Thanksgiving 2009

Sometimes I marvel at life, the simplicity of it, the complexity of it. I cradle a changing leaf in my palm, seeing the color variations with a child's eyes, breathless with the beauty of it.  It looks so simple, this leaf, slender and ovate, and yet I my inner-scientist knows how complex it is, knows about the plant hormones that control abscission and marvels at the capacity of something so fragile to split molecules and excite electrons in order to create sugar from sunlight and air.

Yesterday I was at Kelly's Cove at the very northern end of Ocean Beach, my arm linked with JL's. We watched kite surfers zoom down the length of the beach, pulled by parachute-kites, their boards leaping and writhing along the silvered sea. He'd brought me chanterelles all the way from Sweden -- picked and dried them himself. I took him to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach, top down on a misty day, and willed the sun to come out as I drove with the heat cranked up on the winding road, the engine of the two-seater purring like a big happy cat.

As JL and I walked into the wind I looked up at the bluff that towered over my right shoulder, the bluff that Cliff House is built into, and looked back at the park I'd taken My Beloved to. Sutro Heights Park, where we'd sat on a stone wall overlooking the very spot I stood in and talked about the world the way he sometimes sees it -- the way I experience it most of the time. I remember the joy I felt at realizing that he got it, got me still after all these years. And in some ways, understands me better with the benefit of time and life lived apart.

I feel luminous and loved, grateful for the people in my life. Tomorrow I call my aunt to discuss her recent cancer diagnosis, and offer what help I can. One of my talents is to provide love and comfort, to heal the soul and ease the passing of the spirit. Dying and death can be beautiful and transformative if the loved-ones are in a place of gratitude and joy. I am fortunate to see it so, and to be able to share my vision with others so they are less afraid.

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New Release: Where The Women Are 3

Just a heads-up for everyone who likes my Where The Women Are lesbian stories, I've completed production of the audio version and it is now up on my AudioSensual.com website. The about-blurb says this:
Ever wondered what goes on at women's colleges? In her Where The Women Are series, Kayar Silkenvoice tells a few tales out of class. This third episode starts with her roommate taking her basket of toys for a masturbation workshop, continues with morning sex between her and her boyfriend, and ends with witnessing one of her co-eds being spanked - - all before breakfast. With something for everyone, this audio has 40 minutes of superb storytelling by a woman whose voice is one of the most erotic you will ever hear.

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And so it begins anew

Conversations with My Beloved. Hours spent on the phone. Understandings achieved. Retrospective awareness of the necessity of separation and the unnecessary pain we perpetuated out of our grief. The ending of our relationship was as real a loss as the death of a loved one. We'd spent 7 years together and who we were was lost as well so there was a struggle to form independent identities. And my weirdnesses, some of which were caused by 4 deaths within 18 months of our break-up, and some of which was a matter of him becoming conscious of things that had always been so but unquestioned while we were together. Like mind-reading and emotional connections over distances. My calling and leaving weird messages like "I have a feeling that something intense is going on with you -- are you ok?" When he was indeed going through something intense. The scientist in him could not find a rational explanation as to "why" and he was spooked by the implications. Relief that each is doing well, thriving, in fact. Wanting to meet up soon to exchange hugs.  So much delight. I look forward to getting to know each other again, after nearly a decade.

I used to feel like an outsider in the world and in my own life because I experienced the world so differently from so many people. I saw things people didn't see, smelled things people couldn't smell, sensed things people thought I shouldn't feel. It is the curse of having a sensory array that has a broader spectrum than most people -- like someone whose eyes can discern a broader spectrum of wave-lengths and sees colors that do not exist for others. Like hearing the earth singing at dawn. The one-eyed man in the land of the blind, I nearly stoned myself to death, wishing I was deaf and blind and dumb.

I was saved by my inner mystic, who defied my inner scientist to prove that the evidence of my own experiences were false. I met extraordinary people. Went into therapy. Studied agnostic Buddhism and quantum physics and human sexuality and psychology and philosophy. Meditated. Broadened my experiences of Polyamory. Learned to trust my intuitions, my perceptions, my sensitivities. Discovered the SENG site. Completed the Landmark Curriculum for Living.  Found soul-satisfying intimacy through Love Tribe and the sacred through tantra and ecstatic dance. Made peace with my fears, my past, the voice in my head, death, uncertainty, and suffering.  Most of all, suffering. And fell in-love :) Yes, that was the best part of my transformation -- falling in love with someone who is amazing in his own way as I am in mine.

