The Gardener

There is a euphemism in the BDSM community of "The Gardener," referring to the dominant or master -- he or she who tends the garden, provides the food and water, shapes the straightness of the growth of the blossom.  He or she who over-sees. And, by extension, the euphemism includes the tended plant's similarities to the submissive:  he or she who responds to the care, who takes nourishment and grows taller for it.

I note with amusement that this euphemism has nothing whatsoever to do with sex, kinky-sex, sadistic-sex, masochistic-sex, three-way sex, or tied-up sex.  The euphemism involves the practical relations between a dominant and a submissive: the dominant acts, and the submissive reacts (philosophically-speaking).

Of course when people who love each other collide and their wow-factors combust and the engines roar in triumph for having found each other, it is a natural progression in a relationship to explore the thousand playful ways of sexual intercourse.  And, of course, during sexual performance the dominant dominates and the submissive submits just as in other daily life-events.  But even a year later after beginning my journey of learning about real submission and domination, I am still amazed at the sexually-charged atmosphere of the BDSM communities I peek into.

Frankly, I don't see very many gardens.  The J2D sim is the closest I come to there being garden, nature, tree and blossom.  Water.  Growth.  Opportunity and potential.

I know, I know -- birds and bees are everywhere, and they pollinate and cross-pollinate and there is always the yawning genitalia of wide-open flowers just waiting for the penetrating probe of the next insect, everywhere one looks.  The fragrant perfume of such blooms attracts me and changes my state of being.  I love to immerse myself in a beautiful garden, and it is equally pleasing to surround myself with devoted and delighted submissive personalities.  Interested, aware, mannered and cultured, the submissive personality has the potential to achieve the heights of intellectual and emotional bliss.  There are fascinating people with unique experience, in this particular realm.

And yet, it is a rare find, that sweet person devoted to growing taller and shedding thorns.  So often, the submissive feels incomplete without a dominant at the other end of this conversation so that they grow distracted, unsatisfied, unreasonably sexually-charged and nearly violent with anxiety.  It is not another submissive she wants to speak with or to wander through the park and look at birds -- it is a dominant, ready to spank her and then sexually use her, half-clothed, without asking.

This, I am learning, is not a problem of submission and domination: this is a problem with emotional well-being in general.  This is a problem of mental health.  This is a problem of coming-online-only-when-horny, so that we never get to know the real person, sated and in equilibrium.  This is a problem of nymphomania -- a manic need for sex that, for as long as it goes unsatisfied, continues to grow in intensity and perversion.  This, I am learning, has nothing whatsoever to do with domination and submission, and frankly it should!

People cruelly-use other people not because the world is populated by cruelty and evil laughter, but rather because there is an epidemic of uncontrolled, unmastered emotion in the world.  Domination and submission is perfectly -- honestly, ideally -- suited for the self-mastering of emotion that is required to practice safe, sane, consenting performance.  This lifestyle is precisely where it should be (and can be) fixed.

Mastering and self-mastering are words that, outside of the BDSM universe, become diluted with overuse and inaccurate use.  Mastering and self-mastering are sorely needed in the general population so filled with anger and quick-to-judge assumptions.  To follow one who has the ability to discipline and to focus another person's energy into higher learning and higher understanding, zen-like peace and beneficial living habits -- oh how I wish this were a widespread practice among dominants and submissives!  To tend to gardens literally, and to prune and eliminate the weeds, these are behaviours that would make people and the world beautiful.  BDSM must be -- surely, it must be -- more than spanking and seeing how long we can hold our breath.

This is my journey, of course.  For those that need a spanking, I am overjoyed when you get it. For me, though, it is a garden that I wish to explore, and to get back to learning of the unique and interesting ways gardeners do their work with the beautiful flowers they labour around. I definitely need to get out more, like I used to.

The Dictionary, Page Fourteen

Claiming, for the fourteenth word in my dictionary of submission, is one of those words that necessarily involves two people.  Words like "discipline" or "chastity" or "service" do not necessarily require someone other than me to be in the room.  I may perform these words in solitude as part of my lifestyle.  But, the act of claiming -- this is an act that requires two people:  the one who declares and the one who is now possessed.

To celebrate, I sport Lola's Tangos in their two-fold enormity, nearly breaking my back from how pendulous and full they feel.  (They are as large as my head, and they could be larger still if I choose!  Unreal.)  The large-breasted phenomenon that sweeps through Second Life right now is hilarious to me.  But I digress.

I remember the anticlimactic declaration of an RP official who said that, after long and arduous negotiation so many years ago, Tasdron could indeed claim me and I could now officially consider myself his.  I remember the ceremony of the brand that almost could not be, all because of more RP shenanigans.  I remember the "going home" with him and the special rituals, the idea of ritual that would come to characterize the flavour of our interaction henceforth.  I remember, outside of RP, a companionship ceremony that we conducted for ourselves in the privacy of his own land, under a flowering tree at the mouth of a cave.  And another, in the dark, as we stood upon stones in a sparring arena, equals in each other's gaze.   I remember a long, long absence ended by a sudden return, and Tasdron reclaimed me in a house I kept just in case of such an incident.  And then a long, long absence after which the bell tower came into sight.

