animal blood, even now, it aches tonight.

But at its zenith, a small rat came sneaking in through my own souls shadow, rather, the soul of souls, refined and compressed called itself rat.

Rat called himself then out of that light.

I fled as rat then through the maze, the labyrinth we all run.

And run I do, towards wolfs open jaws.

The further I run, I can better make out the shape of my own paws, my own tail becomes more familiar.

I can feel the air in my fur and smell the paths, my own body too has its smells.

I can hear my breathing and our heartbeat.

I stop from time to time and ask the rat "How ever did we escape?"

At times I can see his mouth moving, but cannot hear him over the great buzz of that light called by so many names, society and religion and law and expectation and self limitation and fear! Oh for fear so often can I not hear him!

When I did hear him at length, this is what he said to himself in the shadows:

"There is assurance, there is comfort, there is ease and meaning and systems in "knowing": Blessed Assurance, curse of slumbering and eater-consumer of this world. "knowing" is the nothing and so I have given you this black circlet, dark nimbus. Here your very name be etched, for this is your Creed:

No knowing has ever been. No knowing is there. No knowing will there ever be.

We live by this darkness, only in its concealment may we move free of that blinding light. Of that light is born all confusion and disagreement and malice and stopping. Come now over into lunar night, silence immaculate. They have said "If it were not so, I would have told you" " I tell you here above all else, we do not know how we escaped, we do not know where we go to, nor do we know why or truly from where. In the concerning or obsession of such things lies fear and the stopping. Now "marveling" and 'the wonder" are of the sacred night, but the desire for truth as power and correctness as authority and knowing as absolutism are of the harming light. If a man says "I know nothing" he says he knows that he knows nothing and it falls again to falsehood. There is no grasping this thing that I have given you, you will never know it. As we write this, there are languages that fail, for they pertain to a "knowing", this I can only muster: "Take you a rosary from some strange, tiresome and overwhelming place, imbue in it all confusion and confounding and unknowing and letting go, give it no prayer, attribute to it no structures or steps, only hold it as an object in you hand. Let all thoughts and worries and fears and places you so firmly stand and answers you desperately desire and all that you think you know and all manner of thinking and emotion pass into it and dissolve there before you, no matter how precious or horrifying, let them dissolve there and pass into darkness, and sigh. Do not stop to think on them, pass them by. Bring your great questions to this trinket and let them pass as though some unremarkable thing seen out the peripheral. The rosary of the unknowing, at my altar you may find it and through it, the only glimpse of this halo of unknowing. This is adaptation, this is running a maze on instinct, this is walking and walking still. This is not to learn, for is there any learning it? can the mind be put to such a task? No, only the body and soul may manifest such a mystery, it is either the deepest pit, full of wailing and no light and panicked falling. Or, it is the lightest thing, easily taken unceremoniously from here to there, yet stepping through it brings a new path to walk."

Exploration without taxonomy. Rats heard but not seen.

Squeak.

Health Update Jan.7 2025

Jan. 7th, 2025:

We just left the Cardiac Surgeon, my assumption was that I'd be scheduled for another round of imaging in six months and be given a rough estimate of when we might be looking at surgery. The surgeon went over all the results and was extremely pleased with the BP readings, weight loss and 8 months of being both nicotine and alcohol free, the extremely low sodium diet and clean eating switch. He said that he had looked over the latest imaging and measurements and recommended a follow up in two years. I was completely shocked. He said the progress made and the valve in my heart and overall heart health looked good and instructed me to keep up with everything and gave me some further guidelines, mostly to tell other doctors or surgeons should something need to be done and said to refer them to his office if they needed more info or if I was worried. Essentially he said "Your heart valve is a little different, its been that way since you were born and the enlargement is a result of that, it puts you at risk and we have to monitor that risk, but it could be possible that you may never need any sort of surgery" I asked him so many questions and he answered them. He told me to stop taking my BP 2x daily and said to do it 2x weekly, said essentially we want to watch, but that I am a "regular guy" and to take it easy, there were people in his own family with my condition and that he saw no reason for such frequent imaging based on the results. Me and my husband cried in the car, it feels like an entire year of having a gun to my forehead just flashed by us. I still have a lot of work to do to maintain and fight, but going from "see you in another six months so we can see when this serious surgery will be" to "see you in two years, keep up the good work, possibilities have opened up and you may not need it soon possibly at all but we are going to watch it and see" is so huge. I told my mom and dad and was so happy to finally be able to give them some reassuring news. It felt like the first time I could catch my breath in a year. While I'm not out of the woods and there are still a lot of things that will never be the same and a lot of hard work to do, for the first time I caught myself thinking about my future without a solid caveat.

Here is where my "New Year" starts. Cheers! And an unbelievable amount of gratitude and love to my husband, my family, my furry friends and community and to a rat and badger whom without, I'd be lost completely. Lets start some work!

A Rat at Texas Furry Siesta! 2024

We left early friday morning for the train station, we decided to take the train instead of driving to the con for a few reasons: One, it's better for the environment and two, fuck driving through Dallas.....Fuck it.

We weren't delayed as much as the year prior. The train ride up was peaceful, passing through small towns and weaving in and out of deep pine forest patches. The light was odly golden coming in through the small train windows of our room, and as Emma Ruth Rundle gently played over my headphones, as the shadows of trees flicked in and out and the train rocked steadily on, I began to doze off.
Waking up to a knock on the door as one of the train attendants asked if we wanted breakfast and informed us he'd made coffee, I took the opportunity to stretch my legs and make a cup.
The feeling, as I sat there across from my husband, sipping my coffee after my nap, was one of peace and much needed rest.
The year has been a difficult one to say the least. Planning a trip to Europe that took all of our PTO, money and energy, dealing with difficult changes and challenges at our jobs, moving out of a damaged and constantly flooding apartment, odd illnesses and health issues landing me in the ER twice the second of which revealed a serious diagnosis that suddenly activated quite a lot of severe life changes for us. We suddenly had to adopt extreme low sodium dieting, less sugar, less fat and oil, which meant our normal hang outs and date nights were toast, it was cooking at home and eating things like raw fruits and veggies from then on. we had begun exercising on a regular basis, which as anyone who has to do it will tell you is difficult starting from scratch while trying to work a 9-5 full time and keeping hobbies going. taking blood pressure twice a day and tracking everything I ate with an app. doctors apt, meds, and lots and lots of panic attacks. I went from 230 lbs to 173 lbs, went from a casual drinker to no alcohol except on special occasions i.e. in three months I'd probably have about 30 beers and a few glasses of wine here there, in the last three months I've had 3 tiny glasses of wine. One at my sister's proposal, one at my first gay bar and one at a celebratory dinner with friends. from the night of the diagnosis I spit out my nicotine gum I was chewing and have had nothing nicotine related since that day. Quitting cold turkey left me in cold sweats on the bathroom floor. telling my husband and my family about my diagnosis was difficult and scary, we just had no idea what it meant at the time. We have a better idea now and have made tons of progress, but to say it isn't heavily weighing on me would be a lie. I was tired, it felt like the trip, the move and the diagnosis were all catching up with me on that train. but it wasn't fear I was consumed with for once, it felt more acceptance and the beginning of knowledge and release. Like I said, it felt strangely peaceful and with so much panic and cold fear in my life leading up to that point, it felt like the light flitting in through the dirty train windows was healing. The coffee was healing, and where I was going, was going to be healing.

