Dreaming of my friend CD

I slept with my clothes on, on the top of my bed, for the first time in over a year. I did this because conversation after a reiki session with a friend ended up going so late I told him I didn't want him driving home in his exhausted state. So we stretched out on my tempurpedic bed, and within a few minutes I drifted off to sleep.

I slept fairly well, but not as soundly as normal, and awakened after seven hours of sleep to a beautiful blue sky. When I awakened, I was smiling, because I dreamed, and in my dream, CD called me.

I miss him. Does he miss me, I wonder? I accept the choice he made, just as I have come to accept my sister's choice. Both have cut me out of their lives: She, out of displeasure at my trying to save her life, he, out of fear of losing his life. The life he'd built with his wife and partner. I loved him as a friend, as a mentor, as an extraordinary man. The love and acceptance I gave him opened things in him, and his wife noticed. He took up his music again, finished his novel, stopped biting his nails. He found a sensual outlet in a sexless marriage, and in his acceptance of his masculine desires, in reclaiming his sexual power, he became the lean, handsome, charming man of 20 years previous.

She asked if he was having an affair, and he answered, honestly, that he was not. But emotionally, he was unfaithful. He was unfaithful because he felt there was something wrong in loving two women at the same time. I encouraged him to tell his wife about our friendship, and he'd said that he would, but he did not. The tension within him was unbearable. I knew that if he did not act consciously, that his subconscious would bring things to a head. He was afraid. I tried to coach him about his inaction, but his fear overwhelmed him.

And one day he did something stupid, something unrelated to me, that brought it all to a head. And in the aftermath of the explosion, he bowed to his wife's demands. He allowed himself to be castrated again. He emailed to tell me that his relationship with me was hurting his wife and that he would not be able to remain in contact with me. And so there has been silence.

Elie Weisel wrote in his book, Gates of the Forest, that when a friend denies you, it is worse than death. He was so right.

I dreamed of CD, that we talked, and I awakened with a feeling of happiness and aliveness. The happiness faded a bit, but my vitality, as ever, remains. Just as the silence remains. I love him still. I always will. And I accept that. I accept that just as I accept his choice to deny me. One day, perhaps, even I'll find a way to be happy about it.

Making connections

Its too easy to make a 'lesson' of the past, to take what happens and turn it into a decision about myself, the world, and others. A decision that is carried forward into the future, affecting how I participate in my life, frozen in time, like the water droplets in the photo above whose ripples eternally ruffle the surface of the tidepool.

In the work I have undertaken for myself in my personal life (encouraging sensual immediacy and connection) I have encountered all sorts of people. I thought that I have been operating from a place that was open and genuine in my dealings with people who have contacted me regardless of venue (my blog, Literotica, Yahoo, HypnoFantasy, etc) but the truth is that, while I have been genuine with people, I've used the experience with CD earlier this year as an excuse to shut down a bit, to be less open, to be wary of new people.

And thus I've been less connected.

But really, Life is about Connection. We live for ourselves, but who we are for ourselves is lived through our connection with others. And a life of self-limited connection and self-limited expression, well, its... unsatisfactory at best.

So fuck it. I'm not going to let the lesson I take away from what happened with CD be that I'm going to close myself off from others lest I get hurt again. Because of course I'm going to get hurt again. That is rather inevitable if one is living life. Really living life. And by that I mean... living life with gusto, experiencing every vivid moment of it, participating fully in it. And I like living life that way--it beats that shadow realm that so many people seem to dwell in, feeling disconnected from themselves and others, feeling like imposters in their own lives. I prefer to be connected. I'm jacking back in, 100%.


And speaking of new people and new connections...

I was contacted by Alicia Night Orchid last week. She asked if she could feature me and my writing on her site. I was very flattered and looked through her site. I enjoyed it immensely. She is a talented writer. So, I consented and she put my story "Jack" up on her site, here. Please do pay her a visit... reading her stuff has given me the impetus to get back to work on some of my story sketches... particularly a very hot little sketch taken out of my portfolio of personal experiences. We all know how it will end, but its the journey there that makes it so very erotic.