And into this stumbles my ex. My beloved. It seems he arrived here, at my blog, via a chain of coincidences that seem almost contrived. As if there is something at work in his life, guiding him here. He mentions to me things that have happened recently and asks if they aren't weird and is confounded to hear that it is part of my daily life, my reality, and that it is my understanding that it is part of everyone's -- it's just they aren't open to it so they don't notice it.

I understand why he has been drawn back into my life. It seems he is ready to accept the pain of opening to his own considerable gifts, a transformational experience I am deeply familiar with. I am reminded of something Anais Nin once said,  “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” The question I have for myself is "why have I drawn him into my life?" And the answer probably lies with my inner child, who felt abandoned by her mother and her soul-mate. I was inconsolable for years, and while I developed the tools and skills to heal myself,  my understanding is still incomplete. There are stories to be heard, blindspots to be revealed, and possibilities to be created. I feel certain of it.
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Bated breath

When my partner and I returned from our month in Japan, it was to a new economic reality. His company's line of credit had been yanked and so they'd closed their doors, and my profession, which conventional wisdom considers recession-proof, had considerably fewer openings and those positions available would have required commutes that impacted my quality of life. So, I decided to focus on writing and recording erotica as a business, as a way to make a living doing what I love. At the same time, my partner started a business with colleagues from his former job. Starting a business is like buying a house and having a baby -- at the same time. Starting two businesses is like renovating a home while you are living in it with newborn twins.

So for the past seven months we've both been working from home in a 1,000 sq foot San Francisco townhouse. My preference is for my home to be a place of tranquility -- uncluttered, functional-yet-aesthetically pleasing, and serene. What I've got is a living room and dining room that have been taken over by computers, wires, boxes, papers -- you name it.  To make things more interesting, our neighbors are undergoing renovations, so from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm we get to deal with the sounds of saws and hammering and loud music. Couple that with the fact that SFO has more and more airline traffic and somehow our place is directly in the path of flights taking off between midnight and 3am, and I'm getting edgy. Noise during the day, noise at night, clutter-noise inside.

A solution has presented itself in the form of his start-up company and their decision to locate their offices half-way between San Francisco and Palo Alto to accommodate the commute times for the team. He hates commutes longer than 15 minutes, so we'll be moving. I suppose it is just as well we didn't buy that condo on Geary Street :)

So now I've got to start looking for a place to move into at the end of January. I've started packing and I've got boxes piled up in my bedroom. I've got a friend visiting from overseas during Thanksgiving Weekend. And upcoming launch of new sites and new audio for those sites. I'm helping my partner build computers and keep things organized. And then there is the issue of My Beloved.

After our initial contact, which was very intense and painful for us both, he's pulled back like a turtle. Contact is now emails with apologies and stated intentions, but no commitment as to when this will materialize. I've tried to keep up my end of things, being open and communicative, hoping that his emails will contain something of substance. A week later, I'm tired of holding my breath. So I'm letting it go. It makes no sense to keep so much of my time and energy freed-up so that I will be available on the off-chance he finds the emotional wherewithall to complete the process he instigated. It hurts, and I've been willing to work through the old wounds and the pain because I thought our connection was worth salvaging. And perhaps it is. But he is also a man who cut me off like a limb because he didn't have the courage to work through his own pain. It has been a decade, and gods know I've grown and changed a lot in that time, but it is looking more and more likely that he has not. And I don't have time to play the mind-games. I've got a life to live, a business to build, a home to find, and a man to love.

When he's ready, I'm sure My Beloved will contact me again. And if he never is, that is sad for him but ok with me. I'm not going to be held hostage by a decade-old emotional tie. I'm not going to wait with bated breath for My Beloved to come. And my inner child, well, I'll find a way to explain it to her. Somehow.


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Asleep in my lap

He sleeps, his head resting in my lap, as I type this into my iPhone. I've run my fingers through his hair, massaged his scalp, caressed his face.  A stressful day for him, and he's come to me for relief.

Before Lethe took him he said "I am glad you're here. I know I sometimes take you being here for granted. It's not because I don't care -- it's because it feels so right I don't notice anything wrong."

"I love you," I volunteered, squeezing him with my legs. It took him three years to get me to move down here, to leave my friends and lovers and come be with him. The novelty of my being here ebbs and flows. "Don't worry about this thing with me and my Beloved."

"I am worried about him," he said, his Canadian accent coming out in his pronunciation of worry. "You're even more special now than you were 10 years ago. What if he falls for you again?"

