Bob and Jan's Collaring Song

Years ago, when my "then" husband and I were still living in Colorado, we hosted a group of kinksters from around the country in our home, and together, the bunch of us spent the weekend at Thunder in the Mountains.  Tom and T were with us that weekend, along with a couple that lived in Toledo, Ohio, and another set of online friends from Eugene, Oregon.  We had people all over the house, and mealtimes were quite the production, gathered around our big table.  We rented a mini-van, and so we managed to shuttle back and forth across town to participate in the play parties and presentations.  It was a wild and busy time.

Part of the festivities of the weekend included a collaring ceremony between Bob and Jan, our friends from the west coast.  We all gathered one evening, before we headed for the play party, to witness to their promises to one another, and to support them as they embarked on a new phase of their journey in their life together.  It was a simple ceremony that included, at one point, a paraphrase of a hymn that they had heard at their church.  At the time, I'd never heard the hymn by John Ball called "The Summons:"

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown? Will you let my name be known,
will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?

Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?
Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?
Will you kiss the leper clean and do such as this unseen,
and admit to what I mean in you and you in me?

Will you love the "you" you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you've found to reshape the world around,
through my sight and touch and sound in you and you in me?

Lord your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In Your company I'll go where Your love and footsteps show.
Thus I'll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

Now, there is plenty of discussion, within the "church music" types about the relative merits of this song.  Some find it insipid, sing-songy, badly written, and derivative.  Church music people seem to take this stuff awfully seriously.  I don't really care that much, to tell the truth.  I "attend" mass once each week with my Catholic school students, and the music is part of the experience that I can sometimes enjoy, given that I am the resident heathen...

But every few weeks, with amazing regularity, I'll head over to church with my kids, and there, posted on the board, part of the music programme for the service, is "Bob and Jan's Collaring Song."  It always makes me smile...  if they only knew!!!

swan

Flogging

I keep starting to write this, and then finding myself stuck.  For someone who has the capacity to blather on and on and on, I feel strangely awkward; like a newbie; as if all those many, many years (documented in this blog and The Swan's Heart that came before), count as so much nothing with regard to BDSM play.

The weekend days are so precious, and as I indicated in the last post, my Saturday was spoiled to a large degree by a nasty migraine headache.  If I say the "M" word to Himself, that is the death knell for any sort of spanking play or even plain, old, garden-variety sex.  My headaches are taken so very, very seriously, and He won't do anything to make them worse, or make me any more miserable than I already am in the throes of an attack.  So... that was the story on Saturday.

By the time I got sort of over it, and began to feel better, it was late in the evening.  Too late.  And so, we sat up together, watching football (yes, it is the season), and probably baseball (that season, too).  It was well past midnight when we finally headed off to bed.  And so, we slept very late on Sunday morning.

It was a nice waking up time.  I felt pretty good.  He rolled over and put His head on my belly, and I rubbed and scratched His back.  We talked.  Nothing heavy.  Just chatting -- the sort of drowsy, just coming to awareness sort of back and forth that I've always loved.  Back and forth; sharing ideas and tidbits of our lives.

But then, we get hungry, and given our various blood sugar issues, there is no way to delay that -- when it is time to eat, it needs to happen as soon as possible.  Nothing for it.  I piled out of bed and hustled out to the kitchen to put together some pancakes and scrambled eggs and bacon and coffee.

We ate, and then I got busy doing the various weekend chores:  laundry, school work, baking, cleaning chores, garden stuff...  He gets wrapped up in watching the digital video recordings of the Sunday morning news programs; and then, the Sunday TV sports programs -- football/baseball.  Somewhere along the line, in the midst of all of that, I start to figure that the weekend is basically over, and that, since we tend to only spank in the mornings before we get up, it isn't going to happen...maybe next weekend.  I really try not to get all bent out of shape over that, but I can't claim to be entirely easy and sweet about it either.  I miss that intimacy.

