How high, Sir?

"Obsequious," a word from the latin for compliant and yielding.  It carries a negative connotation in the modern day:  fawning, agreeing without critical thought, giving the illusion of agreement regardless of whether one truly agrees.  "Yes, Sir, how high would you like me to jump?  I will not ask why."

If I were dominant and seeking, I would feel naturally suspicious of a submissive who agreed with everything I said.  It would sound, to me, as though the submissive were kissing my ass for other reasons besides submission.  I would not trust her submission while she was agreeing without critical thought.  Yes, it is good and right that she trust me, if I were dominating her.  Yes, it is good and right that she believe I would not steer her wrong.  But I think I should tire very soon with someone who could not shade my perspective with different colours besides my own shades of grey.

Of course there are dominants who require absolute obedience and unquestioning faith.  Yes means yes and "how high?" is the only acceptable deviation.  Such an attitude reveals the difference between one who owns a slave's unquestioning obedience and one who exchanges power with a submissive otherwise-free-thinking person.   But, I digress.

The real élan, the real finessing, the extra special uniqueness that one submissive is capable of giving that is different from all the rest (and the real reason why she is loved by a dominant in ways that a dominant loves no other) is the way in which she makes compliance seem like right-reason.  Right action.  How "Yes, Sir" can seem perfectly logical and NOT obsequious.  How actions can be  critically considered AND obeyed without question, the opposites erased and replaced by pleasing mystery of the initiated.  The little submissions she performs in her decisions to obey each and every time so that you see (freshly every time) how she submits -- how massively those chains hang from her wrists and ankles and yet how lightly she bears the chains of her submission.

In other words, sounding obsequious is my anxiety, and practicing asserting myself and negotiating is my antidote.  (That is, if I don't already naturally and simply agree.)

Transcendence

What have I learned in my study of the D/s lifestyle?  I've been a student here for over six months and, in that time, what has made it a worthwhile endeavour?  My whole blog is filled with learnings and personal achievements, and at the risk of under-privileging other very important lessons that I would gift to any seeker in the lifestyle, I do privilege one lesson above the rest and that is learning how to forgive yourself.  Nevermind the rest of the people who inevitably require it in life -- the self is more important and (though I did not realize it) cries out for it the hardest.  Thank you.

More than that, I understand what it actually means to forgive myself: and that it's not just words to repeat in a mantra each morning or affirmations to bring sweet dreams each night.  There is something to do and it is very important.  Forgive yourself for wanting to be loved means saying, "I want to be loved," and then saying, "Okay, me?  Good."  And then making it a part of my character.  "I am someone who wants to be loved," then, and after another little while, "This will only work if I feel loved because that's who I am."  As time passes, I take it for granted about me.  I am forgiven the selfishness of it by making it part of my true self without apology.

Forgive yourself for feeling so sure, for feeling so certain, and for being so wrong sometimes.  And for taking responsibility and feeling the burden of other people's responsibility (NOT a submissive vantage point, another reason why it feels so unnatural and heavy).  That means saying, "I am wrong, and I'm not sure," which opens me to enlightenment, and it is not tied to my ego to be unsure, and it is not a reflection of my character to be wrong.  I am forgiven the character flaw by making it my character to be open to enlightenment without certainty.

Forgive yourself for valuing perfection and for aspiring to it, and the shroud that thickens this:  forgive the illusions and pedestals and plinths that crumble when perfection shows what it looks like in the morning before coffee and lipstick.  And so I say, "I really enjoy the striving.  I'm going to keep striving.  I'll try a little harder to be satisfied, though."  And the coffee tastes pretty good today, thank you for that also.

Mastering the Light

Once upon a time, I wandered into the darkness, seeking.  Then, things happened.  Then, I learned something.  Now, I come out of the darkness and back into the light, having learned something.  I breathe the fresh air, and I look around at the blue sky.

I'm not finished my learning; not at all.

I'm looking from a different angle, though.  I thought it was darkness that compelled me through the woods.  I realize now, though, that things have changed and I am better able to articulate what I need -- and articulate to the proper people.  It's not darkness I need: it's mastery of the light.

Just like in photography: the trick to a good photo is the use of light.  The trick to an interesting subject, one that compels us to look and understand, is the story.  What is she doing, where has she come from, and where is she going?  The present, the past, and the future of a story.  Only connect.

And as such, as I begin my mastery of the light, I celebrate one very important revelation.  It's a thread that has spun round me for a few months now and finally terminates in a pretty bow laced to my frilly blouse-collar:  are you sure what you're looking for is a D/s dynamic, he had asked?  It's an honest question.  The question arose because I was resistant to many things one traditionally associates with BDSM, namely the wide array of kinks on offer.  They simply do not turn me on.  Are you sure, came the question.  Of course! was my reply.  But that thread still hung loosely, nagging me.

