Ecclectic Ponderings of the Season

I have, for as long as I can remember, come to the winter holiday celebration with ambivalence (to put it mildly). For me, it begins in mid-October and then just builds from there until, by the time everyone else is feeling all "merry and bright" I am a full-on humbug -- and generally pretty sincerely hysterical about it in the bargain.
Some of that is wrapped around a mixture of family history that is so cumbersome and complicated and just icky that I don't even want to step into the muck to begin to recount it. Suffice it to say that I don't have a lot of warm fuzzy memories to hang my holiday hat on. Part of my difficulty with the mid-winter celebrating is that it happens in WINTER. Ewwwww! I am not a snow person. I detest the cold. The dark brings me down emotionally. All I really want to do is curl up under the warm, snuggly blankets and hug and cuddle and sleep -- waking occasionally to make love before drifting back to sleep. I do not ski. I do not ride sleds. I do not ice skate. I do not shovel snow (given any choice). I do not like being out in this nasty, awful, dreadful, miserable winter weather. Period. Warm. Give me warm, sunny days and a patio with a beer or an ice tea -- preferably served by a charming cabana boy... GRIN! Further, I really do feel conflicted about the religious context that pervades the holidays. I am NOT Christian. The whole Jesus thing is a problem for me in terms of "intellectual integrity."I like the pretty pageantry of the whole story -- I was raised with it and I know all the music and I have a serious collection of nativity sets, but the fact is that my personal spirituality is not in line with this very Christian holiday. I don't have anything against people who DO do this path, but it isn't mine, and I know that is the truth for me, so I can get to feeling a little raw, if I pay attention at a certain level. It just doesn't feel honest. And don't even get me started about the commercial drumbeat that pounds out the mantra from way before Halloween with ever increasing urgency -- HAVE YOU BOUGHT ENOUGH; SPENT ENOUGH; PILED THE PILES HIGH ENOUGH? I don't enjoy shopping. Ever. Not for myself, and not for anyone else either. I am never sure what to do about gift giving. Not creative or inventive or sure what is the right thing for anyone on the list. I am easily overwhelmed at almost every single turn in the gift tumble. And I'm no better when it comes to receiving gifts -- I don't like being surprised. I hate that whole wrapped up package scenario. It makes me nervous.

So. I have been a little surprised this year to find myself easing gently and softly through the season with a sense of quiet and calm and simple enjoyment. I've scaled down some of what I might have done in years before. I've chosen what to bring out of the decorative items that I've had in my collection for years -- I've given myself permission to only put out only what I really want out; those things that I most enjoy and really want to see in my environment. I've found I'm enjoying the music that is seasonal as we've played it at home -- simply letting it wash through the place and take us where it will. Some nights, after dinner, we turn out the lights, put on the candles and just sit and listen, or even sing along. Sharing the music that seems to fill the house with a particular kind of warmth and joy. It has been good.

I've found I'm pondering and listening to the language of the holiday with some sort of different perspective this year. Not so put off by the Christian nature of the celebrations, I am finding other meanings that are speaking to me in the images, symbols, and traditions. For a celebration that is, after all, deeply rooted in pre-Christian ritual and belief, none of that should probably be surprising. Still, I am glad to find things that can carry me through the pervasive frolicking with some kind of orienting that makes it all seem at least a little bit contextually sane for me.

So, here are some bits and pieces -- shared for the holiday with you --

This first is really not Christmas oriented, or even holiday oriented, but I find it evocative in the context of our world situation, especially as Bethelehem continues to sit at the vortex of so much upheaval in our world. How remarkable that these words, penned at the opening of the First World War seem so applicable to where we find ourselves so many years later. As the seasonal darkness settles down over us all, this is the season for lighting the fires of hospitality and hope in our homes, our hearts, our communities. Wherever ignorance and fear and hatred hold sway, people of good will and good heart must find the courage and the conviction to reach across seemingly impassable boundaries to make common cause. We are, all -- here on this tiny, shining bit of matter in a vast universe, more alike than different.