So, I was a little surprised when, after dinner on Sunday evening, He looked at me and suggested that maybe we could set up the flogging frame...   No.  I was not just a little surprised.  I was amazed.  And thrilled.

The flogging frame has not been up since long before His shoulder replacement surgery.  Before the surgery, His shoulder was so painful that there was no way we could contemplate wrestling the heavy top off the flogging frame, and even if we could have managed to get it up, the arthritis in His shoulders would have made flogging just impossible.  After the surgery, the recovery and rehabilitation period extends for a full year.  His shoulder healed perfectly, but by the time He was feeling capable of swinging a flogger, He needed another knee replacement.  That was last summer -- just over a year ago.  It wasn't easy, even as knee replacements go, and the rehab course took longer than we anticipated.  Then, His other shoulder started to hurt...  and so it goes.  We are definitely headed for another shoulder replacement.  It is only a question of time, and probably not a lot of time either.

So...  I was torn.  Of course I wanted a flogging, But things are complicated for us.  There is a tentativeness between us that is hard to navigate.  But, beyond that, I did not want Him to hurt that shoulder.  Actually, I didn't want Him to hurt either shoulder.  Not with the flogging itself, and definitely not with the sheer brute strength required to set up the flogging frame.

We wrangled back and forth, considering the possibilities... until, finally, I suggested that maybe we could use the spanking bench instead of the flogging frame.  THAT was the ticket.  He quickly agreed.  I went and pulled the bench out of the bedroom and into position in the living room.  I messed and messed, trying to remember how to get onto the thing and be halfway comfortable, and He rounded up a pile of floggers... and other things.  Of course.

It was good.  The floggers fell this way and that.  He used His hands and a variety of knives, and had me squirming, feeling sensations that haven't visited this part of the world for a very long time.  From soft, sensuous suede and the heavier buffalo flogger; working up to the sharpness of the kangaroo-hide cat, the flogging was amazing.  There were paddles, of course... and the rattan cane, and one of those birch-rod styled thingys.  All the way along, I was entranced and fascinated by the waves of sensation He was causing to play through my body.  It seems I've finally found my way back to "it."  Finally.  Yeah.

It was good.  Good.
swan

Feeling Pissy

I woke up with a migraine.
That spoils the morning.
Happens more often than not anymore.
Ruins the day.
And having the day ruined pisses me off.
There are only just two weekend days, and my stupid, fucking headache spoiled this one.
Damn!

And around a migraine, I tend to get moody, angry, fussy, and just generally pissy about everything.  It is just part of the package.  Even when I've started to feel physically better (read:  my head doesn't feel like it is about to explode), I tend to be still emotionally volatile.  Sucks.

So...  In no particular order, things that piss me off:

• Miley Cyrus
• I finished reading Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
• I have to do the laundry
• There are floods in Colorado where my kids live
• I've got a boy kid in my math class who simply will not work with me, insisting that he "doesn't get any of it."
• My veggie garden is almost done, and I have lost the joy of having it since my neighbors have been so ugly about it
• Every package of strawberries purchased in the last few weeks have spoiled before we can eat them
• Syria and Obama and Congress and Putin and every single news program that brings any of that up
• I don't drink Coke anymore
• My house is a mess
• I need a shower
• Need to go make coffee
• All shoes hurt my feet after awhile
• Every Fetlife group is contentious and nasty
• I want a cheeseburger and an ice cream cone
• DD-er's seem to be swarming over this blog, while no one else even comes to look anymore
• The baseball season is coming down to the end and the Reds continue to just play subpar ball
• Football season and baseball season are in that period of overlap
• The DVR on the TV works by principles I do not fully comprehend
• It is the season for crazy meetings with crazy parents
• Gas prices are all over the place

I'm sure there is more, but you get the picture.
swan

HOT!!!!!

