pyxis /'pɪk.sɪs/ · noun · name
one name, many meanings.
self chosen. self reflective.
- α the compass
- Latin for a mariner's compass, and the faint southern night 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.
- the old Chinese sky filed it under the Vermillion Bird of the South, which reads as fire. 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 and history, and every bit of the Dionysian debauchery the textbooks leave out.
- also, yes: the Pyxis of Pandemonium, my first-ever Magic card, out of Theros. pandemonium means chaos, and I like a little chaos.
- γ the shell
- a genus of little Madagascan tortoise, too, that carries its 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 and share more of who I am with the universe.
a constellation, a compass, a box, a shell: things that carry, navigate, hold, and point somewhere. the wanderlust, the myths, the critters, and the cosmos all ended up in one pup.
it's a ridiculous amount of meaning for one word. I know, I 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, but 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 their pack up here in the PNW. Capitol Hill's where the leash hangs now. the community is where I traded the tidy, buttoned-up version of myself for the loud, curious, shamelessly self-expressionist one. "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: talk it out first, then whatever works between us.
currently sitting on the board of SEA-PAH, the Seattle Pup & Handlers.
species
space pup · mutt. the mutt part, always has been. the breed question comes up a lot, and the answer is a point of pride. mutts are one-offs, and nobody picked the "ideal" traits. not pure, which is most of the punk of it.
mutts happen: the byproduct of spontaneous love in the moment. not always the prettiest thing in the room, but loved hard anyway.
it's also the build that's resilient and hardy. when the Soviets went looking for dogs to put on top of rockets they took strays on purpose, because strays are mutts and hold up to cold and hunger and shakies and being strapped to a rocket and placed into the unforgiving reaches of space. the first dog in orbit was a mongrel off the streets.
and it's just accurate. my human ancestry reads the same way, a mess of somewhere-and-elsewhere with no pure anything in it. mutt on both counts, and better for it.
in the kit