W.B Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming!

Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I

That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Another set of words that have brought me to a place of thinking this year come from a frankly "Jesus" promoting Christmas song by Kenny Rogers -- "Mary, Did You Know?" The truth is, I like it musically. Beyond that, though, there is something in these words that speaks to me about the whole "virgin birth" thing that is part and parcel of the Christmas story that I was brought up with as part of my Catholic childhood. For those who have not had the Catholic experience, the doctrine of the virginity of Mary is a major article of faith within that tradition. I don't know very many people who come of age within Catholicism who don't struggle with the sheer cognitive looniness of the "virgin birth." Still, I like this song. It celebrates the mystery of motherhood (quite apart from the religious overlay) in terms that I believe any woman who has ever gazed into the eyes of her infant child can understand. There is that wild unknown place when you hold that new, unformed human person in your arms. Surely, EVERY birth is "virgin" in some very real sense. It is territory that cannot be known ahead of time, cannot be understood in any sort of concrete sense short of actually walking through the process.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will one day walk on water?

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?

Did you know,

that your baby boy has come to make you new?

This child that you've delivered,

will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?

Mary, did you know

your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?

Did you know,

that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?

When you kiss your little baby,

you've kissed the face of God.

The blind will see

The deaf will hear

The dead will live again.

The lame will leap

The dumb will speak

The praises of The Lamb.

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?

Mary, did you know

that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?

Did you know,

that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?

This sleeping child you're holding,

is the great I AM

Then there is the continued injunction, delivered by angels, if you read the accounts of the birth of Christ, as told in scripture, especially in the Gospel of Mark -- "Do not be afraid." Angels tell Mary not to be afraid when they announce that she has "found favor with God" and will become the mother of the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Angels tell the carpenter, Joseph, not to be afraid to take Mary for his wife, even though she is bearing a child which he knows is not his. Angels tell the terrified shepherds not to be afraid, but instead to go and seek out the child which has been laid in a manger... I don't know about the veracity of the whole story, but I do know one thing. Messengers from "god" who tell you not to be afraid -- are actually telling you to hang on to your hat because life is just about to get interesting as hell. I am trying to remember if there was an "angel" the night that Master sat at the end of the sofa, long after everyone else was asleep; looked straight at me, and announced that He loved me... Did I hear some angelic voice steadying my nerves -- assuring me that there was absolutely no reason to be afraid? Maybe so...

Then there is the even deeper, older, more rooted set of traditions to which it all hearkens back... the time of magic and wonder before there was anything but a world ruled by sprites and the wood nymphs and the whole pantheon of gods and goddesses from cultures flung across the globe. In the more innocent and earthy celebrations of the solstice and the turning of the year and the returning of the light, I still find something deep and resonant:

In Russia, there's a Christmas divination that involves candles. A girl would sit in a darkened room, with two lighted candles and two mirrors, pointed so that one reflects the candlelight into the other. The viewer would seek the seventh reflection, then look until her future would be seen.
The Early Germans built a stone altar to Hertha, or Bertha, goddess of domesticity and the home, during winter solstice. With a fire of fir boughs stoked on the altar, Hertha was able to descend through the smoke and guide those who were wise in Saga lore to foretell the fortunes of those at the feast.
In Spain, there's an old custom that is a holdover from Roman days. The urn of fate is a large bowl containing slips of paper on which are written all the names of those at a family get-togehter. The slips of paper are drawn out two at a time. Those whose names are so joined are to be devoted friends for the year. Apparently, there's often a little finagling to help matchmaking along, as well.
In Scandinavia, some families place all their shoes together, as this will cause them to live in harmony throughout the year.
And in many, many cultures, it's considered bad luck for a fire or a candle to go out on Christmas Day. So keep those candles burning!

swan

Political Rant -- Fair Warning

Mother Jones Magazine reports this week that the new darling of the "social conservative" wing of the Republican party, Mike Huckabee, wrote the following in a book he co-authored in 1998:

It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.