We arrived in Dallas outside the Hyatt Regency at about 12:00 in the afternoon, exited the train and immediately went into the underground where the hotel the con is held at has a door you can be buzzed into from.

I was excited to be back, I really only get to see furries other than my own reflection and my husband once a year, and this was that time. The first sign that we had arrived in the right place was the icy air that hit us as we were buzzed in from the underground and then suddenly passing folks in pup hoods, the excitement built.
As we checked in, the first fursuits were seen as suiters milled about the lobby, and I sighed, it literally felt like relief, just to be there, to have made it to this place and to be among my people....animals.
A quick elevator trip up and we found our room had a great view of the city and was in a nice little corner of the floor where you could overlook the railing and see down all the way to the lounge/bar below on the second floor.
We unpacked and rested for a bit. Rolling straight out of a full work week, cramming all our days off together to make the trip work had left us exhausted, happy, but exhausted.
After freshening up a bit, we headed back down and to registration. It was quick and the folks were friendly as always, it's always exciting to see my "BrotherRat" moniker printed on a new tag, the ones this year were very nice looking.
With badges clipped to our shirt we headed to do our first peek into Dealers Den, we knew we werent going to be attending or getting up to much on friday evening, so we grabbed a comic each ( I picked up Orens Forge vol.1) and a few snacks from "Delicious Doom" and "Wolfe Sweet Treats."
After scurrying off with our goody bags, we quickly checked in on the game room and then headed back up to the room where we relaxed for a bit and napped.
By the late evening the itch to get suited up was becoming too much so I transformed myself into my rat self and headed back down. Being Ben is magic, it's hard to explain, but being him is a freedom not easy to come by in daily life. Walking about as my rat self in a huge space with so many others who are out and about as THEIR animal selves is so intensely special and as tired as I was, I could feel that specialness deeply. We walked back down to the dealer's den and bought a little fan to put in my tiny rat mouth to help keep me cool and then headed next door to play Galaga and pinball in the game room.
We took some photos with a little stuffed alligator that was set up in a photo shoot booth and then headed back upstairs to change and get ready for dinner.
Eating on a sodium restricted diet while on a trip is challenging. We brought food and snacks just in case there were no options for me, but you WANT to eat at the restaurants! It's part of a trip! Though that isn't always possible and that is OK, the Hyatt Regency in Dallas came through in spades. We ended up at a second floor restaurant where they were able to cook me a plain piece of salmon on a fresh salad with sodium free dressing. It was awesome to get to sit there and eat and not have to worry over how much sodium was in a dish and how much of it I could eat. The staff was so sweet and I can't thank them enough for making that a possibility for me.
After dinner we ended the night and slept in the next day, exhausted is a mild word, this felt like European jet lag again that night.
The next day started with a breakfast of fresh fruits and a bit of yogurt and then back to the dealer's den to make our yearly book shopping pilgrimage, support the artists and makers and see what all was new. Then it was back into suit and going to rat about in the game room, where we met up with a few new friends, chatted for a bit and then I continued to "rat" after we parted.
The con ends twice for me. The first time is when I know I'm taking my suit off for the last time while there. Before we headed to the room to do that, I let it all wash over me as we walked about the hotel. Just being there, among so many people who had come together for similar reasons, the love of this fandom, the love of anthropomorphic animals. A queer positive space where I could be an openly gay man, where I could hold my husband's hand and not be afraid. Where diversity is celebrated. The LGBTQA visibility at TFS is always healing, this part of the country can be tough on our community and getting to see so many people get to be themselves and be out and proud and not worried....it's an energy I can't take for granted. It humbles and fills me every single time. On top of all these feelings, I'm walking around in it all in a hot, impossible to see out of giant rat! It's a wild experience, I consider myself fairly transparent and open in my life but when the burdens really come off, you realize just how much you carry on you without even fully recognizing it and with the year having gone the way it had, my emotions were running high, I will always say "thank god for fursuit heads, they are easy to cry in"
The year felt like it was there with me, there with everyone, it walked with us in the space, it didn't vanish, it didn't become "easier from that point forward' but it felt like there were more shoulders than just mine that it was resting on and it gave me some much needed time to breathe...to rest.....to heal. That is what I come to my community for, even if it's just a few words spoken between us here and there, the spirit is there and it always leaves me feeling empowered, braver and highly inspired. We made it back up to the room and I took Ben off.... and I thanked him, he's become such a source of joy for me, it felt right to literally tell him "thank you".
After  spraying suits down and drying things up, packing things and prepping for the next day's train ride, we headed back down for our last dinner of the con, another stellar hit with low sodium options and kind, super wait staff. We sat there and ate while a pre-season Seahawks game played quietly on our table. We sat there in our favorite restaurant spot and talked for a bit, talked about the year and new friends, future plans and letting go, we felt older for sure, maybe a little fragile, but hopeful and happy, it felt like a much needed piece of us both had been replenished. We finished our little dessert we split.... and then we got in line for the DRAG SHOW!!!
Now listen, I haven't been to many, but I love drag and I love drag shows. I'd never been to one at a furry convention and was highly curious what kind of event "Otterly Fierce Productions" was going to put on.
As soon as the company has uploaded the video of the performance to their Youtube, I will be adding a link to it here. -->
All I can say until that video is available, is that I SHREDDED my voice screaming for those performers! It was one of the most entertaining shows I've ever seen. The audience was highly engaged, the energy was so good and the numbers were WILD. The MC was absolutely stunning and had great delivery and humor. The opening act hit like a sledgehammer with energy, humor and wit. There were wonderfully furry themed numbers and ensambles, it was a wonderful experience and I was absolutely floored by it.
We headed to bed after the show completely hyped and happy but EXHAUSTED.
The last morning was check out, getting our bags together and heading downstairs for breakfast and to wait for the train departure time. That morning Dittman Rat had informed me that one of my favorite bands Starflyer59, had released a new album, I downloaded it while we packed and was eager to listen to it on our train ride home as it felt like it would be very fitting train ride music.
Passing the time was easy, we did another round of looks in the dealers den where I found a wonderful little badger plush I had somehow missed. We ended up back in the game room until closing was called and then hung out outside the escape room where artists sat around big tables swapping sketches until it was time to head to the  train platform. That walk is always hard, I swear there's little ratty claw marks leading from the hotel exit to the train platform! I didn't wanna leave! But leave we did and on time. As we sat there completely exhausted again, as my husband dozed, I put on my headphones and let Starflyer59's "Lust for Gold" begin to play. There may not be a more perfect album to soundtrack the train ride out of that con back to our sleepy town. It was perfect. A slight bittersweet sound, but warm, experienced and slow, it was the sound of moving forward, like a train, like my life. I was leaving, but I was taking a lot back with me, I was coming back more healed, with more fuel to burn, more inspired, feeling more love and with more of a fire to defend and show love and support to others in my community.
Texas Furry Siesta was a blast, and it always is. I cannot thank the Staff/ volunteers and performers, vendors and hotel staff enough for their collaborative work to bring an experience like that to life, to give us a space to feel those things and be ourselves in a safe, creative and beautiful way.
Much love to you all ~Ben/ brotherrat

(Here's a few links to things mentioned above! It should be noted that these are not direct endorsements, as I have not done any sort of research into any of the following businesses/ individuals but enjoyed some tasty treats or performance/ product by them at the Convention!)

