Regrets. Regrets? No.

Short-term pain, long term gain.  Short-term gain, long term pain.  Short-term thinking, long term effects.  Short-term effects, long term consequences.  Decision-making always exposes a person to the possibility of regret.  Is it the right decision?  Is it going to hurt later?  Even if it hurts later, is it worthwhile now?

If it is not worthwhile now, how do I know it will not be worthwhile later?  Will it be too late to make a decision later?  If it is too late to make a decision later, will it hurt more later than it does now?

I have made decisions, in my life.  The most interesting decisions are always relationship-decisions.  To be (His) or not to be (His), this is always the question -- not just for me, but for those submissive personalities who yearn to be partnered with a good (male, in this case) dominant. There are complicating factors in these decisions:  and usually it involves a third person.  An absent third person, or a present third person, or a third person who (for one reason or another) is both present and absent at the same time.  (That is possible, in Second Life.)  Or maybe it involves a third person who is entirely attached in the physical realm.  Decision-making is sometimes paralyzing, and especially for someone like me who basically rests her submission on the idea of surrendering decision-making.  But here are two decisions that I would be happy to vouch for, for any submissive reading this.

a) Consideration Collar, yes.  If it's offered, take it.  You both know you like each other, but do you know if you are going to react well to each other over time?  This is a way to get to know the person before making a commitment of vulnerability.  If it's not offered, insist on it.  If it's not acceptable to the other person, there is something wrong, there.

b) Protector, yes.  If it's offered, take it.  (Do not, however, strong-arm anyone into accepting that kind of relationship -- it defeats the purpose.)  Personally, I have been blessed with a handful of outstanding protectors.  Not many.  I didn't think I needed any, of course, until I actually did need one.  Thank you, Sir Tony.  I suppose I don't thank you enough for the good that you did.  Protectors are mentors of a sort; they are wise counsel; they are an ear and a shoulder when necessary; and in the absence of a dominant who can take responsibility for decisions in the relationship, a protector can guide you through decisions that need to be made so that you don't necessarily end up with regrets at the end of that path.  (Two heads are better than one, eh?)  In the case of Sir Tony, not only was he a protector, but he knew how to create a meditative state and get to the source of things.  I keep those memories alive and I'm fortunate to have them: it was a healing time.

A year ago, I was writing about how the best was yet to come.  My journey into real submission had begun in earnest and I was opening legitimately.  I will not insult my own writing, a year ago, by claiming that I have any regrets.  After all, stories never end, and I am a patient person.  My decisions have come from a place of nobility and more care for someone else than for my own self: that means, I think, that I have never made a bad decision, even if it means that I have not indulged as other people indulge.  Integrity is my reward, I suppose.  While not a perfect analog, I recall a passage that flutters around my memory wanting to come out, from Memoirs of a Geisha:

     "Now, nearly forty years later, I sit here looking back on that evening with the Chairman as the moment when all the grieving voices within me fell silent.  Since the day I left Yoroido, I'd done nothing but worry that every turn of life's wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me.  When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.

     "But life softened into something much more pleasant after the Chairman became my danna.  I began to feel like a tree whose roots had at last broken into the rich, wet soil deep beneath the surface.  I'd never before had occasion to think of myself as more fortunate than others, and yet now I was.  Though I must say, I lived in that contented state a long while before I was finally able to look back and admit how desolate my life had once been.  I'm sure I could never have told my story otherwise; I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it."

Realism, Pessimism, and Hope

"I wasn't thanking him for the coin," says Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha, talking about her great love upon first meeting him.  "Or even for the trouble he'd taken in stopping to help me.  I was thanking him for, well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now.  For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose."   This passage in the book is meaningful to me on a human level.  It has nothing much to do with D/s specifically; or BDSM or any of the alternative labels and structures for relationships that I explore in Second Life.  It has everything to do with the human beings we interact with on a daily basis.  With the people that I meet.  With You, my mighty and penetrating You.  You are like the Chairman, Sayuri's beloved.  You are like the one who brings Sayuri currency in a world of poverty.  You are like the one who brings Sayuri hope in a world of pessimism posing as "realism".
I met a man who tries to tell me the way things really are; but the way things really are in his mind are skewed by a terrible, scorpion-like anger.   I met another man who devotes his time to the growing of flowers in a vast garden, but he tends only to those who cry and fail; to those who call out with a shy silence and wound.  The flowers that breathe and thrive, on the other hand, he does not look at or enjoy, and they blossom for nobody.  I have met a man who is barely alive; rarely breathing; and infrequently amused.  I have met a man trapped by his own logic, a snake with two heads that devour to the core until nothing remains.  And I have met a man whom I could not even distinguish from the chip he bore like Atlas with the world -- a giant tumor of a chip that spoke for him, walked for him, alienated the world for him, but left him to wonder at his own loneliness, as if he could not see the chip that manipulated him.  Could you master any girl, truly? I won't allow myself to discover yes or no; I must protect myself from this.

