Decadence, Metaphor, Metamorphosis

Decadence is a word usually associated with over-indulgence, over-satisfying, over-eating, over-feeling.  Too much of a good thing.  The erosion of morality.  The erosion of a sense of what is natural and, therefore, what is right.  The idea of decadence challenges the preconceived ideas of nature and "what God intended."  As if we could know what God intended.  As if we could declare "right" and "wrong" based on earthly nature -- the most varied and sparkling array of colour and celebration on Earth.

I wear Tasdron's collar and it is a big, thick, black, studded, manly awesome phenomenon: it is an over-collar, there is no question.  Obvious and evident, over-satisfying and decadent.  I know a collar doesn't mean much to some people in Second Life, and it is to be expected -- a collar means as much as a person wants it to mean.  It feels incredible when what it means to one is the same as what it means to other.

The collar, to me, is a metaphor -- and more than a metaphor now that I have no power over locking or unlocking it.  A metaphor in literature has two parts: the tenor (the original subject) and the vehicle (that thing you compare the subject to, when you use a metaphor).  "Rose-red lips," is a metaphor, and the tenor is the lip while the vehicle is the red colour of a rose.  It is as if the person does not kiss a pair of lips but, rather, kisses a rose instead.  The vehicle is what we remember in the metaphor, in other words; the vehicle is what lingers.  The metamorphosis is immediate, in language, as immediate as you can command.

My collar means everything to me.  I had put in a request for a particular kind of collar -- I wanted it to be big and bulky, obvious on my slender neck.  Black!  Not something one sees everyday.  And Tasdron got me something beyond my wildest hopes.  We speak the same language, in the heart as well as in the head, and we have the same sense of the too-much, the over-good.  The decadent and how we both move towards it.  In our world, though, decadent means something more.  (Of course it does.)  Decadent brings with it a sense of nature, changes what is natural (read: what is approved by the mainstream) into something super-natural, over-natural, perfectly-for-us natural.  Decadence brings with it art, display, revelation, exploration, curiosity, and the vastness of the never-ending.  Decadence brings with it human potential, different ways of looking at ourselves, different ways to hold a mirror to our expressions of love.  Self-gratification and other-gratification, and new ways of gratification (the way the man can tie a knot is its own religious experience).  Nature changes; the righteous or sinful nature of people being what it is, my collar represents a whole new nature, a whole new righteousness.  I have learned so much of what I wanted to learn, and now I want to put it into practice.  I feel good.