Delicious Doom: https://deliciousdoom.com

OTTERLY FIERCE PRODUCTIONS: https://otterlyfierce.kirakira.org

Furplanet books: https://furplanet.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=9

Studio CH: https://www.chpowersart.com

Soap Pony: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SoapPony

Nightengale Needles: https://www.nightengale.org/home

Twisted Tails Escape Room: https://www.twistedtailsescape.com

Texas Furry Siesta website: https://www.furrysiesta.org

To tell stories or to embody a “storied animal”

Returning from Europe: Nice airport, France. July 7, 2024

It’s just before takeoff, we are all seated on the plane as it taxis down the runway. My time in Antibes France has been magical, full of wonders and frustrations and liberations and many, many eye opening reminders.

The world is far more wild and open than what the hard shell around me in my daily life would allow me to believe. There is such an agenda and control over how we feel and live in the communities and areas I have grown up and lived in. “You may say this, but not that” “you may love this not that” “you may look like this not that” “you may feel this not that” “you may create this not that” “you may believe this not that” “you may eat this not that” and it’s all performed in varying degrees of subtle and unsubtle aggression. As a child, as I’ve written before, it was religion (Christianity) that laid down many of these subjugations, the church and its community enforcing them, now as an adult it is the conservative and socially difficult area we live in, in America.

Reminders, reminders, reminders…

I must live with not only my death in mind but also with my spirit and the world in mind.

There is so much to see and experience, there is so much complexity and difference to people, people all over the world. Animals, landscapes, buildings, thoughts, informations, truths, loves.

Sitting in a tiny living space in a rough town in the US with a generalized view of its views, and a limited and skewed amount of information on its limited views and skewed information about me can feel like I “know” but I do not “know”. Much of what angers me is informed in some way or another by the chaff of television, social media, news and other such industries who profit off of attention and emotional engagement. If I am on their website, if their program is playing and I am upset…they are making money. How could I ever truly trust sources with such tactics?

This life of mine as I wrote about in “Badgers and Bravery” is constantly informed and guided by fear because the industry and control methods of the social-political/ religious norms that I’ve always been subject to are fear mongering. It keeps me clinging to what I think I know because I am too scared to look away and question. So many times, I don’t even realize it!

I operate under so much fear….I aim to use whatever magic and lessons I have picked up along my travels to operate against this fear. As an artist, as a queer and someone now with a lifelong medical concern, I must shed as much fear as possible if I am to live well at all.

If fear has grown around me like a hard shell, then…it is a good thing that I am a rat and have the teeth to nibble! Chewing away at it from the inside to let that light in, the two lights, the sun and moon. (I heard this rat tale and am alluding too it here)

I have been an animal of “no” an animal of “wait” all caution and hesitation. who knows what’s left, but there truly will be no one to “give” me peace, “give” me better or certainly “give” me easier…to my benefit. I can be offered convenience and numbing for many different prices and at times I may choose to take those, but I should be aware of those choices and not believe they are my only options, as fear often makes it seem.

This fear has often informed my creativity in the most direct ways, It is not an “ I am afraid to say this, so I choose to say something easier or more popular” it is quite frankly. “I have had many ideas throughout the days, but now here I am at my table with my watercolors, and I am in pain, frustrated and full of fear, so what I will produce here, is limited and not full, not in bloom”…the story is stunted.

As I mulled about Antibes and Edinburgh I began to think of my creative process, I give so little true time to the animals. They appear as flashes here and there. For much of my art and representation this is fine. A portrait. But there is more here than simply observing and illustrating. Or rather, there is more to be explained within the illustration. How do I embody the story? What is the story? It isn’t a story easy for my mind to tell, it’s not direct, linear or always of the same pacing theme or aesthetic. The story must move between these still images and images that walk a “tale” to its viewer. A badger wearing a ruff, painted in blue shadow and yellow light with symbols painted around him is a lovely thing, however, there are also moments that convey a more immediate narrative, things of the everyday, that must be translated in a way that clearly convey those things. If the animals themselves are not simply static images and symbology systems in my mind and they move about as visible, speaking and action taking beings, then that must also be shown. It must be shown that these animals are also “I” the self as it were, and that some moments, though they are taken from my direct physical living, are worth illustrating through this world as it walks the story, both mine and the animals in directions that can further open and make connections.

A lesson I am learning in these travels is that there is no “this” or “that” to a lot of things I assumed there was. The crystalline of black and white and “is” and “is not”….diminishes. It is better to put pen to paper and write many, many things about these animals and myself, better to put paintbrush and pencil to paper and canvas for as many attempts as I can and in as many directions as I can….because without walking many paths, I may never meet these other selves, these other animals…I may never spend days with them on a boat, or in their home, among the flowers of a garden or by the pools, in the deep dark forests or the pearly silent caves. Who knows what is out there in those paths if there is no attempt to walk them? Sitting from a frozen vantage point hoping to see what I can as it passes by is an act of fear.

If fear keeps me from walking my paths, then it is the greatest threat to both the animals, myself my creations and those who love and support me.

I may not have concrete yes or no answers, I may not have all the pieces of the puzzle, but I need to not assume, let go of that control and instead simply go looking.

I do not know “what” I want my work or life to be

And that’s ok

If I go after them both with joy and give joy.

I cannot sit stationary, overthinking and over planning from the armory of fear. Making countless selections against an enemy that will one day win….something that everything that draws breath or blooms or is created eventually will fall too. It will happen and I don’t know when, but I do know it will and that time is short for us all. So what to do with all those things I love? Sit with them and weep that I cannot hold them forever? Or embody them with great story and life and love, until one day I miss a step and fall into the arms of the veiled wolf.

I would like to choose that.

To go forward as storied animals, and not as one who simply fears the leaving of it all.

Many hours have passed since I first started writing this from Nice, we are now in Paris in a hotel room we were given, my husband gently snoors next to me in bed as I finish this writing. Soon I will wake him up for dinner downstairs using the meal vouchers we were given.

I do belive even a year ago, the situation of having all friends and family make it out of a foreign country, the first foreign country I’ve ever visited and then being told we could not leave…for two more days because there were no flights and ours had cancelled….would have set me on cycle of fear and panic that would have caused fights and tears and extreme upset. After the first few moments of adrenaline, we big everyone good bye, frustrated and tired found our way to the airline agents. Got our hotel and meal vouchers….and tomorow? We’re going to the Louvre. That is an active fight long sign against fear for me.

