When Enough is Enough

 

There are rules of engagement between practitioners of the BDSM lifestyle.  Outside of the world of BDSM, however, to break these rules comes with insufficient outrage.  Often I have wondered privately if people sought out 'The Lifestyle' as a way of ensuring they stand a chance of dealing with someone who understands basic human decency:

- ask permission

- offer respect and honorifics where required

- make amends, offer restitution after transgressing a boundary, stated limits, negotiated terms

- negotiate terms in good faith

- engage with those who wish to be engaged with and not with others who have demonstrated no interest or -- worse still -- who demonstrate aversion

- regroup and re-cover all the areas in an abundance of caution to make sure everybody acts with enthusiastic consent

- understand that non-negotiated 'duress' is illegal and -- worse still -- immoral; conduct unbefitting a member of society

- offer community safe spaces where the vulnerable may gather and express feelings, ideas, pains, pleasures, conflicts, dilemmas... without judgment or fear. The idea being, we share and we learn and we are ready for when it comes for us, someday.  

- offer communal support places that determine whether a member of this society is fit for further interaction with this society.  There are consequences for violating boundaries; there are consequences for willfully causing distress.  The different communities that I have spoken with over the years have taken some pride in keeping serial rapists out of positions of power.

And here we find ourselves on the precipice of a real problem.  A global problem.  A serial rapist is going to take unchecked power over one of the most powerful nations in the world, on January 20.  A convicted felon; an abuser of women and food and power and children; whose best friend for twenty years was someone who was also such an abuser; one of the worst men in the history of men, and America voted overhwhelmingly to put this criminal in charge instead of the prosecutor that challenged him.  He didn't just get 'enough' votes, he got 'more than enough' votes.  And the excuses for this are lame and all mask the shame of "Anybody But A Woman" in charge of the White House.  For the second time in a row. We won't cover that bullshit here.

As an aside, I once long ago wondered why the LGBTQ2S+ communities aligned so powerfully with the BDSM communities, and I stopped wondering that in 2016.  It was plain as day to me, in 2016. In 2016 it became so obvious to me that I'm embarrassed to say it took me so long.  And it's plain as day to me today, in 2024, a little over two months from the time when allies and safe spaces and tight community will be essential to the survival -- both emotional and literal -- of so many people in the world.  

Shame is a real problem in the world; it makes people do stupid things. It makes people do stupid things to other people.  It makes people do stupid things with lasting permanent damage, to other people. And the whole reason, I think, that there even IS a BDSM community at all... the whole reason that there even is a LGBTQ2S+ community at all... is because there is too much shame to simply call them 'Human'.  That sex is simply too shameful to talk about in most circles; so separate circles form that offer safe spaces to these separate 'species' of Human.  That even Sex-Positive Asexuals (like me!  Enjoy your sex, have your sex, make your sex the way you like it, and I'll support you from over here while I read my books and play on the computer and emotionally experience the most profound and fulfilling intimacy with You know who...)  have to overcome certain shames in their own journeys along the Path of Many Gazes.  

Shame is a real problem in the world.  It feels like, to me, the wrong people have it.  The wrong people wield it as a violence.  The wrong people enjoy the power of it.  And by all accounts the wrong man doesn't feel an ounce of it.  As a nation, the United States should be ashamed of themselves for electing the criminal instead of the prosecutor that was -- once again -- more than qualified and experienced for the job.  And its president elect should be ashamed for all the wrong he has done in his awful life.  And personally I have had enough of all of it.  My heroes are heroes because of times like these; not because of easy living.  And here we are, once again, in times like these.  My heroes will be those who carve out the safe spaces for the people who need them, emotionally and physically.  The best we can do is to look for those heroes, and if we can't see any in the immediate vicinity, to be one.  And then, as people have done for hundreds of thousands of years, light after light after light will emerge and glow along the shore, well into the horizon and beyond, showing the path to Civilization.  

Enough Is So Vast a Sweetness

 'Enough' is so vast a sweetness
I suppose it never occurs,
Only pathetic counterfeits. 
~ Emily Dickinson

I go today to sit and write in the world we have created. Wandering to and from the Tasdron Tree to put more tea on, I have created "...a little path just wide enough for two who love," a walkway denuded of grass from the traipsing to and fro.  How ironic that the place you erected for the purposes of your writing should now be my sanctum for the writing I shall do.  

I am reduced to a thing that wants You

 From Sackville-West to Woolf

Milan [posted in Trieste]
Thursday, January 21, 1926

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things.[ ...] I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it …

Please forgive me for writing such a miserable letter.

V.

Chapters filled with pebbles

 "The division of one day from the next," writes Iris Murdoch, "must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement.  We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to little new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, for both our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously, too, night matches sleep -- sweet image of it, so neatly apportioned to our need.  Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-invested dark.  How our frail identities survive these

chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain."