And I have met a man who appears to me almost as though he were my own shadow --   who knows, somehow, the very curve of my wrist as though it were his own.  Who makes me feel as though I were not one of many petals but, rather, an entire blossom proper and ready, something select and chosen.  Someone careful with words.  Someone calm.  Someone with imagination.  No pretense, or so it would seem (and isn't the best art that which cannot be detected?)   And I have met a man who knows good photography when he sees it, and who shares.  I am quite enamoured with John Tisbury's photography at the moment and I'm becoming a fan.  His landscape prints can be purchased in Second Life at Alanis gallery.  Anyway, You of my clear and vivid imagination... You, Sir, have me captivated.  I am beginning to wonder if You are as intimately familiar with the curve of my wrist as I am familiar with the calm waters of your deep sea.  Sayuri committed herself, submitted herself, to the path that would lead her eventually into the arms of her Chairman.  An unwavering devotion.  So Choji walks, slowly and with sweet curiosity as butterflies and flowers surround her, towards 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.

Discipline - The Body

"I wanted more than anything," says Sayuri in the novel  Memoirs of a Geisha, "to see the smooth skin of his face once more with its broad brow, and the eyelids like sheaths of marble over his gentle eyes...  I did finally let my eyes flick upward, though I blushed and looked away so quickly that he may never have known I met his gaze.  But how can I describe what I saw in that instant?  He was looking at me as a musician might look at his instrument just before he begins to play, with understanding and mastery.  I felt that he could see into me as though I were a part of him.  How I would have loved to be the instrument he played!"   This quotation is among my very favorites in the book.  It speaks in but a few lines what it takes me pages and pages of this blog to articulate.  It speaks from "my" point of view, the way that I see You (when You come to me, finally, wherever and whoever You are).
I enclose a picture here of some of my preferred musical instruments in Second Life: a lute created by Grey Kurka among the best crafted builds I've yet come across.  There is only one song ("Greensleeves") -- and when I say "only" I say it with the due reverence and awe that there is any music at all emerging from the collection of prims that performs its artistic beauty -- but it's nicely done.  There are other lutes with still more collections of songs in the world, but none that look like this.  And the two hanging shamizen built by Kahiro Watanabe are just a sample of what this music-maker has created in the world of Japanese instruments.  Kahiro's talent is extreme and perfect.  The music soothes exactly the ache that the soul requires when it craves music.

The technical perfection required of an instrument -- nevermind the player of the instrument -- is an expectation that goes without saying.  When I put a flute to my lips, the wind-pipe must be perfect.  The sound that results will be the perfect result of my mastery of the instrument.  My perfect mastery of the flute will not yield pleasing music if the flute, itself, is badly flawed.  Conversely, if the flute is perfectly-crafted and maintained, the sound will be off if the mastery of the instrument is incomplete.  So it is with my body and Your mastering, when You come.  In the novel Memoirs of a Geisha, Sayuri makes a point of saying that the Japanese value imperfection insofar as a hand-thrown cup is of more value (emotionally, meaningfully) than a store-bought, mass-manufactured cup:  there will be slight imperfections to the hand-thrown cup, and those imperfections contain the character of the vessel.  (Imperfections are not flaws: a badly-flawed cup that cannot perform the duties of a cup is of no value.  But a cup whose perfection dips and ripples in interesting ways... that is character.)  Sometimes if the chip or crack is significant enough, it will be filled and healed with gold.  This is how I, too, have been trained to find beauty.
My picture of my Japanese house; stepping stones that I created; water ripples at each post and cherry blossom trees in the distance; lamps suspended from the roof and resting on the platforms.  All the straight lines in the making of this house --  all the perfect straightness -- where does such straight wood come from? The tree that becomes the straight-line beams is curved, rounded, knotted and imperfect.  The man who makes the straight beam is a wood-master.  A carpenter.  An artist.  The mastery of the body, the making of the straight beam, doesn't erase the lines and rings and character of the wood: there will always be the ripple that softens and balances.