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.
Garrison Keillor 


The building where I teach is 98 years old.  Built of brick and cinder block, with high ceilings and long, windowless hallways, the place is a sweat box when the temperatures and humidity levels start to climb as they are wont to do here in Cincinnati. There is NO air conditioning.  Oh, there is a window unit in the principal's office, and the cafeteria is a later addition, built with AC, but the classrooms.  Nothing.  Remodeling of the classrooms over the last few years has included ceiling fans, but that's it.  

A first world problem, I know. 

School started for us, on August 20 -- and after what was a remarkably cool and rainy summer, I was hopeful that maybe, this year, we would avoid the sweltering, brain-melting weeks of late summer here in the almost-but-not-quite-south.  Wishing, really.  How does that old nursery rhyme go?  "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride..."

So...

Today...

Outside temperatures reached into the mid-90s.  Humidity levels upwards of 50%, the air in the building was soupy at 7:15 this morning.  With the addition of about 130 young adolescents, we quickly advanced from soupy to stifling to utterly awful.  By the end of the day, every one of us was a droopy, drippy mess.  I can't think in that heat, and neither can they.  How am I supposed to convey the wonder and magic of math when the only numbers any of us can focus on are the temperature and the number of minutes until we can escape from the misery?

If I ever, EVER said that hot was, well, HOT.  I didn't mean it.  Not like this.

swan

Reminded

I have always taken a dim view of submissive partners who require continual attention and reminding of who they are and what their place is.  I've always believed that the purpose of the "one down" partner in a power relationship is to make the Master/Owner/Dominant/Top's life easier and simpler.  Really, the submissive shouldn't require a lot of maintenance.  That is what I believe, and that is what I've said all along.

And then, I found myself in a circumstance where the One Up partner in my power dynamic stopped actively engaging in that "role."  Note, I do not think He has stopped being that.  I still believe that dominance is His innate way of being in the world, and I don't think He can change that.  Still, the reality is that He has had other things on His mind, and His heart has not been in the active work of "keeping me in place."

I have been less that sweet and graceful about that.  I have been sad, lost, pouty, and lonely without the sure sense of His power in my day to day life.  I have felt that as abandonment; as a decision that I was no longer wanted or appreciated.  I have sometimes whined, cajoled, and blamed Him for making that be the way I felt.  I've acted in opposition to all of those things that I have ALWAYS believed and thought.  I've behaved like the bratty submissive I never, ever wanted to be.

But even a brat can learn given enough time.  Here's what I have learned:

He is my Master.  I am His.  Always and all ways.  Master is who He is, not what He does.  I do not require Him to control or micromanage me in order to behave as I know He would have me behave.  I know what is expected, wanted, and needed.  I have the voice of His dominance in my mind.  His voice.  I have the face of His dominance in my mind.  His face.  All I have to do is listen and look inside, and all of it is there; all of the many years of learning and growing in His sight; all of the work and effort that it took to become His.  It is there and I can hear it and feel it without His ever saying a word.

I have not lost my Master.  I can never lose Him.  If He chooses to be quiet for a time; if He chooses to remain quiet for a lifetime; still He will forever be in my head.  I can follow Him as surely as I might walk in His footsteps along a sandy beach.  I remember now.

swan

Journeying -- Somewhere

I've been to subspace a few times.  Time was, I would go off to subspace in the midst of a session; not often, but occasionally.  I've tried to describe the experience at least a half dozen times.  Search subspace here, and you'll find a wealth of words on the subject.

Like many submissives, I find the subspace experience to be pleasant, satisfying, and just a little mysterious.  The times when I've managed to launch off into that different sort of awareness have been some of the best parts of being who I am and what I am inside of my intimate life.

Recently, though, I've found myself, in the midst of sadomasochistic play, traveling to a different sort of mental place.  At least, I suppose it is a "mental" place.  It might be.

I used to battle my way along through most sessions, believing that I was, mostly, working to please Him.  Sometimes, rarely, I got off into my own good place, and even more rarely, I'd get turned on and find the whole event thrilling and sexy.  At some level, I believed that when that happened, He had allowed it in some way; letting me go and permitting me to find that path way.  I felt that it was a sort of indulgence; a release from the suffering that He most enjoyed from me, and so a gift of sorts.