Trying to put some sort of "reasonable" spin on that little gem, Huckabee mouthpiece, Joe Carter sought to clarify its meaning like this:

"He's not equating homosexuality with necrophilia. He's saying there's a range of aberrant behavior. He considers homosexuality aberrant, but that's at one end of the spectrum. Necrophilia is at the other end."
Carter added: "No way is he saying that homosexuality is like having sex with dead people. That's not it at all."
Asked how one measured what rated where on this spectrum of aberrant behavior, Carter said: "He was talking about aberrant sexual behavior. Sado masochism and necrophilia are on the further end of the spectrum."

Well.

Now.

We're a good long way from the point where this all comes down to actual votes getting cast here. I wouldn't ever, ever, ever vote for any of the characters that the Republicans are fielding this go round. That said, I, for one, am going to keep that little piece of information very clearly in mind. I will be very sure to do anything and everything that I can possibly do to ensure that Mike Huckabee never moves into the White House.

swan

Maestro, Please?

He held the cane in His hand, and directed the music that I am sure I heard. No conductor of any orchestra ever wielded the baton with such grace or such sensuous suppleness. His smooth wand traced the contours of my flesh, awakening the nerve endings as it traveled. By times, there was no actual contact at all, only the teasing promise of a touch as the rattan tickled through the fine down that covers my skin. My breathing followed His lead as He directed my rising emotions and desires. The lightness of the touches only drove me to long for the sharp staccatos that I knew He could deliver if He only would. Those swishing, sweeping, strokes brought my whole mind into the music He was creating until I was writhing and undulating, thrusting my hot ass up to be burned by the score from which He was reading...

And then the dream was over, and the morning came.

The first words out of His mouth, when the C-Pap came off, were of the stocks and a whipping. I found myself plunged, in an instant, into the darkness where I go at the mere mention of the stocks -- where it is an effort to simply breathe without shrieking; where it is all I can do to stay in place and not run; where I hope that my mere quiet will be submission enough until I can be restrained and unable to do anything else.

In the end, He opted for something less -- for a session that was very much like what we'd done on Saturday morning. He began with His hand, but quickly moved to the paddle and the heavy rubber strap, and I don't know what all else. On Saturday, it was grand, but on this morning, I howled and raged and simply made my way through the darkness.

Of course, He did not know of the lovely, lyric dream that was... I never spoke it -- until later. There never seemed an opening, an opportunity. When I did tell Him, He was angry with me. "Why didn't you tell Me?"

But really, it never seemed to me that there had been a place in the rush that was our awakening to say, "but, Sir, I was dreaming that You were teasing, and creating this most delightful heat with Your cane..." Perhaps I should have stopped and made that happen, but I never really saw how... Still, the dream remains, and the memory of the music it evoked in my mind and in my body. I am hoping that with that dreaming, the potential exists for us to create the reality -- perhaps as the holidays bring us the gift of a bit of time.

swan

Schedules

From late August, until the middle of June each year, our life is driven by a very rigid set of schedules. Our various jobs dictate that our days start with the demands of the alarm clock, and there is a definitive pattern to that. The school year is definitiely not as "relaxed" as the summer schedule can be.

I leave first each day. The alarm clock starts our morning at 5 AM each day, and I am on the road by about 6:45. T follows, leaving the house around 7:30. Master's work is more flexible, and there are many days when He can do some of His work from home, or perhaps, He will drive north to "politic" in the state capitol, or He may have meetings scheduled throughout the day and into the evening. Whatever, He is almost always the last to leave from home.


Our morning routine is a finely tuned dance that gets me up and showered and dressed and fed with lunches packed and all my "teacher crap" loaded into the car. He and I eat breakfast together, and He usually goes to see T and get her launched once I'm on my way. Once we're both out of here, He typically takes care of whatever He needs to do, and gets going on whatever His schedule for the day is.


The problem with all of that is that, He wears His hair long -- He has a pony tail that He prefers to wear braided. He does NOT braid His own hair. That is no problem in the summer time when I am around to handle the hair braiding task for Him, but when the school year begins, He misses having me here to take care of that for Him.