A true story

The book lies open. It has been open all year, open at the same page she left it on New Year's Day, page 147. It has usurped the place once reserved for the Caged Gifts, resting as it does on the gold brocade chair near the foot of her bed. She doesn't touch it, though her feather duster does tickle the pages once a month or so, and when it does, she looks away, eyes blinking tears. From the dust. Yes, dust. Some days when she awakens her eyes fall upon the book, where it glows whitely in the morning light. She asks herself why she doesn't put it away somewhere, or send it back to the author. It means something, she knows, It means something that it is still there. And yet, nothing has meaning in and of itself, she reminds herself. There is what happened, and then there is the meaning we give it when we try to interpret what happened. What happened. Yes. What happened? I don't know. I really don't know. She looks over at the book. She knows the author's pride in his opus, and she wants to know what happened in the story, even though she knows how it ends. She knows how it ends because she helped the author craft that ending. She told him she wanted to know what the protagonist was thinking and feeling, there, at the ending, which was also the beginning, where things came full circle and the reader knew only the 'what happened' and not the meaning the character ascribed to it. What does it mean? she asks herself. Sighing heavily, torn, she reaches a hand toward the book. And stops. It means whatever I choose for it. And today, because she feels like it, the meaning of the book is a reminder of a promise made. I promised I'd never abandon you, she sends out into the universe, to the author's inner child, but I never noticed you didn't make the same promise, until too late. She glances at it again. The book remains open for lack of closure. She supposes that she will never know what happened in the middle, that perhaps it is enough to know the ending. The only certainty in life is death, and the only certainty with books is that the pages turn until there are no more, and that is The End, whatever the state of the story. What does it mean, then, that a book lies open, abandoned, unread, unclosed? Nothing. It means nothing. Perhaps it never meant anything. And with that thought she rises, gathers the book in both hands, and slams it closed. The End.

CD the Cat

I dreamed.

A maine coon landed on my windowsill.

He was blue in the moonlight.

I recognized the cat as CD, and as soon as I recognized him, he jumped down, shape-shifting to his human form.

He stood by the side of my bed.

"I miss you," I said. "Are you ok?"

He smiled then, but his eyes were a bit sad.

"I'm good," he said in the awful New York accent he sometimes mimicked.

And then he was the big coon cat again, walking along the windowsill.

His foot touched a shaft of moonlight, and he was gone.

I awakened. It was 3:57am.

Goodbye.

In memorium

Ten days ago, I lost a friend.

We met online just over a year ago. We never touched, never saw each other smile, but we talked often, wrote, shared of ourselves. He guided me through my first attempt at editing a poem of mine, and I listened and gave feedback on a novel he was writing. Over the past year he went through many changes, several crises, strain in his marriage, etc; and me, I was working too hard, suffering through the crisis of my sister's health, and juggling an active social life. He developed a crush of sorts on me, and I discouraged it as best I could without abandoning our friendship, because the level of communication and understanding we shared was something special.

I tried to get him to tell his wife about me, to be less secretive about our relationship. But he was afraid. He did something stupid on New Years Eve, something not involving me, thankfully, but the effects were that he sent me an email stating that he had to break off our relationship because his behaviour was damaging his marriage and hurting his wife.

I've gone through a wide range of emotions. I recognize them as the grieving process. Loss. I've always been so bad about loss. But he taught me a lot in the past year, and now he is teaching me to grieve, as my therapist says I should.

This past year I learned a lot about the pros of putting myself out there emotionally--of taking risks: Joy, pleasure, love. This past week I've learned the cons, as well: Pain, loss, suffering.

And so far, I've no regrets. I could take away the lesson that I was stupid to become emotionally involved with someone I never met, but that is cowardice speaking. My life has been enriched for knowing him, and that is the lesson I will take away from this... keep taking risks, keep loving, continue to make connections and grow.