Discipline - The Mind

Discipline of the self is something I regard as the combination of mind, body, spirit, and aspirations of the person into a personal completeness called "integrity".    I alluded to the discipline of my "self" in the last post whereby my geisha training comes out of hibernation and I begin to apply it to my learning about D/s relationships.  My already-enjoyable journey into the dark becomes even more enjoyable as a result.  My core self I introduce to my fantasy self, and my personal feelings of "being real" strengthen.

In my mind, I harbor indelible thoughts.  Philosophy that I hold to.  Learnings that I adhere to.  Information that I seek.  Memories that, over time, re-create and re-adjust.  Some memories, though, that fade in colour.  And some that could never change due to the thrust of the original intensity.  This is the makeup of my mind.  The makeup of my mind contributes to my personal integrity; the extent to which I consider myself a person with integrity is the extent to which my discipline of mind maintains an equally-strong link as-and-to the rest of my parts.

That which may compromise me: impatience.  If there is something worth disciplining in my mind, it is impatience.  At a group discussion earlier this week on "Patience" I learned (or, rather, re-discovered) that  "anxiety" feeds on "impatience," and vice versa.  My chronically-anxious disposition may be disciplined by practicing the virtue of patience, in other words.  The body begins the exercise and the mind acclimatises thereafter.  The physical behavior of patience calms the mind to patience.  And patience is a beautiful visual: water flowing over stones, nothing obstructed, nothing blocked.  The physical behaviour of patience is stillness, calm.  Observation.  Meditation.  Reading.  Walking without purpose.  (Being bound... being restrained... feeling cage bars surround me...)   The physical behaviour of patience will bring the mental stillness of patience.

With patience, one can trust more easily.  When You come, I will trust You in ways I will not trust others.

Discipline - The Self

I was asked, recently, "Are you sure what you're looking for is a D/s relationship," given that, apparently, I long for something that sounds unusual, a contrast to the "normal" way of doing things.

"Yes," I assert gently and truly, "of course a D/s relationship is what I'm looking for.  I already know this.  I'm already there, in my mind.  That is fundamental.  That is basic."   I imagine a gardener with a bonsai.  I imagine a man older, wiser, full of humour.  I imagine he shapes, painstakingly (but not every day... only when it is time), as the natural shape of me emerges from his pruning.  When he is not tending the garden, he is enjoying the garden: he lets me give back, whether in silence or in active pleasure.  When he is at liberty.  When it is easy.  And only then.  There is no "pretend" attention; there is attention or there is space.  You, when  You come, will be a wizard and an artist with shibari.  And the iron of Your chain-leash will be strong.  And Your collar that I wear will be thick and obvious, well-made, substantial.  Warm, rounded, well-wrought metal and leather.  Something strong and masculine around my slender neck.

My future Master, without those things, why else would I seek You?  That, to me, is You.  I need You to discipline and shape this part of me.  And because You have already mastered Yourself, You will know how to master me.  You already know how I complete You; and what I will do for You; and how Your garden will become the great prize for the bonsai that, shaped by You, defines the evidence and skill of Your mastery.

While I wait, I discipline myself.  I discipline my mind.  I (re)learn the geisha manners of love and humility, entertaining and specialties in arts.  It occurs to me that there will never be One who wishes to master me who does not enjoy a geisha's beauty (and make no mistake -- a geisha is not for everybody!  Of what use is a woman who serves by talking or playing the shamisen?  Of what use is a woman who serves by delighting the mind and the eyes with light and surprise? A geisha is not for everybody.)  I continue to shape my intellect, curve my responses, sculpt my disciplines.  I do this because it softens the sharpness of my need, so that my patience blossoms.  I do this so that I have something still more to offer You, when You do come.  I already know what You will do to me; and I already love how I will submit to You.

And, that is enough for me: it is as if You are already here.  I enclose myself within this garden, and I admit none who is not You.