my name · pyxis (n.)
one word, a few meanings.
self-chosen with purpose.
turns out "pyxis" was never just one thing - I took all of them (well most of the meanings).
- α the compass
- Latin for a mariner's compass - and the faint southern sky constellation that carries the name, drifting just off Argo Navis, the ship Jason crewed with the Argonauts.
- a compass for the ocean, for getting happily lost, for the wayfinding every culture has its own version of.
- its three bright stars - α, β, γ Pyxidis - are the roles I move between in the community; I've never been only one thing.
- the old Chinese sky filed it under the Vermillion Bird of the South, which reads as fire - and yeah, I love a good (safe) one.
- it maps how I got here, too: I found my pup side down on the Space Coast, and my pack up in the PNW.
- the needle that points you home, or toward the next adventure; proof I've been a space freak since long before the hood went on.
- β the vessel
- a Greek lidded box (πυξίς), painted with myth and geometry and scenes of ordinary days, made to hold whatever mattered.
- where I keep my love of all things Greek - the myths, the epics, the maths and philosophy, every bit of the Dionysian debauchery the textbooks leave out - plus history, culture, the whole anthology.
- also, yes: the Pyxis of Pandemonium, my first-ever Magic card, out of Theros. pandemonium means chaos. I like a little chaos.
- a box holds many things at once; so do I.
- γ the shell
- a genus of little Madagascan tortoise, too - carries its whole house on its back.
- for the part of me that loves biology, animals, and how living things actually work (I picked this name sitting right next to some turtles, fittingly enough).
- and the honest one: I spent a long time tucked inside a shell I'd built. pup play is what made me want to come out of it - to share more of who I am with the world.
a constellation, a compass, a box, a shell. different fields, same gist: a thing that carries, navigates, explores, and holds. marry them - wanderlust and wonder, myth and maths, critters and cosmos - and you get the whole pup in one word.
that's a ridiculous amount of meaning for one word. I know. picked it anyway.
(since learned it's also a hospital medicine dispenser, an Attack on Titan character, a digital film camera, a Sony GPS, and an audio company. none of those were the intention - I've decided to be flattered.)
field notes
who's this, then?
a plaid-wearing space-pup, littered in Appalachia, who first got unleashed in the Space Coast, and found his pack up here in the PNW - Capitol Hill's where the leash hangs now. the community's the whole point: it's where I traded the tidy, buttoned-up version of myself for the loud, curious, shamelessly handsy one. turns out "good boy" hits a lot harder when someone means it - and I've gotten very into being told.
in play I lean vers/switch and adaptive over archetypal - new-guard at heart: consent, intentionality, and whatever actually works between people.
currently sitting on the board of SEA-PAH, the Seattle Pup & Handlers.
in the kit