I snorted and half-laughed, thinking about all the things in the way of something like that happening. "That's unlikely." 

He snuggled down into the pillow in my lap. "I sometimes don't notice that I am in love with you because I'm in it all the time."

And then, with his next breath, he was asleep.

Sweet. Direct. Vulnerable. Open. God I love this man!
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Also, I released two new AudioSensual podcast episodes yesterday, so give them a listen here. 

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Communication

To say that my lover and I communicate well is an understatement. It is very freeing to know that there is nothing that I cannot bring into the forum for discussion between us. Better to admit we are not mind-readers and instead reach out to each other with eyes and hands and mouths, straining to bridge the gap between Self and Other, to know, and to be known. Sometimes it is very intense, especially the struggle to find words to express the complexity and ambivalence of past relationships.

I accept that my current state of being could best be characterized as "dazed" and he does too. He worries a bit, but he knows that when I have them, I will reach out to him with words. In the meantime, I reach out to him with my heart, and his eyes meet mine and he is there, smiling gently at me, his arms slipping around me, his scent enveloping me. I rest my cheek on his shoulder and brush his neck with my lips.

"Still no word," he said. It was not a question.

The last email from My Beloved that had any real content was on the 12th. Since then, two "emails from the open road", one short and apologetic, one short and about... coffee. I've mailed him in the interim, expressing a willingness to work on carrying our heart-connection forward in our lives if he is willing to be open and vulnerable with me, as I am with him. No real word back, nothing substantive. The analytical side of me recognizes that he is probably still processing and taking care with his responses, but the feeling side of me wishes, if that were the case, that he would at least say as much.

Too restless to do sitting meditation, I did walking instead, along the stretch of Ocean Beach. The sun was warm, the wind cold, and the sand was a bit of both, and damp, underfoot. I focussed on the physical dynamics of walking, enjoying the animal-body I inhabit, appreciating it for all it does without need for conscious oversight. I allowed myself to feel my body, to feed my awareness of it, to notice the places where tension had accumulated, and to explore the emotions the little knots held as I caused them to relax. My body is the bridge between my inner and outer worlds, and my mind the road, sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy.

The irony of meditation is that struggling with the chatter of my mind puts the clarity and simplicity I seek farther and father out of reach.  Best to accept the chatter, to notice it without judging it, or myself. My ego-self struggles, sometimes even flails about, but my spiritual self is balanced, calm, content. To touch it, I have only to cease identifying with the ego-self and its chatter.

What will be, will be. I released the anxiety and anguish into the wind for the second time in the same day, zipped up my coat, and drove home with the top down, drove home to my lover, who met me at the door with sympathetic eyes and a warm hug. The best communication of all :)

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Comforting the inner child

One of the interesting things about blogging is the sharing of self -- thoughts, feelings, interests. Sharing with strangers. Sharing with friends real and virtual. And sharing with ex-lovers. My Beloved has the address to this blog, and I expect he has read at least one entry that I've pointed him to. It occurs to me that he might find it uncomfortable, reading about himself, and it occurred to me not to post, but this is one of my forums for self-expression, for processing, and I share it with the world because the world has sent me feedback saying "Don't stop. You find a way to say what I've always felt but never found the words for" and "Thank you for sharing this, it has helped me process my own feelings." And so I am writing this, doing my best not to let my awareness of my ex-as-possible-audience affect the tone and content. He may read, or not, as he likes, and I'll write, or not, as I like :)

When I was in therapy, I learned that, no, I wasn't crazy, that everyone has a little voice in their heads.

And then I learned that it isn't just one voice, but many; the voices of our ego-identities at various -- usually traumatic -- stages of our lives. I learned that these voices speak up when we experience something that provokes emotional echoes back to the first time we felt strongly that way, and if we are unwilling to 'hear' them, they hijack us from the level our subconscious. I learned that this is why I/we/people tend to revert to childish behaviour under certain kinds of emotional duress.

I have an inner child who is 9 or 10 years old, the little girl whose mommy abandoned her, and for years I refused to acknowledge her, and so for years she ran my life. I made peace with my inner child. I learned to listen to her concerns and address them, telling her it is ok, I'm grown up now, and I can take it from here.

