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.

The Dictionary, Page Eleven

Rendering is the word that begins the new year.  A joyous 2013 requires a joyous space for contemplation and so I have renovated the contemplation space.  It gets me in the mind-set required for "rendering."  What does that word mean?  It has several meanings, depending on the artistic or engineering or food-manufacturing contexts.

To render is to shade and texture something until it becomes the most "itself" it can possibly be.  It could mean the preserving of slight, tiny details that may otherwise be lost in production, thereby making "itself" the most "itself" it can possibly be.  It could also mean separating the "itself" from the layers of indigestible fat, red herring, white noise, grey smoke, invisible demons, and black thoughts that detract "itself" from its real self.

The relevance, then, to my ongoing journey:  it's a sidewinder, so I will try to clarify this for myself and any others who may someday find it interesting.  In a discussion about "pushing someone's limits" I thought very carefully about all the time during my D/s journey that I have spent trying to defend my personal limits against people who insist on pushing them instead of respecting them as I wish them to be.  As I mentioned to my friend in this discussion, it just feels to me like whenever I state a limit, someone is there to try to bust through it -- as though stating a personal limit were the equivalent of painting a bull's eye target on myself.  "But, pushing limits is how people grow," is the argument against.  And, I disagree.  It is not the only way people grow.  It is not the only way people try new things.  And it is not the concrete, definite, be-all-end-all rule that every Dominant or Master must push a submissive to do things that are uncomfortable.  It's written nowhere that this is "the only way" a D/s relationship may successfully exist and thrive in the world.

"But, you will stagnate and grow bored," is the argument against.  And, again, I disagree.  As I meditate on the idea of rendering, I think about the ways in which pain is removed from me -- not inflicted upon me.  As I meditate upon the idea of the getting-to-know, the sharing of imagination, the conversation and processing of the world together, the ways in which Tasdron gets to know me and offers perspectives that I had not thought of, the ways in which I may speak candidly and freely with him and unburden the sealed vaults of festering secrets or unleash the anxious chirping doves that are eager to fly, all the different ways that he takes care to preserve my essence while carving away the excess noise and sludge...  this process of rendering that takes place time after time, day after day, weeks and months on end... this process of rendering (that he would have me believe is mutual, in fact) is a process that does not involve substituting one pain for another but, rather, involves letting the real person come out.

The real person emerges.  And frankly, that's enough of a challenge for me, because it's been a long time since that's been a reality, and I didn't even realize it before.  This process of rendering requires trust and time and closeness and intimacy and care so that mistakes do not happen, of course, just like pushing limits requires.  But instead of pushing limits of endurance, it's a process of removing unnecessary endurance to free the soul and let experience be that much more gratifying.  And, thank you.  The peace is delightful from where I recline.

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.

Book Review: Fifty Shades

Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed  are pretty fun reads.  So far I haven't found a review that does the trilogy any justice.  The reviews typically focus on the stilted writing style, and yet this lady's writing style is one that I happen to quite enjoy in a fun romance novel (and that's all this aspires to be in the first place -- fun, romance).  The reviews might mention the quirky persona of the first-person female voice (which, in itself, I find refreshing and rather liberated).  And almost without fail, the reviews will declare that it is nearly impossible for this trilogy to have gained the fame it already has: "How could it be?"  they lament.  "How could this woman hit right on the knob that elusive little button full of orgasm that we men have missed?"

Easy.  Women writers do it all the time.  So does E. L. James with her Fifty Shades trilogy, and the formula is dead-simple:  the fantasy is all in the familiar.  Take, for example, blue-jeans.  North Americans love their blue-jeans.  For women it's a "thing" -- that pretty pair of jeans that makes us look "just right".  Or, that pretty pair of jeans that we wish we could get into... In the book, when she puts on the jeans, we put on the jeans.  And we have the perfect look.  It's really easy.  And then we get that look from our lover.  And then it's all about how fast those jeans can come off.  Nothing very difficult about this fantasy, right?  It's all in the familiar.  Ana has the right jeans.  She has the right education.  She lands her dream job.  She ends up with more money than she can spend.  She has a lover who brings her to climax every... single... time... (except once, but that is dealt with fairly swiftly and is never repeated).