I hope that some animal, or plant, or art piece or journey may soon inspire you to fight your fear as best you can. My love to you, my words from behind yellow teeth.

Brotherrat: Stranded in Paris, July 7, 2024 hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport 6:23 pm.

A short prayer

Meaning, truth, morality, judgement, reason: may they be banished in their militant forms here.

This garden holds no room for such instruments.

May their second and hidden meanings come forward, let judgement become discerning

Let truth be effort

Let meaning be witnessing, watching

Let morality be harmlessness

Let reason be awareness of possibility within possibility.

The candles have all burned low, the light is very low. The garden has hushed and is hidden, flickering pockets of light, all else is still and dark with night and green and wet.

And here I am in it.

And I am calling out, in a whisper, in a laughing call, in a scream, in a yelpIng.

For those that come to me in low lit gardens.

Who of the birds? The flowers and leafy herbs? Who of the mammals? Who of the lizzard and frog and salamander? Who of insects in their innumerable names. Who of fish and all things of the sea in these small pools that have gathered. Who of the trees? The rain? The air? The sky and stars? The sun, the moon? Who will answer my call here? And what lessons and things will I find if I depart with them, hand in hand?

July 4th, 2024

Brotherrat, Barcelona Spain, outside of Sagrada Familia

On BRAVERY & BADGERS

Tours and fun were had in Edinburgh, the first of which was a tour of the underground and the vaults under the city.

Of course the most morbid, occult (false) and otherwise “spooky” elements of its history were emphasized for the tourist dollar, a little theater can be fun after all!

Upon being brought down into the vaults and into a cell that had no light in it, the guide snuffed out his flashlight and we were thrust into something familiar to me: Silence, darkness profound, wet tepid air and little, very still air at that….the natural state of being deep underground.

Why though would this be familiar to me? As a younger person, from childhood till about my mid twenties, there was a frequent destination in the deserts of New Mexico that provided the same atmospheres, smells and sensations, though much deeper, Carlsbad caverns had familiarized me with this experience. It’s something I’ve always feared but also found impossibly comforting when alone.

As we stood there in the dark, I placed my fingers in my ears anticipating some cheap jumpscare (and was worried over a sudden startle with my heart issue)

As I stood there listening to the muffled mumbling in the dark, I began to feel a strong, distinct and familiar presence: 57

Initially I was put a little on guard, wondering if perhaps there was something that had set him off, some danger as he is my guardian/ protector. He welled up inside of my  senses so massive and close and so very present, I truly expected to be able to just make him out faintly in the pitch darkness and I did indeed look! The guides flashlight suddenly flashed back on and the cheap jumpscare never came only the anticipation. As we were hurried out, I lingered here and there, looking into the darkest spots and corridors to see if just maybe…:but nothing was seen, no big badger faces just visible in the black.

A few days later, as my husband and I sat in a public garden off the main road, sipping our coconut milk coffee after a long day of exploring Edinburgh, a small tan mouse ran just across the path and into the flowers, while he may very well have his own little writing soon, his small performance in this story is important in that it turned my mind back to “my animals” as I call them, “The mice and moth” and their connection to nature lead me to think back on 57 and just how heavy and close he felt there in those cells.

What was it? There were of course talks of bad spirits, Covens who left because of maladies and bad energy and so on and so on, perhaps I had conjured him defensively out of some spirit paranoia? But no, that’s not quite how he and those like him work is it?

The animals show up when there is something to be learned.

But why there? Why in that darkest place? Why 57?? Why not Ben? A dungeon or sewer of sorts seems more his calling card? But no, again I’m afraid that’s never quite how these things work.

As I sat in the garden pondering it, my husband pointed out some flowers and then a big hole dug next to them. “Oh! A burrow!” He said, and looking into it, into its darkness the prickle of tears at the corners of my eye and the unexpected lump in my throat, signaled clearly my answer to why he had been so present there. In truth.

57 had drawn so near me, because I drew so near him and his domain. The earth and the within it, “within a burrow”.

Remove all the pre notion of history and aesthetic here:

A badger digs his den, and where he rests is IN the earth.

What I was standing in down there in the vaults, was the same, but for people, what my body is. As I stood in that thin place, as close as I could naturally cross paths with that world, with his world, it was not some protective thing that he came so close, but rather that he and I were simply “close” in some proximity of understanding and experience  and it was a space of  his learnings.

There, where the mind, MY MIND, at first was overcome with thoughts of  death and burial, eternal darkness, pain, fears. When the lights were on, I thought of these things, caskets, burials my own death and though I brushed the thoughts aside as quickly as I was able, they were the instinctual first thought.

When the light was taken, what was in the quiet, sightless dark? Nothing that wasn’t there when the lights were on. The room was full of people still. But there was suddenly that overwhelming feeling that “he” “badger” was very near me. I could not touch him, but I could feel the wet and warmth of him, The muffled voice, became his.

Firstly I came to deeply know:

I will one day be buried.    

After my death, nowhere in the world will anyone be able to go and find me physically, sitting under some tree in a garden, laughing about some animal story or painting my little paintings.

I will be gone.

And deep in that vault

In the reflection of foxes mirror as it does.

Badger said:

“One day you will go along

As all have

As all will

As all must

But this fear of the dark, of going on

The fear that holds you

That consumes your time

Must leave you

Feel how close we are here

In this

The darkest of darkness

Stillness of stillness

You may breath my breath

As we walk this darkness

You may reach out to me in these tunnels

You may rest in my burrow

And this earth contains within it

As vast a silent peace as you may ever know”

I left the vaults unsure of what I’d experienced.

I left the garden in  Edinburgh with a slight idea of what had happened and why.

And am now somewhere in the sky, flying in a plane over the Netherlands thinking of badgers, so deep below the ground.

And my own death one day

A strange Memento Mori, there was only comfort and love in it and for that I am grateful to the one I have called 57, and for the chance to be so near him there in those vaults. Massive badger of the earth, strength of my spirit. Guide us through the dark and silent stillness in great peace. Let fear not be my guide, lead me on as long as we may travel. I will breath your warm wet breath, and follow your padding paws and digging claws, deep, deeper still.

Brotherrat: July the first, 2024; somewhere above Amsterdam.

(There are countless ambient pieces that deeply signify this feeling, however at the moment, the one that does a well enough job of walking the line I felt between overwhelming peace and deep fear, is this one: Lustmord, The Dark Places of The Earth: Primal: https://youtu.be/6zp34F-mk18?si=4X9LOlHK3bhpU8fK )

“When the Broken Pitcher Glistens”

Waking up In Edinburgh, 7:30 in the morning. The Rented flat is quiet, I’m the first awake.

Dallas to Charles-de-Gaulle to Edinburgh flights fatigue still heavy behind my forehead and in my joints. I put on the kettle and brew some chamomile, I haven’t had enough sleep or water. The view is shockingly quiet at this hour, shops opening, cafes putting out their tables and roll out floral displays….My body Longs for a strong coffee, but its too early for that, it would shift the feeling of the “quiet and calm” of the morning to “trapped and anxious”. It’s strange to now be so aware of such subtle changes and shifts.