And then, in the last couple of weeks, His schedule has demanded that He be up and out of here early every single morning it seems. So the schedule has shifted. He's been getting up and getting showered before I leave each morning, and I've been able to get His hair braided before I leave for school.


That's the good news. The bad news is that having to get ready like that severely limits the time that He has for ... well it limits the private time He sometimes has had to spare for taking care of all that "wild Man energy." The result of all of that is that the Man is "horny."

Horny isn't necessarily a bad thing. Except that, here lately, when we do have time to be together, He has only one thing on His mind -- and it isn't SM.


There was a time when I'd have been relieved to have Him less focused on spanking and hurting me, but I'm recovering, remember? My "whaterver-you-want-to-call-it" is waking back up. And so we are wrestling with one more irony -- even as I begin to hunger for more spanking, He is focused in another direction. It isn't that I mind the good old fashioned, roll-in-the-hay, "sex" part of this at all. Really, it is just that I thought I might not ever GET back to this itch, and now that I'm here, HE doesn't seem to be at all itchy for that part of who we are. Damn! Isn't that the way it always works?


swan

Gotta Love These Folks

They are asleep. Crashed! Completely and utterly worn out.

And would you take a look at where they are? Isn't it fabulous? Utterly gorgeous -- that's a view that they probably walked a gazillion miles to get to. Those poor, beknighted fools worked their tails off; planned for days, or weeks, or maybe months for this exact moment to be able to be in this exact spot, at this particular moment, precisely so that they could drink in the glory of that oh-so-spectacular vista... and they are too tired to even care.

You gotta love them, because, unless you are a whole lot younger than I am, you've been there and done that -- worked your ass off to come to the place in your life that you always wanted to be, only to find that you are too darned tired most of the time to give a hoot. "That's lovely, now can I just sleep for a bit, please?"

This is "The Heron Clan" family portrait if you really want to know. All laid out right where we find ourselves. Happy for just a soft place to lay the tired old bones down and rest without a single thought for anything much at all. After all it took us to get here, too!

swan

Wall

Here is the wall that seems to be keeping me quiet these days -- or at least a pretty good picture of it. I come here, day after day, and sit here looking at my screen, and can't think of a single thing to say.

The temptation to simply write, "The End," and be done with it all, is enormous.

It isn't that I am unhappy, or discontented, or sad, or any of that. All the grand melodrama that has driven the flow of words for the last two and a half years seems to have subsided. I really feel as if I've come through a great period of storm and tempest, when all my emotions and reactions were in an uproar all the time -- when I hardly knew who I was half the time. During all those long, weary months, writing here somehow helped me to keep the warring voices in my mind from driving me completely crazy.

But, now, I feel healed finally. The physical scars seem to have stopped aching. More importantly, the emotional doubts have diminished and faded away to memory. I may wobble a bit now and again, but I don't seem to be continually on the verge of utter and complete emotional collapse. I may not be exactly the woman I was "before," but I'm close -- and I am well and healthy. I usually feel good, and my "interest" in life and love and sex and SM is all coming back with something like its old heat.

"We" struggle, still. The days are so busy. Work demands much of each of us, and we get tired and frustrated and worn out and weary. Sometimes, it is easy to wish that we'd hit the lottery, or magically inherit a fortune, so that we could simply stop reporting to the various jobs each day, and relax just a bit. There are never enough hours, and there are far too many demands on our time and our energies. We live for the precious hours of the weekends -- and we burden those days with so many wishes and expectations. It is far too easy to fall short of what we dream of through the work week.

All in all, though, we are living a life we once only dreamed of -- couldn't even dream of. We'd get younger and richer if we could, I'm sure. We'd lie about each day and never leave the happy confines of our home and beds... But life is good, and I haven't got a darned thing to say here that seems very interesting.

swan

About that Snapping Turtle

So. Backing up just a little bit.