In everyone's head is their own little world, their own reality with its own rules and landscape. In the shower today I heard my inner child crying and asking "why?" I went looking for her and found a long-forgotten place from a long-forgotten time -- on a little sandbar island in the Frying Pan river in Colorado -- squatting on her heels next to something she'd been building. It had been demolished by another child who then ran away, I remembered, though I could not remember what it was that I had been making. I think it is my earliest memory of someone destroying something we'd worked on together. It was a relief to find that my inner child was not crying over her missing sister, but my relief was also tempered with awareness of what she was really crying about. Our Beloved.

The demolished heap of sticks and pebbles symbolized my relationship with him, I knew. I told her that his answer to "Why?" was "Self-preservation." She didn't understand. I'm not sure I do either. I told her it was one of those questions that didn't have a simple answer, one of those questions that people made up common-sense answers to, like "Why is the sky blue?" but in reality has to do with the composition of the atmosphere and the scattering of wavelengths and the limits of our own vision. Sometimes it is easier to tell a child "The sky is blue because it is reflecting the color of the ocean." And so I comforted my inner child and told her that it was something he thought he needed to do to stop the hurting, like scratching a mosquito bite that itches. She understood that. Understood, too, that scratching that mosquito bite, no matter how good it feels in the moment, often makes it worse.

When I stepped out of the shower my lover was there, smiling shyly and looking like a satyr with his morning wood on display. He took me back to bed and we snuggled for a long while, kissing and touching, murmuring and talking. Reconnecting. I'd been distracted for a few days, and so had he. The scent of him filled my nose, the scent of sleep that spiked his natural spicy smell slowly changing with our heat, musky and pungent. His fingers strummed me just the right way, those fingers that stoke the keys of pianos and computers with equal deftness. I climaxed under those fingers of his, and as I did he entered me from behind, gasping into my ear. We moved together, slowly at first until I came on his cock and then it galvanized him, the feel of me cumming around him, and he pushed on me, pushed in me, pushed at me like he was trying to merge with me, pushed me through a succession of orgasms until I was hoarse from crying out and limp as I have ever been, legs trembling, pussy twitching, breath-catching... Eyes gazing into each other, heart-connected, soul-connected, cunt-and-cock-connected. This-is-love connected.

Later I checked-in with my inner child. She was still on the island, playing with her twigs and pebbles, humming happily to herself.


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This is my voice

"43."
Or, "All life is suffering."
Or perhaps, better yet, "Yes."
Best of all, the answer, "You are right, and I am wrong,"
It is a good answer, but words are no parachute.
I will not fight you, Beloved.
I cannot fight you, Beloved.
I have answers, but I don't have the right answers.
I have no way to answer any of your points or questions that will not result in more pain and more questions.
Logic and reason strapped on like bracers and greaves and the holy glowing Breastplate of Truth itself are no match for the one-pointedness of the Sword of Subjectivity.
Standing on the edge of this precipice, there is no safe space.
No defense.
No desire to defend, nor to attack.
Rather than cling to the ledge, I step off it, trusting that I can handle what comes next.
Perhaps Phantom Ranch waits at the bottom of this Grand Canyon.
A hailstorm hit last time I tried climbing down.
I zipped a Chinese woman up inside my coat with me until the storm passed.
A message sent ahead to my partner through other hikers pushing on: "Turning back."
It snowed the rest of that day on the South Rim.
We watched it from the warmth of our bed.
Had each other for lunch and dinner.
Love is the best nourishment of all.
Love.
Will it conquer all?
 
 
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What cosmic forces are at play?

Was it just Tuesday that I opened my email to find a message from someone I thought I would never hear from again? I have experienced so much emotion in so little time, and so of course I come here to process it.

I am fortunate to have known love in its many forms, and to have the capacity to blur the artificial lines our society has drawn in blood, sectioning off our hearts and the people who dwell in it.  I have known what it is to be a mother to my siblings. I have known what it is to be a sibling to a lover, the child of a lover, the mother of a lover. I've had lovers become friends and friends become lovers, and it is the friends and lovers arena that has always been most problematic.

Once upon a time, a decade ago, I took a long-time friend as a lover, and my primary partner of 7 years consented but was ambivalent. Those of us who are Polyamorous understand the NRE (new relationship energy) conundrum. We all love feeling it, but our partners who aren't caught up in one of their own feel excluded. Usually within 6 to 9 months the NRE fades -- but some poly couples do not survive this period.  Such was the case with me and the man I've always thought of as "My Beloved".