So I sip my chamomile and sit at the window overlooking the city and the towering castle above it all. Current 93s “Sadness Song, quietly plays over my headphones (construction and car horns are not my preferred morning backdrop of sounds, though they will do in an aesthetic pinch) The song is one of my favorites off “Thunder Perfect Mind” which in it’s own turn is one of my very favorite albums. The song has an over arching theme of emptiness and quiet sorrow…..but a peace, a reflection on it, a finality. There’s an aimlessness to the song that for me, seems to be a tonic against my minds constant need to perfectly define and derive exact meaning from all things. It isn’t quite a defeated feeling, more of a “in this moment, sighing then getting up and going through it despite that “knowing”.

A sudden and drastic shift in perspective, rather that be foxishly framed by “Philosophy” “psychology” “spirituality” “religion” “chemical” “magic” can often be shattering. Quite how I feel: shattered. But here in Scotland, so far from my home in the swamps and Cyprus knees of the bayou, which is still further away from my childhood home of mesquite and yucca and the open skies of the desert, I feel shattered in a completely knowable way, shattered as so many, if not all other living things are. All the ideas, all the “signs and “symbols” are spilled out around my shattered pitcher. They are all still there, all of me is still there, the form has simply changed. And I cannot say I “hold” these things anymore, I cannot neatly define them or self, or form. When I say form, I mainly refer to the inner forms and systems of self, systems of thought and magic, inspirations etc. but now, I sing the same song as the world, and rather than only mourning the loss of that inevitable and false safety/invincibility that my Badgerine-ram heart insists on (which is needed and appreciated at times! Thank you 57) I can watch these ideas and pieces of me go out into the world, walk outside of the “pitcher” in steaming ether, along and around whatever is and becomes of this “form” as all forms do in it time become. Though this is all yet another definition in the foxish-ego-perception of things, it is new to me at least, and necessary. This morning, I will do my best not to mourn the fragility of my body or concern myself with the contain-ability, definition or eternity of my self-spirit, I will instead, notice the glisten of the broken pitcher.

All my love to you, from Edinburgh.~Rat

Imprint

Adaptation and adjustment has been swift, so much has changed.

With the diagnosis settling in my mind and the shock dimming and the shatter of it all being swept up, I am focused these days mostly on change and action.

I have now known what it feels like to fear for a life you hope you can change. As I’m sure so many do when things like this suddenly come to light, a lot of running happened at first. But it wasn’t the running I expected. The things my thoughts ran too were connection, friends and family….community. I have spent a lot of my life very walled off and dealing in encapsulated behavior. I have a tendency to give peers, friends and family a very curated experience of myself and a lot of that has been motivated by fear and difficulties as many social things go.

What I craved and needed, almost as much as food or medication during the first week of having my diagnosis was company. Friends who I normally would turn down for a hang out, friends who I didn’t check in enough on or chat with frequently…suddenly I was saying yes to every opportunity and reaching out in any way I could. In that first week I did more with friends and my husband than I had probably done all year, and that’s sadly not an exaggeration.

I have always been an overly cautious, frightened, fearful creature. Leaving the house must be a controlled and easy pathed thing. Essentially if it’s out of my control, if I’m going to stress….it isn’t happening. When it comes to other people, especially friends and peers, there will always be an element of “out of my control” an aspect of needing to go out of comfort zones and putting forth some effort. and those things were what I have used for a very long time to excuse myself from social things: hangouts, meet ups, clubs, cons, parties, trips…..he’ll just going down the fucking street to get a coffee with a friend would be a no some nights.

As I sat there with these ideas of facing my own mortality and truly having the microscope put on the “everyone has a time limit” I began to uncover these regrets. I wanted to be there for people, I wanted them to be there for me, I wanted to hear what they had to say, listen to their stories, tell me about their days…I’ve sat here putting brush and pen to paper for years and years saying “oh dear look at me and my story, isn’t it terribly important that I feel this way or that and trained myself to make all these pretty markings on paper about it?” And could not be bothered most nights to pick up the phone or hang out with a friend.

My immediate friends and family were surprisingly easy to begin to bridge that gap with, simply showing up, listening and reaching out did the trick. I’ve had more impromptu hangouts and fun little conversations these past few weeks than I could put down here even in short form. It’s all very much impressed on me how rich my life CAN be if I can do two things.

1. Try

2. Receive

That word has really become a bit of my new ratty word “try” i have not “tried” enough in my life, sure i need to cut myself some slack, ive tried in a lot of ways that I can see, overcome a lot of rough roads and put in a lot of work. But in a lot of ways there are things that I don’t show up too, I don’t “try” and give it my effort.

Fear has been identified as a big big force in my life, as a person, an artist and even in my spiritual path. It’s been fear informed for far too long and deeply, and while I may not ever be able to completely get out from its thumb, I can “try” more. Identify those things that need my effort and give.

One thing I’ve really identified outside of immediate friends and family that I want to “try” for way harder and give way more too is a community that honestly has supported me through everything and has always, ALWAYS been there for me. It’s art is where I started my path, as a coyote when I was 15. Its artists have deeply and profoundly inspired me to take up that work. Its online spaces have provided a home for my strange little art and words and has always in some form or another been wonderfully supported, unabashedly by people brought together by that communities interests. It’s gotten me to travel and meet with friends, all together in big spaces and events…the closest thing I can comparing to that I grew up with….its like a church…no no not like the rules and “you have to go”s but in the “this is how it was supposed to be” way. We chose what we loved inherently, we found others who did too, we created things out of that interest and love. Sold and supported one another. Met together. Our own words, dress, costume, culture…and it has always supported those who find themselves on the fringe, which I always have. It’s such a beautifully inclusive community. It’s so strong. And doesn’t get enough real credit for how incredibly unique and powerful it inherently is.

I’m talking about the furry community of course. And those animal folks that it’s made up of! Those people? I want to give more to those people. People I refer to by animal names, people who understand things about me that are so near and dear to my soul. People who support my art of rats and badgers. People who call me rat.

That’s become a major desire now.

Showing up, checking in, supporting more, both monetarily and time. Giving of myself to new people, new experiences and just clearing out the cobwebs of a frozen in place fearful little rat.

Who knows what the future holds, and though fear will be struggle, I’m going to TRY against it. It’ll make me not want to paint and sketch my FURRY ART but I’m going to TRY against that, put pencil to paper more often and give it my effort! Same with people and events, I know it might be safer to just stay home, not risk it. But sitting there in a hospital, in the sterile, cold empty void, being told something serious like that….im gunna want to have a lot more effort and strength in my arsenal to get through that the next time. Friends in my corner. And while I am able, because who knows, none of us really do, I want to make my art, so my ratty little things, and find joy in them. And maybe if I can find joy in them, and work, give it that effort, that “TRY”

Mayne someone out there can feel inspired and comforted by it or my presence.

take time to take care of yourself, it’s so easy to just let it go because it’s all too much, all the time in every direction. But “try” where you can. It started for me by saying “I don’t know how to do this all for myself, but I know how to try for Ben and 57 and all my little animals” I can try for them and the people who I love.