As for him, I wish him well. I wish him happiness and laughter and good health. He knows my boundless compassion and he has it. I will continue to include him in my metta meditations. I have always said that even when a relationship between two people must change, the things they love about each other do not. Love does not stop. At least... not for me.

Goodbye dear.

Weekend in San Francisco

After a rather stressful day at work, I flew into San Francisco Friday night, rented a car and drove over to M's by 10-10:30pm. It was good to hug him and talk, and we neither of us got to sleep until 2 or 3 am. But of course I was awake by 7:30am, and of course he needs his 9 and more hours of sleep, so rather than wake him and make him keep me company, I showered and went out. Lucky for him I had my rental car... or I just might have taken his nice little BMW Z3 for ride.

The weather was peerless, warm enough that I didn't need a jacket, and there was not a cloud in the sky. I opened the sun roof, rolled down the windows, and listened to a jazz station as I drove up the Great Highway toward Sutro Heights. CD recommended the park to me. I climbed the hill in my little blue Pontiac G6, passed the Cliff House, found a parking spot on Point Lobos Ave, and strolled up toward the entrance to Sutro Heights Park. There be lions there, reclining on either side of the decomposed granite road. There are benches placed along the west side, and older people sat there, reading the paper and warming themselves in the late-morning sun.

It had rained a fair bit the week before I came, and I noticed signs of growth and renewal: new-green grass, plants pushing up out of the ground, bushes starting to bud. The air smelled so clean and fresh, and there was only the faintest breeze, barely enough to stir the folds of my skirt. Just past the gazebo I followed a dirt pathway that lead up into some trees surrounding a stone wall. The quality of the light coming through the tree branches was dreamy, lending an ethereal quality to my little tramp up a stairway. I came out onto a broad foundation overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Wow. Three big trees (cypresses?) dominated the east side of the space, leaving the rest of it exposed to the elements. I rested my palm against a rugged trunk and shook a stone of of my Birkenstocks. I liked the feel of it under my hands...rough and unyielding as stone, but living, a living being, this tree. I found myself wondering how old it was, how much it had seen, how many decades had passed for it to reach such an imposing girth.

As I wandered around the grounds I developed an appreciation for some of the specimens growing there, particularly this flower.

M woke up around noon and called me. We arranged to meet down at the Cliff House for lunch. I had a delicious shrimp louie at Sutro's Bistro, where they served these great warm popovers with a flaky exterior and an eggy inside. From there we walked down the hill to the beach and eventually sat on a bench and talked until the wind picked up about 4:30pm and it got chilly. We walked back up the hill and I followed him bak to his place, where we watched episodes of Ghost in the Shell late into the night.

I spent *hours* in bed on Sunday. I don't know when I last spent 10.5 hours in a bed. That is twice my usual daily dose. But it was nice to sleep in, and M did say that he would know his goal of geting my vacation off to a good start was achieved if I actually slept in. Which I did. Lunch was dim sum at a place that was insanely busy and we were the only non-asians in the building. From there we went to see Casino Royale. Went back to his place to watch more Ghost in the Shell and nap, and then went for sushi at Hana Zen, which was fantastic. I was going to head south to see my sisters, but as it was dark and getting out of San Francisco and onto I-5 is difficult enough in daylight, I decided to stay over another night, and leave on Monday morning. Since he had to go to work in the morning I was a good girl and went to bed early, then got on the road about 10am.

A long, relaxing weekend with one of my best friends was just what I needed. All in all a great start to a week's vacation.

Can you see the flower's singing?

No? It is clearing its crimson throat, preparing to raise its head to the sun and sing the nectar forth...

One of my primary goals when I entered therapy two years ago was conquering my attention-aversion. I've come a long way. I no longer cringe when my boss or colleague praises me in front of others. I am learning how to accept compliments with fewer attempts at deflection or self-deprecation. That feeling of needing to hide is diminishing in intensity. I've been putting myself out there--dating, writing, recording--and accepting the attention and feedback with as much grace as I can muster. Some days are better than others.