Thrown into the world of his wealth, Ana remains just her plain old self, blue-jeans and all.  Finely-wrought furniture (and there's a snooker table in there also, for a pretty great scene), high-speed car-chases (where our Ana's at the wheel and parks perfectly right after, without a scratch), lovingly-detailed lovemaking, and through it all our Ana is reminded time after time to please eat, she needs to eat more.  I mean, seriously, what part of this fantasy is complicated?  And how much wouldn't speak to women across all nations (if we were all being honest about the snooker table)?  The formula is perfect:  take the ordinary, make it extraordinary.  Take the simple, make it perfect.  Take the every-day living of the under-satisfied North American woman plagued with debt, sexual harassment, jeans that were built for teens, and a lacklustre car that keeps breaking down, and throw her into Ana's world:  the same world, but completely revamped by a sudden love-interest who has all the money required to bring her every conceivable physical comfort.  Suddenly.  Without having to beg for it.

It's fantasy, right?  Anything goes, for fantasy.  Because, then, there's the rough stuff... The ropes, the safe-words, the flogger, the cuffs, the "red room of pain".  She's terrified at first.  She's a virgin, after all, and this is quite an initiation.  She's a "hearts and flowers" kind of girl, and he's a megalomaniac Dom who wants to control every moment of her life.  And the real, truly beautiful fantasy of this trilogy (this is the part that all the critics miss, because they don't approach this trilogy from the mindset of Our Lifestyle) is the exquisite dance of negotiation Ana and Christian Grey achieve over the course of three books.  The negotiation is honest; it is open; it is dramatic; it is painful sometimes; it is hilariously funny in other moments; and it goes on without stopping.  The negotiation is brilliantly accomplished because it is real, bona fide negotiation.  He begins with a list, and she begins with a blank slate.  She moves from her hearts-and-flowers-chaise a little closer to his Dom-play; and he moves away from his Dom-play closer to her hearts-and-flowers-chaise.  Together, they begin to enjoy each other's worlds.  They learn to love what the other has to offer, even though it wasn't originally what they had thought they wanted.  This is the fantasy - open, honest, saying what you need.  It's a great fantasy for the frustrated, silent type.  Negotiating each other's space is tricky and uncharted, but to observe how they do it (and how good it feels afterwards, all that deep and meaningful intimacy they share as a result) is the real fantasy of this trilogy.  Even though this story is really all about Christian's journey away from D/s living, the story still lets us subbies feel, first hand (it's all in first person) what real, REAL intimacy feels like with a Dominant who understands that negotiation is NOT the same thing as topping from the bottom.

Bondage Part One: Captivity

What I know comes from my many Second Life years of experience and observation: I'm not the quick study that people think I am.  I've been around the block once or twice!  What I've never been, though, in all my years of Second Life... is real.  Exploring the D/s lifestyle is making me get real, now.  It's making me take relationships seriously.  It's making me give (and expect) a deeper honesty about human interaction.  Frankly, it's carrying over into RL also.  This is a very positive journey for me.   Bondage is on my mind, lately, and so into the dark we go.  The first landing:  Captivity.  The word alone conjures an adequate darkness for my taste, but it's no good (I've found) if a person can't feel it.  Really feel it.

In Second Life, I've had my senses trained to expect some pretty fine things.  Not necessarily expensive, but fine in the strict sense.  Craft, care, time, nothing rushed...  Shade Fantasy Outfitters gives good equipment.  Good imagination.  Good feeling.  It has the old-world feel (built especially for Medieval and Gorean sims I expect... but any dungeon would benefit); it has the tried-and-true positions that don't look noobish in the least; and you know these aren't free.  They aren't expensive, either.  High quality, low cost.  The pictures that result (because why bother if you aren't going to retain a keepsake for future enjoyment in a solitary moment?) give you a fighting chance for realism.

And the more that I experiment (privately) with this equipment, the more I begin to understand the idea of "virtual pain".  What it represents.  What it symbolizes.  I begin to understand the idea of "virtual captivity", what it represents and symbolizes.   I still have not got past my roleplay urges and inclinations... I have roleplayed for many years in a virtual environment and have gotten fairly good at inventing thought-provoking images (where once it used to terrify me, the idea of contributing to a play with more experienced people).  I want to "get real" but I want that time to think before throwing my gambit, which roleplay affords me.  And now I begin to understand what the D/s community refer to as "scening" -- it's never explicitly been explained to me but I now imagine it is a created scene, a mood built around one driving action that requires preparation, consideration, and readiness.  And the scene plays out.  And then there is the aftermath... I mean, "care".

My years in roleplay might reasonably serve me quite well when I get to the point where scening is available to me; if I can get REAL.   Realistic props and enclosures make it work for me -- so kudos are also due Van Auster and his store POST for being the high-quality texturing guru that makes me never want to leave my POST home. And as a final note, since we're prop-talking, Xanxan Jervil  makes phenomenal collars and cuffs with some good original animations.  Submission is good with the right equipment moving my body, and the textures that make me feel the bondage-chains.