• I titled this blog post “imprint” because when I was younger I was obsessed with the song of that name by the band Doubledrive, I think the idea of just making yourself pick up your leg, put down your foot and repeat, is a mantra I can get behind. Another musical reference on the subject, In the words of Jason Molina “we’re all supposed to try”

  Doubledrive: Imprint

• https://youtu.be/ths4gm0k-5g?si=7EBIlUBMwpyE348T

  Songs: Ohia: Farewell Transmission

• https://youtu.be/malJUMz2A9Y?si=Lmc1BrVrc3UbtV4C

(A huge thank you to my friends both in and out of the fandom for all of your love, kindness and willingness to show up for me in my time of fear and being so very frightened, I couldnt have needed you all more and you gave freely and openly. Odette, Gil, Brundledonk, Portglast, bjaker squirrel, SIF, Shyly, Mute, Zunel, Bear (Medved), goat, Saul, Tusk, Patrick, my potato ratty brother, ZeeBusk, Pedro, DAISY, Max, Vasmeth, lebarron, Bug and Frank and so many others…yall really saved a little rat! Love you all so much🐀)

Results!

Ok everyone! My results are in and I’ve spoken with the doctor

It will need to be monitored every 6 months to a year with an echocardiogram

I will be seen again in six months

It is a congenital heart defect meaning I was born with it

The valve in my aorta has only two cusps and people are supposed to have three

Mine is fused

So it will deteriorate over time

But we can mitigate that hopefully with care to prolong it

Low sodium

Reduced caffeine

Light exercise

Everything else normal it seems

Just need to log my bp for the next six months twice a day

The anurism and the messed up valve go hand in hand apparently

So yeah that’s where we’re at!

Thank you all for your lovely support during this time! It will be a challenge to change my life for this, but I know I can do it!

Here I am, a rat

The past 10 days have been some of the most intense and stressful of my life, we will have next steps come Monday, but the mystery and fear are still paramount in my mind. I have completely surrounded myself in the company of friends and family. For once I definitely don’t have some long winded reflection on it all. Go where your comfort is. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I have identified an urgency and desire to free myself in love and action. I am comforting my animals, they are comforting me, and we are saying that we would like to do things differently now. We begin, wait and learn. I’ll update here as soon as I am able on Monday with the new information. Thank you all and much Ratty Love.

Rat Blogging (IMPORTANT UPDATE!)

Well, hello to all of you out there!

The Rat has decided to start up this blog again. I wish that the circumstances were a bit happier, though to be fair I had made this decision before everything happened.

On Wednesday evening (05/29/24) I asked my husband to drive me over to the emergency room. I had been experiencing some mild but unfamiliar chest pains. We ate a small dinner (not thinking much of it, more just a precaution and to set my already nerve riddled hypochondriac mind at ease.) then drove over to the ER. They got me checked in and immediately took me back for an EKG. Shortly after that they drew lots of blood, collected urine and did an ultrasound. They initially told me that my pain was due to my gallbladder and the ultrasound seemed to easily confirm that as the tech even said it was “full of stones”. They ordered a CT scan as well just to be safe. When the physician came back in to discuss the results, she initially went over the gallstones and said I needed to have my gallbladder out eventually. I asked if that’s what could be causing the pain in the middle of my chest. She neither said yes or no, or maybe she said no, or yes, it’s so hard to remember because what she told me next really just left me feeling blank and full of ice and nothing. She said in a sort of nervous voice that the CT scan had picked up an anomaly and that my Thoracic Aorta was enlarged. Usually it is 3.something and mine was 4.something. She said that that puts me at a greater risk for aortic dissection. She referred me to a cardiac surgeon who was to see me first thing in the morning. I asked if it was safe for me to go home and she said she felt it was.

They called me when we weren’t even two streets away to tell me the office wanted to go ahead and see me that next morning.

I went home completely wrecked. I was crying and scared. I didn’t even know if i could/should cry or if that would be dangerous for my heart. I had to immediately quit nicotine gum and of course immediately went intro withdrawals. So with panic, hypochondria and withdrawal setting in, we drove back in the dark with a diagnosis but no clue what to expect.

I slept horribly that night, every pain and palpitation making me feel like that was gunna be it. All my loved ones, friends, family….all my work…ben….57….the little things my husband and I love doing like playing smash and eating in the car in the rain…..it was all just way too much to bear thinking about. There in the dark as the hours drug by.

When morning finally came an agonizing forever later, we got dressed and went into the cardiac surgeons office. It was a small dark little affaire, and most patients in the waiting room agreed on two things, they always had to wait forever and that he was the best around so it was worth it. I was so incredibly nervous and tired, I just wanted coffee and Nicorette, but could have neither (I self imposed caffeine until we learn more) After what seemed like an eternity, my husband returned with the imaging disk from the ER just as the doctor called me in.

The surgeon looked over the papers, listened to my heart, asked me two questions (can’t remember what they were) and said “ok were gunna schedule you for an echo, we will call you, your aorta is supposed to be about two fingers wide, yours is about 4, your a normal guy dont worry about it, its not that.” I sort of protested amd was like “what about the pain?” He said he felt it was “a little pleuritic pain or lung issue, maybe esophageal but not that.” I asked if there was anything I needed to watch for or warning signs, he said no. I asked if there was anything i needed to avoid and he said “yes, no nicotine” I said that’s all? He said “I’m not trying to ignore it, I’m trying to put your mind at ease.”

We left there with my head spinning, it was great that he said that but there was also so much confusion and flat out doubt. Most people doubt stuff like that, but with hypochondria its especially hard to be consoled. I was fighting my brain from entering that song and dance while reeling from the “your dead to your going to be in mega-critical surgery within hours, to you’re….just going….home??

We stopped at a nearby building to set up an appointment with a primary care physician for a close date and then went home.

The last few days have been intense. Facing mortality has really drawn up a lot of poison and fear. The first two days were so severe I was genuinely worried for my heart because of the extreme stress (It didn’t help that the afternoon we got back from the cardiologist, the tornado sirens were going off all evening) I called the ER back and had them prescribe something short term for my nerves. They barely helped but I’ll give it credit that I didn’t actually crawl out of my own skin. I insisted on going out as often as we could. Eating (very healthy) but out on the last few nights. Having friends over today and making plans to go out with friends later in the week. My husband has been a rock through this,. Having him by my side has really helped me even be able to get up off the floor through the fear. That fear has been the worst part, this icy, empty panic that seems to be triggered by everything from thinking about the doctors offices and nurses and doctors, to thinking about the future and things i like, to turning my head too quickly, being too cold or smelling certain things. It FUCKED me up. Ive not experienced such intense panic and dissociation possibly ever. Today was the first day that as of 11:20 p.m. I have not needed a nerve pill. Bed may prove the undoing of that but we shall see.