If ever I had a soul-mate, it was him, and the ending of our relationship was complicated and ultimately, well, tragic in some ways. During the course of our relationship my partner had been involved with women I liked and while I sometimes felt threatened by his attraction to these other women, I had only to examine the depths of our connection with each other to feel secure. Unfortunately, the intensity of my connection with the woman-friend I was involved with was rather daunting to him: he withdrew and she filled that empty space to a point that eventually, when I was asked after four months to choose between them, I chose her.  In choosing her, I hurt him deeply -- very, very deeply -- and myself as well, such that the after-effects rocked me for years. This is an extreme over-simplification, of course -- there is a lot of nuance missing in what I am writing, but that is the bare-bones.

I tried to stay in contact with My Beloved, but eventually he severed all ties, and despite a half-dozen attempts on my part over the years to touch-base with him, he never responded, and so I accepted that he would never again be a part of my life. I can only liken it to an amputee finally accepting the loss of a limb and going forward with her life. My woman-friend and I soon fell out of infatuation and did our best to continue being friends, with limited success. I healed from my first attempt at polyamory, did my best to take positive lessons away from it, and went on to form meaningful relationships. I even fell in love ;)

And then Tuesday, out of the blue, My Beloved contacted me. I couldn't help myself -- after the events of the past couple of years one of my first thoughts was that something must be horribly wrong -- was he dying? Why else would he contact me? A transformative journey is the reason he's given, and I am ok with that. Every day is a transformative journey for me, so I understand that reasoning. Each day, while connected to those which came before and will come after, is entire of itself, and radical change can take place in a matter of heartbeats.

To say that I feel joy in hearing from him again is an understatement. I've wished him happiness every day since we parted ways. I've missed him, and thirsted for news of him, but respected his demonstrated wishes to eliminate me from his life: Though we worked for the same company for several years, I never once inquired about him, and when I had to visit his office, I took pains to make sure he never ran into me. I've not seen him in person since 2002, I think.

In the space of a week I've been in contact with three men with whom my relationships were formed prior to 1995. I find myself wondering what cosmic forces are at play here. Fortunately, my current partner appears to be ok with what is going on. We have excellent communication and he is willing to give me the space I need to work out my feelings on this. Past experience has taught me that keeping my partner fully informed makes a world of difference :)


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Love lost, love found

November already! Wow. It has been a year since I left Portland for San Francisco. And while I miss my friends, and the life I had up there, I have no regrets. I love being near my family and friends here, and I'd be a fool to complain about living in San Francisco, now wouldn't I?

Halloween would have been Tammy's 40th birthday. This one was a big contrast to the one last year, when I had a friend visiting from Denmark and after showing him around town I curled up in bed and cried. This year I poured a drink and imagined the party she would have had for herself at her nightclub. I imagined her shaking that wonderful ass of hers on the dance floor, her blond hair shining in the darkness. Bittersweet, and no tears this time. Time does heal... I can think of her without tears falling, though they still well up in my eyes now and then.

A friend of mine sent me a "Firsts Meme" on Facebook, and as I completed it, I dredged up old memories of my first best friend and my first kiss and my first love. I thought about the boy I first kissed, when I was 7 or 8, and who I did not see again for 8 years but became my first love, and certainly the only boy I loved when I was a teen. My childhood sweetheart. Everything was so sweet. I loved him. I always have. I never quite understood how things dissolved between us. So as I was filling out that meme, I looked up his name on Facebook. There are lots of people with his name, but only he has his face. It is the same face. And so I sent him a message.

Minutes later he responded and then we were chatting away, filling each other in on our lives. And within minutes we both had answers to the questions that had gone unanswered for over 20 years. Parents. Our parents had thwarted us. My dad called his mom and told her I was 'late'. She in turn told him. He never heard anything again, so he thought I'd had an abortion. Lots of pain and sadness and feeling stupid on both our parts. And so it goes with teens. Our parents have stayed in touch all these years, and despite both of us asking our parents about each other, they never, in all these years, provided us the means to get in touch with each other. He's known for years that I was in Oregon, and tried to find me. It wasn't until I left Oregon that my father told me he was there. Funny that. And Hooray for Facebook!

And now, back to work. I've got a podcast to release tomorrow, and a naughty story to finish.

Sitting here in the little courtyard, the sky is incredibly blue and the sun warm, but the trees are losing their leaves anyway. M was just leaning his head in my lap, and I rubbed his neck and forehead, mussing up his hair just before he has to go off to a meeting. The days are so much shorter now. I think I'll go to Ocean Beach tomorrow. I want to crunch sand between my toes. I want to taste the wind with my skin.

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