     I live in a world I helped create with You; and I live there for as much of my life as I can mete out without letting the whole architecture of everything crumble, taking with it all of my daydreams. The world I create and inhabit with You, this is my constant refreshment.  This is my beginning to beginning to beginning, separated by the angel-envied sleeps.  

     The world of BDSM has unlocked new aspects of what I believe to be a powerful identity, not so frail as described by Iris Murdoch.  To feel like an adventurer and an explorer is a feeling unparalleled. To feel as though the adventure could be perilous and yet remains safe at all times from any real harm because of the arms that hold and support -- this is paradise.  The world of BDSM, too, has shone the God-light upon a person I love so truly; whose path I may never otherwise have crossed. For whom the blessing "Safe Paths" called into being, day after day, like pebbles thrown down to settle into The Way Forward, a future together bound by similar refreshments and similar language and similar connection.  All made possible in the virtual world of magic, controlled by smiling, benevolent gods. 

     I have written for years about the normalization of the secret languages contained within a BDSM lifestyle; how the service of breakfast or the service of companionship or the service of rememberances were as much a part of the connection forged, link by link, as any solid steel chain, ropes, or blindfolds. But it is time to check my privilege.  Mine is a story of tremendous good luck; of tremendous good fortune; that there are participants in this story who understand the maturity of controlling appetite, the discipline of containing emotions, and the wisdom of perfect timing.  Because, it doesn't always work that way.  We are all walking woundeds, after all; the scars from battle colouring the tender flesh that still remains to be touched and loved.  Mine is, indeed, a story of extraordinary good luck.  One must be careful out there.  One must look both ways, twice, before exploring the tempting path. 

     "Pebbling" is a curious pastime and it seems as though I have adopted it. Isn't it wonderful how (more than one) species give stones to each other as tokens of the solid and enduring love they feel?  I lay pebbles like Easter eggs, as much for me to re-collect as for You; and the great adventure through the universe we make is really just a collection of pebbles meaningful to us; meaningful to me because You will see them and know them to touch them.  This is half of an almost-incredible life. (I won't say 'miracle.')  The other half is realizing that You who see, collect, recognize all the pebbles is the You whose arms control the ropes that bind me.  I think there could be, now, no full enjoyment of one without the other.  I am all gratitude. 

Counting all different ideas drifting away
Past and present, they don't matter
Now the future's sorted out

Of What is Our Bed Made?

     Penelope famously asks the question of Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca after a long, troubled journey home from war: of what is our bed made? They are the only two people in the world who know the answer.  She suggests the bed may be moved outside for the stranger; but he disagrees: the bed is carved out of and within a giant olive tree's trunk, its roots still deep underground and living.  To move the bed would be to destroy it.  It is a question posed as a test; but it is an answer revealing a mighty endurance of the private lives of two people.  Odysseus and Penelope are the only members of their bed because they are the only ones who know what the bed actually is.  

     Of what is our bed made, then, mine and Yours?  You who know exactly how and so; You who have known since we began; You who have taught me, led me, shown me the painstaking construction of it -- You know what.  I know only that it will take years of articulating and minute-by-minute understanding of the instant flashes of experience we are capable of.  A single picture frame contains multitudes, years of explicating.  A flower is comprised of many, many petals.  

     Recently, it is comprised of a lot of grace:  your patience as I get up to speed again forming words and thoughts, creatively, impulsively, instinctively.  Your patience as I remember who I am.  Your indulgence as I feel my power and extend it a little bit, here and there.  If I call, you will always be there; if I beg, you will always use the time well for us; if I muse, you entertain it; if I blurt out extraordinary things, you will marshal and harness them rightly.  I suppose that is what "testing" means, when a submissive tests her dominant.  If this, will that? Yes, always.

     Recently it means, too, that we have learned the rules of engagement all over again.  That we have created a space wherein it is safe to return, day after day, and wherein it is a perfect bubble of blameless honesty.  Where imperfections are allowed (not that I have seen a single one) and where we laugh at bugs (because in a virtual world, bugs are as ubiquitous as in the real world).  That there must be rules of engagement in a virtual world; that this is how we stay safe, and how we maintain sanity, and how we keep it all perfectly consensual.  And how, fundamental to it all, the will to love and protect carries the whole load.  Is there any other place in the world where this holds true?  Is there any other place where the flaws of vulnerability are in fact beautiful and cherished, not flawed?  Is there any other place in the world where two people can hold that bubble of honesty without it ever breaking apart?  One supposes it is age that brings this kind of gentleness to a relationship; but in fact it is simply the will to love and protect that does it.  One must will it.  

     Finally, recently it also means that I have found my power and am beginning to see how it is useful in the exchange.  I feel like I never properly articulated my power or my needs, my wants or expectations, or put words to the things that I felt or lacked, before You.  I feel like in recent months, I have grown exponentially in that regard, now able to better articulate. And what is a relationship if not "articulation" of those wants, needs, lack or surplus to share.  