As everything has shifted in our lives, I have lived for better than two years with the awareness that sadomasochistic play between us is not what it had been. I sense that there is a banking of the fire that once drove His sadistic urges.  Even as I continued to feel the inner urge to submit and fold into the belonging that was once the norm for me, I confronted the fact that the place where that was possible for me no longer exists between us.  I have, very slowly, evolved into a mindset that allows me to play and take away from it what I need.  Understanding that I may not always be able to do anything to please Him has given me the space in which to please myself.  And I am still a masochist at my core, and so the occasion of masochistic play has become an opportunity for me to go where I will inside my own person.

I used to get through spankings by chanting away inside my head.  Most often, those repeated, mantra-like chants were of a couple of forms:

• Yours always and all ways, Yours always and all ways, Yours always and all ways...
• I love You, Sir, I love You, Sir, I love You, Sir...

Sometimes, in my darker times, the repetition would sound more like:  You are just the butt, You are just the butt, You are just the butt...

Either way, I avoided anything that seemed like counting.  I used that repetitive, mental chattering to help me regulate my breathing, and anchor me to the present.  It worked to keep me from imagining that the pain would go on forever, escalating ever upward, until I would simply cease to exist in any viable sense.  It prevented panic and rage.  It allowed me to be what I believed I should be; what I wanted to be.

Lately, though, I've found that I do count; not strokes but more of a breath count like I once used when I was learning to swim.  I've found that I tend to fall into an eight-count; two counts as I breathe in, and then two as I breathe out.  Repeated over and over:  one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...

That count seems to take me into a place that is different that the subspace I have known.  It seems to take me "down" into some kind of passage, and I can hear myself talking to myself:  "Go deeper, deeper..."  I believe that the path I travel is akin to the shamanic journey that I've learned about, but never been very successful with.  I travel along, counting to eight, and following some sort of tunnel into a space where I remain quite aware of my surroundings and the events of the session I'm engaged in, but with a detached place where I find the ability to ask my questions, and find my own answers -- or be shown those answers.

  The trick seems to be that I need to remember to be asking the question when I get to wherever it is that I go in these moments.  The big question that I've been asking for a long time now is, "What can I do to lessen the emotional distance and separation between He and I?"  We live, these days, with a gentler, softer, but limp seeming emotional space.  The fire and passion is simply gone; a memory of another place and time.  I am torn.  I do not miss the dangerous, scary, and mean parts of the "unhealthy" co-dependence that characterized our former life, but I often feel as though we live more as roommates than lovers.  To be sure, there is nothing much left of our power dynamic (although I continue to act out that relational style by habit and internal conditioning).  

So, I have been making the "shamanic journey" wondering, asking, what to do to bring the two of us closer, and then, just a week or so ago, I came back up out of that purple-lighted deep space with the, seemingly, obvious answer:  If you want to be more connected; if you want to close the gap between you; if you want to reduce the separation; then you must stop separating from Him.

OH!  Duh!  Here, I've gone along believing that it was Him who was creating the distance, and insisting on the arms-length space between us.  Imagine my surprise when the answer made it clear that it is me.  ME.  I am the one who has been pulling away, like the frightened child I once was, I have reacted to His struggles and His pain and His anger by hiding my self.  I have banked my own emotional fires, and convinced myself that the appropriate thing to do was to simply stop pushing, stop needing, stop caring, and stop wanting the close, intimate connection with Him.  I have reverted to that strong, rigid, Amazon woman that I was when I first entered into this life.  I have gone back to the claim that I can take care of myself, that I don't need anyone.  It is a lonely and ugly place, and I have put myself there.  He has not done it to me; to us.  It is me.  I am the one who needs to take down the walls, curl up in His arms, and let it be OK to be there.  I need to stop making the separation happen between us.

swan