I'm living for a season in the wilderness, at the foot of a hill in the green rainy East. Eastern WHAT, though? America? Australia? I can't tell.

I camp in a ring of gums--Australia, then, I guess--and settle down for the night, despite the risk of falling limbs. Want to be hidden.

Deep in the night, I wake, uneasy. Heard a predator in my sleep? Don't know what may be out there.

But I have my big black scissors! I open and close them, snick snick snick, and picture the night hunters hearing the metallic hiss from afar, warning them that here's a well-defended creature!

I snip and trim some of the yellowing dry leaves from the drooping branches, till I have a clear view east up the mountain, the way I expect predators to come. I thought when I camped here I wanted to be hidden, sheltered, but now I know: in my life, a clear view's better than shelter. Open beats closed!

The moon rises. A strange wind's sighing. I get up and nightwalk with my dog. I always say, if you're afraid of prowlers, become one.

As I prowl and crackle through the night, I start to feel the power of the moon. Have I changed somehow? Not sure just what I am any more, in the dark.

Suddenly I grab the black wind, lift off... and fly. Not far, the short hops and glides of a flying fox, not quite full flight. But wonderful, weaving through branches. In the lunar half-light, a skittering half-flight.

Fox-flight.

MORNING NOTES

• Australia, flying foxes-- my friend Alder just got back from Australia, and showed me photos of the Blue Mts at dusk--trees full of flying foxes. She brought me Aussie books, too. In Mudrooroo's novel The Kwinkan, a surreal satire about real-estate developers, he adds Asian folklore to Aboriginal: one Japanese girl openly says she's a were-fox. Mudrooroo did his homework, for Kitsune IS much the way Japanese folklore depicts fox-people--seductive, playful, but with a mean streak. Only... the were-foxes in my dreams have never been mean. I think the old Japanese were just snobs--"we're civilized--foxes, minorities & foreigners are all subhuman." Enough to make ME want to bite them.
• Scissors = cutting cords of obligation and expectation. Rebelling against Japanese-ness.
• Trim dead branches blocking view = trim the hair falling in my eyes! Tomorrow I plan to cut my hair.
• ACTION: Simplify! Clarify! And don't hide! Sacrificing some cover is worth it to get a clearer view what's out there. "Silence = death!"
• Prowling werefox = Euros, Navahos, Japanese, Aborigines--EVERYONE agrees that were-critters are trouble. The Kwinkan's dark view of were- and spirit-beings is typical. But should I fear myself? I grew up treated as a freak--and I am. So what? I'm not very human, but less cruel and predatory than the creatures I gotta live among--full, true, purebred humans. Brr...

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