The Dictionary, Page Four

Submission is a timely topic (but isn't it always?) and this morning over coffee we wondered if perhaps submission had anything to do with turnips.  The taking of coffee together for the first time in years had clearly made us giddy.  We had been exchanging stories about what could possibly have been the nascent, beginning features of his dominant personality and my submissive personality.  Submission is a big deal to me and has been for the last several years; so much so that this past year I have undertaken a serious study of submission, bringing to bear the force and rigour of my mind as I would treat any other major idea in philosophy.  I have been well-rewarded for my efforts.  These conclusions I hold true, self-evident, and sacred:

1.  There is one person in all the world with whom I would never turn off the performance of my submission; and that person masters my submission truly.  Tasdron, time will not erase the good you have done for me.  No time, no place, no act can erase or negate the way in which you privilege our connection, and how you make me feel it.  There are good people in the world who do good deeds and who give regularly, and I am blessed to know them.  And, Tasdron, your goodness speaks to me like a soul-mate.

2.  The performance of my submission is the most natural, pleasing, fulfilling performance of my life.  To seek ways in which to perfect it for you; to seek ways in which to clarify it for you; to seek ways in which to demonstrate it before you; these are tasks I set myself.  And, any task that you lay upon me to fulfill, I believe such tasks achieve the same thing.  They are opportunities for me to love you.

3.  I understand, now, the meaning behind the picture that I love.  The blindfolded girl, and she smiles, and she kneels with hands in chalice-position, and she waits by an empty chair.  I understand the assignment that I was called to write about her, by my mentor.  I understand why I was compelled to send you that assignment, even though we had not spoken for a long time.  And I understand that, whether or not we can articulate such things, the truth of it rattled around inside us, continuing the journey for us even though we were (for a little while) focused elsewhere.  When I submitted to you years ago, I never stopped, even though we did not know how real we were at the time.  It was fun to play!  And it is also fun to do it for real.

4.  There is no cruelty in your domination; there is no weakness in my submission.  There is no weakness in your domination; there is no cruelty in my submission.  Tasdron, we have so much in common.  Where is the difference between us?  In the songs we sing to each other when the world is too much with us.  Your mastery; my submission; we understand each other.

5.  Submission does, very likely, come from turnips.  I am what I eat, after all.

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.