And then it occurred to me.  Eureka! I do not need kinks to enjoy submission.  I may, actually, enjoy submission for the sake of submission.  It may very well be that I simply enjoy submission; the power exchange; without necessarily needing to bring a chicken, a crop, a deck of cards, and a blindfold into the room at the same time.  (Note well:  I am not only kink-tolerant, I am kink-encouraging!  I think people should have fun and do what they love to do.  I do not disparage "kink."  I simply think that kink is for others.  Or, well.  Usually.)

People may enjoy the delights of kink even in a non-D/s dynamic.  One does not have to be submissive to enjoy the unique sensation of a drop of wax on one's inner wrist.  One does not have to be submissive to enjoy the feeling of clamps, stamps, needles or blades, pins, fins, broomsticks and spades.  One may enjoy these things all on one's own, or with a friend, or with a lover, with an equal, or with a stranger... there are many ways one may enjoy a kink without actually submitting to an exchange of power in the process.

Plain and simple: I am not a kinky submissive.  There are times (naturally) when fantasies arise and these fantasies do not resemble my daily routine in the least.  (I do not live in a Chateau or own a posture collar in my real world; and so these things are delicious in fantasy play.)  But I have discovered that these fantasies arise less and less frequently as I engage more and more fully with my present.  My every-day.  My heart and soul and hearth.  The LIGHT in my life.  As I begin to embrace what is lightness in my world, the darkness recedes into the distance.  It may not be such a difficult transition into the real world, after all.

Faith and Certainty

I would not know what to do with myself if there were nothing more to learn.  It occurred to me today that I might be forever a student of interesting things.  It occurred to someone else today that I ought to be happily paired with a Dom Priest.  (Do we know any ordained priests in the world?  I am no Christian, but I am Christ-Curious.)  And then, I began to think of everything that I knew of Christianity, because someone that I care about was hurting.  Surely, there would be comfort from her faith.  Surely there would be some magic word that would unlock the rush of soothing balm.  The problem with faith is that there is no certainty; and the problem of certainty is that it removes the blessing of faith.  This is the problem of Eve:  choosing certainty over faith.  And this is the healing restoration of Mary: believing instead of knowing; choosing Gabriel's word over the condemnation of just about everybody else in her life.  Mary's faith erases the original sin of Eve's certainty.  Jesus does for the world what Adam failed to do.  Christianity, therefore, abides; and Adamism died a quiet death shrouded in obscurity.

Personally, I live a life that I believe separates me from appetitive beasts in the world.  I strive to make decisions based on logic ("Live and let live") or self-sacrifice ("More for thee than me") as opposed to making decisions based on fear, hunger, or anxiety-avoidance.  I do not always succeed, of course; but I do strive.  What is my motivation? To separate myself from the appetites of the beast.  In other words, boobs and cocks are funny and adorable, but let's talk about important things like God and the nature of love.  While I'm bound in rope and hanging in a stone dungeon, listening to the Olympics.

I have felt hunger.  I have felt need.  I have felt as though the world were blessed and I had been cursed.  I have felt alone under a dark sky, and my face pelted with debris hurled by a screaming wind. And, I have turned around to look at where the wind was going.  It must be going somewhere extraordinary, because it carries everything there with it.  My thoughts, the red sky, even clouds are curious.  I know so much, and I seek to know so much more, and I remember the person who first shaped me and how well he controlled his appetite.  Even at his hungriest, he shared with me.  Even at his lowest, he spoke kindly to me.  Even feeling the most fear he had felt, he touched my hand tenderly.  When reduced to his most basic, primal self, even he did not growl and grunt like an angry ape: he closed his eyes gently and composed himself before uttering a word.  And so my model abides.  He made me, and he shapes me still, just as wind and water and fire made rock and shape it still.  Everything is in flux.  Everything, if you let it, grows.

I know how good it feels when wind blows me so strongly that I just go with it, not fighting it but letting myself be pushed along.  It is almost like flying.  I know how good it feels when the sun shines during a sun-shower of raindrops and hail.  I know how good it feels when I tiptoe over stone and grass and dirt, and then stand in the water and close my eyes.  It is another way to feel like I am in the right place.  I do not know God at all, and I do not know the amazing architect of the natural world.  I submit myself to the whimsy of wind and the life-force of water; to the passion of fire and to the steadiness of grounded earth.  I kneel before a clever man, and I myself have no certainty.  I have no need or hunger.  I know only that I wish to learn, and to keep learning, until I am no longer here.

(Many thanks go to Sir Will for taking me to this extraordinary Scottish place for some extraordinary picture-taking.  Loch Haven is just another reason why I love Second Life so much, and Sir Will is one more excellent human being that I am lucky to know.  I am truly blessed by my family and my friends.)