Right now art and my animals feel very far away, they feel very scattered like maybe they are quite scared too, I can tell Ben is here with me through all of it.

Ive stepped away from most projects I had planned at this point. I need everything completely cleared, furries are usually intensely sweet creatures (hopefully myself included) and so I do hope that those who are waiting for things or had things be cancelled will understand and have patience and mercy for me (I know that sounds extravagant but I couldn’t think of a better word)

I think for now, experince and people are my main goals, I’m gunna be a chatty rat! I wanna get to know folks better and learn how to use my skills towards love and betterment and not simply deep self reflection! That’s all great and good but it revealed a huge gap when it all went down, I don’t wanna go through this alone!

Ill be keeping this little blog here updated, probably every day for the first little while, just as a place to keep things updated, but also just as a space to share and stay connected.

THANK YOU ALL, you’ve kinda been my little ghostly (and some not so ghostly) cheerleaders throughout my career as a silly online rat who paints. And it’s very comforting to know that there are folks out there who see me and my work. ~RAT

The Rat as a new path: finding new soul.

As an artist, I have always, since I set out on my journey of creativity almost 19 years ago, created work that featured anthropomorphic animals. When I was a child, I was sent to bed after story time with a head full of rats and moles and badgers, panthers bears and tigers or rabbits in blue coats who were always getting into some sort of trouble. The cartoons I was raised on in the early 90s almost all predominantly featured anthropomorphic hero’s. And the theme followed me into my online years. I was fascinated by online content that dealt with anthropomorphic animals. So it made sense then that at 13 when I began drawing, that these creatures would be a large part of my focus.

With all of this, however, something grew along side of it. From my earliest memories Christianity was present. The ideas of a benevolent God, ever watching, protecting, judging and controlling, was impressed on me. The first pre-school I was enrolled in was faith based, then the kinder and then the actual school. I was enrolled in private Christian education from the time I was in day care, until I graduated a Christian high school in 2009. Peppered throughout that was an endless river of Christian camps, youth groups, Wednesday services and Sunday services. My home life was dominated by Christian faith as well. Every question, every problem, every shred of information given through the guise and concave mirror of religion. So on one hand, I had the world of story and fantasy, animals who could talk, wear clothing, walk about and do things any person would, often informed by their species or habitat and on the other I had the feeling of responsibility for eternity. It was never enough to fill hand made field guides with drawings of birds, it was never enough that I knew the birds by their songs, never enough that I could identify almost any insect I saw. There was always the question of my “salvation” my “soul”. These questions were asked of me at an absurd age, it’s difficult to impress the severity, especially to those who never really experienced the sort of tactics that were employed against us at the institutions of religion I and my schoolmates attended. An entire facility full of adults, telling children stories of hell in a manner so severe they would cry or yell while imparting this life or death information. It is an impressionable time in life to say the least. If the stories of animal folk and talking animals has stuck with me to this day, its easy to understand how these endless, daily conditioning sermons might have stayed too, nestled up among beds of clover where mischievous rabbits might play.

As I grew older, I went through a bout of devout Christianity, I look back on this phase less now as an honest attempt at reaching out for a new soul, a new way of life, a new start, and more as a crushed spirit finally collapsing under years of tactics and unbearable guilt and stress. Amidst all the animal people and nature obsession and Christian dommculting, there was another part of myself, that I was exhaustedly wrestling with, I was coming to terms with the fact that I was homosexual. It was an agonizing thing. I spent so much of my youth angry and hurt and invisible.

Religion  fell apart the year I turned 17, which coincidentally, was the year I decided I wanted to be an artist. This was a time where I wanted to devote a large portion of myself to creating images. I was always an artist, but this was a determination to explore that, and at 17 a desire to tack that title on to my personality. By 20 I was involved with church activities again, but in a more honest way. This period I look back on with some sadness, as i feel it truly was my soul, empty, afraid and completely wrecked trying for one last reach. I was still closeted but was coming to terms with my sexuality internally. The strange thing was that I found, what was for me, a safe avenue free from guilt and conditioned trauma to explore my sexuality.

Art.

And what did I draw? What did I spend my time imagining? Anthropomorphic animals. Suddenly these animal fellows were exploring this side of myself I was far too afraid to explore physically myself. I could draw them with one another, loving one another, touching one another. Ill never forget the first one I drew nude, Ill never forget the first pair I drew fucking. It was wild, free and mine. It was secret and powerful. And I loved it.

Religion for me ended the day my best friend died, I think that’s truly when the concept of God died in my soul. I was recovering from a wreck, a genital surgery, the loss of my grandmother and the loss of my friend and those feelings I thought were there, simply left. I had always felt cut off, alone and unseen, but now I was all these things and my heart was completely broken.

Time moved on and through support and my creative outlet I got by. I went back to work, devoted myself to my craft. I ended up showing my work, drawings of rat headed men wearing jockstraps, at a local bar. From there I was invited by studio owners to show at an art market, from there I was invited to show at a studio, and after some time I was showing in several galleries around the city.  I made it into zines, had Pulitzer winning journalists buying my work at auction, and in the mix I inevitably found the furry fandom. I was featured on tumblrs front page and before I knew it a slew of furries were in my notifications. I didn’t know at the time, but many of my favorite artists turned out to be furry. And the idea of it all both scared and thrilled me. After a few years i was in the thick of it. And have been ever since.

Through tumblr I met a man, we talked, we shared art, we shared our stories and after some of the most bone rattling fear I’ve ever overcome. I agreed to a long distance relationship, my first relationship at 27. We met up eventually. I lost my virginity to him. We met again. And again. And after a year, i put everything on the line and came out to my parents. We had a plan to escape if it went badly. I was packed. And he was ready to travel.  It wasn’t without its barbs, but my family was accepting, and loving. And after awhile I moved away with my partner. Both of us under the spell of anthropomorphic animals. I married him two summers later. I’m writing this from our bed actually, but my religious side, rather my spiritual side seemed to never quite fade through all of it. There was always this pull. These feelings I didn’t understand. I sought therapy for it, and was medicated for a time. But though I learned to deal with the traumas of it. I never lost the love for the internal place. The place I thought God was. I would read books on philosophy and nature based thinking that scratched some itches. The ideas of interconnectedness, the ideas of story telling as self healing etc. but there was something moving in the shadows, and at this point I only feel it polite to introduce him.

His name is Benjamin.

He is what some might call an alter ego, a persona, or a fursona. Benjamin is a lot like me, he’s in his early thirties, not very tall, not very thin. He is male, and gay. But benjamin is not a human, benjamin is a rat. He stands on two legs most of the time. He wears cloths most of the time. He can speak and drive a car. He has sex, and quit smoking etc etc. Benjamin showed up when I was in my early 20s as a self portrait I painted. Instead of painting my head on my body, I simply painted the head of a rat. There was something that happened there, I’m not entirely sure what, but I can guess. It spawned an all consuming obsession with rats. I latched onto it like nothing I ever had. Every drawing was of rats or rat men. All of them in some way being me. I named him Ben after the smallest tribe of Israel, during that time my heavy Christian roots were still very much showing. But something drastically changed once I met him. My creative mind was no longer trying simply to improve and impress. Now I had this impish rat man doing all sorts of things in my head. He was different from me at first. He smoked, so i began smoking, he wore boots and so I wore boots. Before I knew it I had begun changing not only my outward appearance but my personality, to be more like this rat! This idea had sprung up so powerfully that I was literally changing how I behaved to be more like him because I was so enamored with him..…or so it seemed at the time.