     And recently, a certain "eureka" -- that this articulation, this D/s dynamic, this will to love and protect, this list of ingredients determining our relationship, this does not depend on erotica (though it certainly enhances it), nor does it depend on ropes and chains (though it certainly enhances those).  This list of ingredients feels like common decency, more than anything else.  And with that foundation, the other things may bloom and grow at their own pace. 

     So, there are certain days when it's just hang around on the deck, staring at the waves.  There are certain days when it's just decompressing, drinking slow hot coffee, and people watching.  There are certain days when it's a feast for the senses, the erotica exploding like intergallactic fireworks.  And there are certain days when it's alone time, going through the photo albums, running through the transcript logs, preserving the nuggets for posterity.  It's a multi-faceted relationship nourishing all the parts of the human creatures we are.  

     Therefore, of what is our bed made?  That's the whole point: to answer that question, You and I will simply have to live it out and collect all the strands and see them all together finally.  It is a bed only You and I will know or understand.   

     

 

A More Glorious And Private Mystery

 

     This video is important.

      In the first weeks when I first got to know You in 2007, I had imagined us as engaged in the dynamic of Kip and Hanna from The English Patient.  You know this.  What you may not know is the depth and extent of this dynamic and the effect upon my perception of the events that followed.  Master of me, the harness never felt strange to me -- I had already seen it at work for the great joy and benefit of its passenger; and the ropes and pulleys never felt constricting to me -- I had already watched Kip's manipulation of these tools in the service of a more glorious and private mystery than the familiar, quotidian war-scape each endures in her own life.

     Do You remember the scene  -- I have shown it here, in this video -- where Kip lights the candle-path for Hanna to discover; where he takes her in the dark to a place he had already scouted and determined to be safe (for, the world they inhabited was filled with land-mines and sabotage, and it was his job to sweep them all away for the safety of others); where he had already rigged the rope-and-pulley system that would lift her high into the air -- candle in hand -- so as to view from a perspective none other but the artist had enjoyed, all the centuries-old art contained therein.  The human likeness whose eyes she gazes into while suspended in the air might as well be a mirror image of her own countenance.  The placid, peaceful eyes and genuine smile of her face looking into the face from a whole other time and place, and yet the recognition of each, signals a timeless understanding. Joy is an act of defiance in a world filled with landmines. To fly is a defiance of gravity's resolute, oppressive, natural law.  

     Do You remember, too, conversations we had about the ethics and morality of bondage; ethics and morality of dominating another who surrenders her power in the service of a more glorious and private mystery than the familiar, quotidian war-scape each endures in her own life.  The question of whether it were any good; of whether there were a Good to be served in the practice of this power exchange.  The question of whether it revealed a damaged motive by a damaged practitioner; or whether this kink were possibly beyond reproach, were impeachable, were innocent and worthy of exploration.  Do You remember in all the years we have danced around the Source of it, sometimes hand in hand, and sometimes from a great distance, discovering in those moments different nuggets of perfect language -- language that thrilled, that captured, that preserved a moment of real connection and true intimacy, a vulnerability and a command not ordinarily experienced. Beyond the orbit of the ordinary.  Existing in a circular orbit all its own, including the normal and extending beyond it; a richer, more full experience, seen from a greater height, a candle moved closer to the source of the artwork.

     When Hana's candle ignites, there is the flash; everything from that instant exists either before it or after it.  The moment of experience illuminating the dark innocence. Your command is that flash of light: to document, to create a more perfect record, impeccable and eternal, of the new discipline.  "You and I are reading a book," You said to me, "about a woman who asks three things of her husband." And You asked if I had a third wish in my heart, beyond Your mastery and Your partnership.  "Can I fetch you the moon?" You asked me. And my reply:  "To stretch me into something more.  To make me more than I am."  The flash of a candle light changes everything:  there is the before times, and there is the now, the future of us.  You made sense of me and of my ineffable needs; and You directed this chaotic energy into a focused light piercing one long direction through time.  You and I talk sometimes in the language of the divine; invoking a pantheon, different iterations of emotion and accomplishment and need and urge and power and limitation.  One of many languages of love, part of our toolkit in explicating meaningful moments of our experience -- as though each moment were adamantine, a statue carved with precision out of otherwise-impenetrable rock.  And today I see us as the avatars of the gods whose destination is unknowable -- a beautiful, magical mystery -- but the journey (and I hope it is a long one)  will be filled with punctuating moments and observations, the gods who wait to delight in us smiling upon us with permission and encouragement.

     Hana's candle ignites and the flash puts me squarely into the future: we have art to discover and create through the medium of power exchange.

Flowers bend and turn

I have reached the end of  a hiatus in my journey to submission.  I have learned so much, and I am grateful for the lessons both hard and soft.

I return, now, to my life of creativity and contemplation.

From time to time I may share yet another learning if my mind bends to the task and turns to look back, reflecting.   We're all still here, just working at different dreams now.  Peace <3


Flowers bend and turn
and seasons blow like winds
on streams over stones.
~ Annwren