I can get caught up with vivid images -- and language that evoke those images. The original definition of the slang word, "mojo," that points to a "snapping turtle in a whiskey bottle," just has me mentally rapt. I think that it has "metaphorical" power for me -- that I can take that notion of that turtle inside that bottle, and draw parallels to my own journey to this point that somehow feel -- useful. Even if I haven't been actually drinking the whiskey -- since I'm sure that some of you are wondering about that very thing.

To begin with, I think the thing that strikes me is the absolute incongruity of the image. My mind just won't quite encompass the idea that something as large and wild as a snapping turtle could get into a whiskey bottle. I find myself going from the immediate reaction of "IMPOSSIBLE!" to a sort of quiet, pervasive curiosity -- how, exactly did that beast manage to get there?

Of course, that is the exact question that I've had posed to me, either directly or by implication, dozens and dozens of times in the last years -- "what is a woman like you doing living the life you are living -- how the heck did you get there?" So, I am finding what I imagine to be the story of the snapping turtle to be "illustrative."

Here's how I think it probably happens if you are a snapping turtle: Life starts, for you, kind of small. The giant, ferocious beast that you will become is there, all coded deeply in your genes, but you are a little, bitty, mite of a thing in the beginning -- all promise and potential. A baby turtle is probably driven mostly by instinct, but that instinct is likely fueled in the immediate circumstance by some pretty basic needs. That little hard shelled bit of "life on legs" needs to eat, survive, and find its way in the world. Aren't we all the same?

Baby turtles hatch, along with a whole mess of their turtle siblings, from eggs left buried in the sand. Turtle mothers are, by this time, long gone. The little ones are on their own to stay alive and thrive if they can. So, off they go, heading into their futures with whatever energy and intent they can come up with. I doubt very much that there is much planfull-ness in the whole business.

If, as you crawl along the sand, you encounter that open mouth bottle, AND you are a tiny, little, vulnerable, innocent, brand-new-in-the-world-turtle, that might just look interesting and/or inviting (perfect and safe even). So, TAH DAH, you stroll right on in. Maybe your discovery turns out to be a safe haven (depending on what the inside conditions are), providing cover and shelter and a way to avoid becoming "bird food." Whatever happens in that first few minutes after you enter the whiskey bottle, the fact is that a baby turtle can't live in that whiskey bottle for very long with out some challenges occuring -- because turtles grow and bottles don't.

Being a turtle in a whiskey bottle might be the definition of "mojo," but if that turtle stays in that bottle very long, the odds are it is going to die.

So, what are the connections to the journey into consensual power exchange and M/s?

The beginnings of all of this for me were a good while ago now, but I think that I was "born" into my BDSM life in very much the same state as that baby turtle. Hatched, fully formed, but without any guidance but my own drives and instincts, I was full of potential, but entirely vulnerable, open, and utterly new. On my own to make my way, I went crawling along the beach looking to get my "needs" met -- and I really didn't know exactly what those needs were, only that they felt critical. When I FOUND spanking and BDSM, it was as if I'd discovered the perfect place for me, and I scrambled right into it with a complete sense of abandon and joy that landed me squarely inside my own version of that whiskey bottle. I'd definitely found my "mojo" it seemed.

Except that, just like that baby turtle, I had lots of growing to do. Growth and change are an inevitable fact of being alive. The wonder of that first period of time in the safety and security and personally affirming surroundings of the lifestyle were like food given to someone who had been starving. Still, staying in that place becomes detrimental in time. I've been reluctant to grow past the bounds of the bottle. Afraid for the opening out into something wider and less defined. It has felt as if leaving that behind would mean the end of everything good and meaningful and true about my life. That has scared me and made me sad.

But I'm learning that there is a future that is outside the "bottle" that is still good and real and "safe" and secure. It is simply different. This passage has been one that I have wanted to resist. I have not wanted the changes that maturing brings. I have not wanted the changes that we, together, have had to embrace. I have been convinced that leaving my safe little bottle would mean that I would lose the "mojo," and I just could not stand that idea.

Perhaps it is time to take on another animal totem... time for the heron and swan to follow the path of the turtle into the future.

swan