Once, I wrote that it mattered not whether "he knew" I submitted to him.  The very fact of my submission was in my mind, after all, and even if he had no idea, I could submit to my own heart's content and behave in such a way that demonstrated my submission -- whether or not he accepted it.  In this way, it is similar to O in the Chateau:  the men try and try to enslave her, but she repeatedly declares her submission to their will.  It doesn't matter what others think, in other words: my own demonstration and my own behaviour define me.  Just as O is submissive and not a slave by her very declaration of submission, so am I, even in my own mind, even during the vast emptiness between "claimings."

But, when the time comes for him to make his claim, then something even more meaningful happens.  I am not just me alone in my own imagination: I am now me, alive and real, in his also.  And his mastery is not my imagination: it becomes more and more real just as my submission becomes more and more dynamic.  That declaration -- like a wedding vow or a sworn vendetta -- is one of the few remaining utterances with the power to change a person's state.  So few words remain in language that will physically and permanently alter a person's state:  "I submit," and conversely, "I claim you" are words that hold such power -- almost as magic transformation.

I now return to my svelte and lean silhouette, putting the tangos away.  (The sexually-charged world astonishes me, honestly.  Sex sex sex.  Tango tango tango.)

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.

Symbols and Sensuality, Part 2

Because I am new to this lifestyle -- or, rather, new to the desires and the immersion -- my meditations involve many "before and after" considerations.  Transformation is something I think about.  Who I am.  Where I have been.  Where I am going.  Whom I know.  Whom I admire.  Whom I (would theoretically want nothing more than to) obey.

The transformation from a vanilla mindset to a mindset surrendered to the idea of submission feels thrilling. And I enjoy the longevity of it.  I enjoy that it is not instantaneous.  I enjoy that there are rites of passage.  I enjoy that there are layers to peel from me in order to feel me emerge.  Many writers have explored the symbology of the moth and the bright light as the soul seeking knowledge, the body seeking experience.  I feel like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, stripped of all that kept me earthbound and sluggish, ready to spread my wings and obey the forces of nature that control me.  I want the forces of nature to control me.  I want to feel the power of something stronger remove from me the petty anxieties of a day; making me an outlaw to the normative and stifling rules of society because of how high I can fly, commanded by Him to do so.

It is a tremendous responsibility for a man to dominate a woman.  Sometimes I am in awe of this responsibility (I mean, the "ideal" version... not the pretend version that feels more and more commonplace).  When I imagine the Dominant's role, I imagine a man who strives towards self-Mastery and vast knowledge.  I imagine a man at the top of his game; someone who has invested time, effort, practice, and good conversation in the art of problem-solving and appetite-grooming (both very, very important characteristics in a man, to me).  I imagine that he understands the ways of the female and the male human body; how to heal and how to nourish.  I imagine he has figured out how to get what he wants in life without harming any.  I imagine he has his cool ambition well in hand, and that it balances perfectly with his warm artistic and inventive pursuits.  And, I imagine he is so self-aware that he knows what the merest look he gives can do to me -- wither me to nothing, or lift me to the heavens.

Who am I?  I barely recognize myself anymore.  I am surrounded by butterflies; a white mist in the distance cools the air that I breathe.  My path is straight, true, and yet I flit about like a butterfly to all the different flowers, drunk on possibility.  My eyes rest easily, and I am not afraid of the dark.  I have the power to wound; and I have the ability to feel horribly wounded.  I wish for, instead of the wound, being in the right place surrounded by the right people.  I wish for, instead of the wound, being on the other end of a powerful chain controlled by one who knows himself.  I wish for, instead of the wound, being united in abiding peace with the man who knows how to control the shadows of his appetite, the darkness of mine, and the sweet spring air in the daylight, after.  (This is not to say that I am in a hurry....................................  It is merely that my goal is clearer and clearer; and that the horizon is a beautiful vista, no matter how distant or near to me.)

License and The Mask

There is something about a masquerade that appeals to me.  It is the license granted the masked, license to do everything one would not ordinarily do if one could see the face behind the action. Second Life is one such masquerade, in fact:  avatars performing acts of fantasy, reaching out to people one could not, ordinarily.  The mask licenses behaviour.  The sultry donning of a glittered cover turns the eyes dark and turns the intentions loose.

The sensuality of a masquerade clearly must be harnessed, teased, and controlled by an experienced master of ceremonies (or mistress...)  It seems as though without the expert imagination of a games-master there can be no finely-pointed focus upon the real reason for the mask in the first place.  One does not don disguise in order to fool one's partner...

One masks in order to liberate, transform, and experience.

In both of the preceding excerpts from "The Story of O", faces are concealed.  At Roissy, O never knows the identity of each man mounting his assault upon her body during her initiation night. Each one, or none of them, may be her lover.  The blindfold is a sort of mask; it transforms inhibitions in O's case as well as Elizabeth ("9 and 1/2 Weeks") with John Gray.  The owl's mask renders O mute but all-seeing, transforming her "as though she were a real owl."

One masks in order to liberate, transform, experience, and display.  Camouflaging one bit in order to highlight another bit in sharp relief.  To conceal the face in order to display the genitals, in O's case.  To conceal the humanity of her in order to display the submission of her.

In my imagination, I revel in the idea of masquerade.  License to seize, to feel, to take, to experience, and to discard before succumbing to sweet, long sleep.