I no longer see it the same way now. I am a gay man in his early thirties, happily married. Living in my own place, still creating paintings in between my career hours. I consider myself adjusted, adequately happy and centered. And for the first time in many many years, perhaps the first time in my life, I also feel spiritually whole. I think it started that night I drew myself as the rat.

I’d like to go forward from the perspective  of how I view what transpired during that time now. When I painted myself as a rat, I broke some spell, I was able to see myself for the first time. I was autonomous, I was not within the parameters of any “plan of salvation” because I was no longer a man, nor was I an animal. I painted what I now view as “ a portrait of my new soul”. When I painted Ben back then, he felt like a “character” he felt like a persona. I now think that what transpired between us was much more than an artist pursuing the story of a “character” When I started painting the rats, I started behaving more like what I felt the human equivalent of a rat might act like. Through this rat, I was teaching myself to shuffle off the awkward, sheltered Christian version of myself I had been squashed into. I was able to interact with ideas about myself from an almost third party perspective.

At the time it all felt like costume. Which of course it was. Your first attempts at anything feel impostor. But after a time, when the ideas about rats and how much I felt I related to them did not fade, the costume became daily attire. The paintings became less “character” and more honest, very naked expression. It was my religious burden, my homosexuality, my health issues, what I wanted to be, who I thought I was, what I found beautiful, what made me uncomfortable and what I longed for coming across in my art, and it was all art of this rat Benjamin. I was showing his mostly naked body at galleries. I was sexually excited by him. I was protective of him. He opened up opportunities for me, allowed me to meet new people, explore my own ideas and self. In many ways I see it now that I was deeply in love with him. I don’t believe now that the obsession and passion stems from some traumatized part of myself. I may have stumbled onto it all in a strange way, trauma may have caused me to take the turns in the maze that lead me to it, however, falling into it, was seperate from the trauma. I now see that I was not having “ideas” i was not creating a “character” I was not just escaping, I was conversing, openly for the first time in my life...with myself, with my own soul.

In a brief summation, I see Ben now as the manifestation of that inner world that all my fascinations, emotions, longings, inspiration and “self identity” spring from. He is my soul. The me that is not my morals or family ties, not the thing that keeps me and my husband together, or something to pray to or feel guilt over if I go a week without thinking of him. He is the part of me that is excited over the rain in the desert, the part of me that gets goosebumps from music. The part of me that jumps out of bed to write down a painting idea. The part of me that fell in love with Beatrix potter. The part of me that is never satisfied and always wants more to see, touch, taste and hear. It doesn’t quite do it justice to try and describe it all in words because its nebulous at best. But he is spirit.

Awhile ago I began asking myself what that meant, how could I explore it? What about the other animal folk bumping about in my head? Who were they? Who exactly is Ben? Through clumsy experimentation and a lot of trial and error. I have begun the creative process of communing with Ben and these other animal folk as if they were spirit in the understood idea of spirit.

I wont go too into detail about it all, but through a blend of meditation and contemplative creativity and a dose of diy scrapped together occult practice, I’ve begun my own rituals involving Benjamin and a few of his friends (such as 57 the badger) that help to center myself, speak with them, pull them into me, give myself to them and draw down an inspiration both for creative em devours and life. I bring Ben offerings at his altar, things we of course symbiotically enjoy, wine, nicotine gum, chamomile flowers etc. Through dance, acting and envisioning, I am able to take on their personas (fursuits work great for this act of communion) and these moments of connection to them have opened me up to new ideas, new emotional paths, and new lessons. Envisioning the breaths they take, the temperature of their bodies, the smell of them, helps capture intimate details of their physicality and story easily missed. Burning incense associated with them, lighting colored candles for acts and purpose, collecting their preferred plants, flowers, colors, stones etc. are all small ways to draw the fur over my body and become them, (they are me after all). Magic and craft, are the attempts to reach in and converse with him, with myself, and it is all a set of tools too make the outside world just quiet enough, that I can hear the faint “ch ch” of his teeth, or feel the brush of his whiskers..then taking that “vision” that “energy” and putting that directly into an act of creation. There is a power in it, there is a healing in it, and there is something to it all that fills that void, fills it to overflowing. I don’t have a name for it all, don’t fully understand it nor can I adequately explain it. But it is mine. To have a “god” that is my own spirit, who did not “die for me” as I previously understood in my old faith, but dies “with” me, day by day, is a far more frantic and passionate affair, we are all the time and energy one another have. If I do not, than it shall not be. And this gets me up many mornings, and gets my pencils and paints moving a lot more often these days.

This rat has opened a path to a new soul. The one that was always within me. From my earliest memories. That new soul, was there among the tales of Beatrix potter, the wind in the willows, 90s cartoons, fandoms and art. It was there under the endless weight of a forced religion and he survived. He was there with me in my invisibility. And is here with me now in an age of visibility. I have my name, and I have named soul Benjamin Rat.

Studio flood update

About a week ago the studio room my husband and I work in was flooded from the roof down when a water pipe burst. The works and supplies were all safely taken out quickly as the water poured from the studio bathroom ceiling which is thankfully the furthest point from our bookshelves and desks. Within about 30 minutes the supply closet (and where we store artwork) was completely saturated, and the bathroom had running shallow water seeping into the carpet which was soaked for about half of the room at that point. We sloshed about with boxes and portfolios as we desperately attempted to mop up, catch and mitigate water in the bathroom (not realizing it was now pooling out from the walls of the room) and made phone call after phone call to property mgmt, maintenance etc. luckily the only real damage is too the room itself, the carpet might be able to be saved (though after water removal and shampooing it still smells quite off) but there will need to be work done on the walls. So for now, I am banished from my painting table and will be focusing mainly on small sketches and experimental works. The studio out of commission and a recent flair up of health issues compounding, may slow painting but I hope to continue making small experimental things in the interim. Cheers~BR

From behind yellow teeth

This will be the first official post on the websites blog. I’m brotherrat and this is the space I’ll be using to speak about my work, subject and inspiration.
Words are often not my strong suit online. In the blooming age of social media, often times I find apprehension in speaking on any subject as I feel what I wish to say does not fit the spaces That are readily available to publish words on. I will be attempting some small writings here and cross posting them to social media via links.
The writings on the blog will range from simple background information on pieces, what inspires the work, small creative writings and process writing (both thinking and technical)

I hope to publish an update to this blog once a week on Friday nights/early Saturday mornings.

Thanks for reading, and cheers! ~brotherrat