Little Submissions

I have stumbled upon a blog that has quickly become my favorite read in all BDSM-dom.  It is called Little Submissions and it is simply genius.  It's a collection of little "shorts" (and some shorter than others); little stories that depict the life and times of a Domme and her submissive.  Normally my interest wanes after but a moment when confronted with stories about submissive men and their Dommes.  But these little vignettes do more than entertain.  These little vignettes burst with ripe juice; they educate; they illuminate; they show the way.  The impact of the learning  makes me shudder with intellectual gratification.  (The writer should be lauded and celebrated.  Regularly.)  They are written so well.  They're great stories.

What has affected me so, about Little Submissions?  The wordplay, first of all.  Getting the words right.  That there is an owner in the world who will do that; who will reinforce the importance of words, whether at play or in all seriousness.  That there is even the idea of getting the words right.   I was thinking about this today because I attended two discussions (in one day!) and both times the frustration of le mot juste compromised some very key feelings.  (Not mine; other people's.)  It struck me, soundly, that there are people in the world who cannot articulate their realities.  There are people in the world who cannot say what they want to say -- or, rather, who want to articulate something but they do not know the word for it.  They don't know that there is a word for what they want, and when they eventually get that right word, their complex feelings that they feel so awkward trying to express will actually become legitimized.  Because they suffer, they do, trying to legitimize feelings that they don't believe they're even entitled to.  When one increases one's vocabulary, one increases one's ability to process one's world.  To legitimize one's feelings.  To stand firmly upon one's principles.  Hell, to articulate one's principles.  Anyway, getting the words right is huge.  I love the word-play in Little Submissions.

What else affected me?  Cause and effect.  The structure; the anticipation; the expectation; the playfulness.  That there is the talk, the banter, the play.  That there is laughter.  That there is learning.  That there is ongoing amazement and joy.  It feels like joy.  I read the back and forth, and I think to myself, "That is how I wish it could be.  That is how I would love for it to be.  But, between me and a man who loves me as much as that woman loves her sub."

What else affected me?  I begin to understand a little more what a dominant personality "gets out of it."  I find it difficult to empathize, and I have been trying to empathize: I have been trying very hard to figure out what it is about domination that tops feel so attracted to and yearn for.  I now see, a little bit more anyway, the subtle celebrations of her personality every time she dominates.  At every intersection of her domination and his pleasured submission.  And there are wonderful, sundry little points of intersection.  Domination is not just one mindset; one job; one state; one long pathway of never-ending sameness.  Domination, when I observe the woman in Little Submissions, entails an enormous garden of endless variety.  It is never boring to tend one single garden for a long, long time.  Every day the garden yields more.  I do not dream of domination; I dream wholly and eagerly of submission.  But I'm beginning to see, now, why You (when someday You come) might want me.  Someday.

Today was a day of eurekas.  And good pictures.  I have entered one or two photography contests.  Someday, maybe You might be proud of my artistic accomplishments, just one of the many petals that bloom for You.

Discipline - The Aspiration

Our destiny is frequently met by taking the very paths we have chosen to avoid it.  Sayuri's "destiny" in Memoirs of a Geisha comes up against her aspirations in nearly every chapter.  It is difficult to determine whether the happy ending to the novel is due to her destiny or due to her single-minded, purely-focused aspiration.  If we call it "destiny," she has been a passive passenger on a pre-ordained journey, and there has been no point whatsoever to her mental conditioning and emotional tribulations.  If we call it "aspiration," she has taken charge of her fate and brought about exactly that which she had set out to do on the day she changed her living.  From the moment of her prayer to the gods, she directed her mind, body, and spirit towards the one man she knew in whom kindness came easily.  The discipline of her aspiration is expressed here:  "With  my eyes squeezed tightly shut and my hands together, I prayed," she explains.  "I would suffer through any training, bear up under any hardship, for a chance to attract the notice of a man like the Chairman again."  And, every moment thereafter was devoted to this singular vision until, finally, at long last, she realizes her vision.

Sayuri remembers, "For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness."  She continues, "And when I raised myself to look at the Chairman, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall."  To get very, very picky here, I notice that she says when I raised myself to look, and that is the key to this sentiment.  That is the definition, as I would understand it, of aspiration.  When I raise myself to look.  When I raise myself to look, I see more, and I see further.  I can change things before they happen.  I am not a passive recipient of destiny's hand (if I do not wish to be); I take an active participation in that which shapes me (if I wish it so).

I do not take it for granted that there is a destiny for me.  I do discipline myself so that I can face the world and all of the choices presented to me.  I do not wait passively:  I wait actively.  Behind my eyes, there are dreams, and there are ladders I craft to reach them.  There are butterflies - the symbolic metamorphosis is the achievement of aspiration.  My geisha name, Choji, a butterfly name; my sole aspiration, to become that which You have always wanted in me.