Recently I identified one of the triggers for my attention-aversion: the words "special", "talented" and "gifted". Most people associate "special" with good feelings. They like feeling special. Not so, me. When someone tells me I'm special, I feel suddenly wary. I find myself wondering, subconsciously, what they want.

I was at the local pub on Monday night, eating my favorite burger and sipping a beautiful microbrew porter. A commercial came on, and the voice-over actor said "What makes you special?" My reaction was immediate and vehement. My internal critic said "Nothing! I don't want to be special!" It shocked me. But I did not have time to examine it as I was in a social situation, so I marked it for contemplation at another time. I mentioned it to CD, and he reiterated that I was special, that I had such a gift for self-expression. I think he thought he was reassuring me, but his words made me choose to shy away from exploring it further. A few days later, in a chat, someone asked "When are you going to do another story? You have such talent!" Something in me cringed. I wanted to ignore his comment, but remembered to acknowledge it with a "thank you" instead.

Thursday night, talking with B, "special" came up and tears flooded my eyes--I felt suddenly, inexplicably sad. Trigger. And something about B's receptivity made it possible for me experience the trigger and trace it back. In that moment, eye-level with my psyche, I found it. She used to tell me I was special. Often. And like most children who fall prey to sexual predators, I blamed myself. I knew that it was something about me that made her want me. That something "special". And from that time forward, that word has been tainted, and any attentions ascribed to my being special or different or talented or gifted prompted instant withdrawal, an entering into "turtle mode".

Saturday morning I had conversation with B about what happened Thursday, abuut my understanding that I'm ready to process my aversion to "special", to lay it to rest and reclaim the word. And so I resolved to do so. But it was not enough. More was to come.

I rose this morning from dream-awareness, from that alpha state, cognisant of an internal dialogue-loop running in my mind "You've been renting space in your soul to a sexual predator for 26 years. Stop this."

Late this morning I spoke to CW. He's in Colorado Springs again. We talked for a while.
I commented to him that I'd noticed a change in him the past couple of weeks with regards to how he and I interact.
He asked what I meant.
I told him he appeared less bothered by my insistence on my independence, on my need to continue exploring and growing outside our relationship. He said he'd read some articles on gifted adults and it made it easier for him to understand and deal with me.
My knee-jerk response was "I'm not gifted."
He laughed. Loudly. "You most certainly are."
Remembering my conversation with B, remembering my intention to reclaim "special" and its related words, I stopped myself from arguing or withdrawing, and listened to him.
He said, "I stumbled across an article titled 'Can you hear the flowers sing?' and it made me think of you. I remembered you stopping us in the middle of the forest and saying 'Smell that? Can you smell the fungal mats growing?'"
I grinned, remembering his bafflement.
He said, "I have a better understanding of the challenges you face, not only with resolving your past, but in the present. I remind myself that you're not being intentionally perverse--that you are pushing at the boundaries that stifle you."
It was my turn to ask what he meant.
He said, "Social boundries, sensual boundaries, metaphysical boundaries. You are one of the most aware people I know. It makes you very sensitive to things most people don't sense. Including me."
Part of me was relieved that he seemed to have come to a place of acceptance. Part of me was wary. And then he said something that triggered me. Again.
He said, "Deny it all you want to, Kay. It won't change the fact that you are special--no--that you are exceptionally gifted."
Tears. Fuck. I cried and blabbered to him about my conversations with B, and the connotations that "special" carried for me. I wished very strongly that he was there to hold me. I wanted to press my face against his chest and breathe him into me. But he was in Colorado. So I forced myself to calm down and have a coherent conversation.

Later, he IM'd me a link to the article he'd mentioned, challenged me to read it and disagree that what it said applied to me.

And so I read it. The title resonated very strongly with me. The line in the article "no one else hears the flowers singing" resonated even more strongly. God, I know what that feels like, to experience the world differently than most. Sometimes it makes me despair, when I am excited by something I see/hear/taste/smell/feel and the ones I am with give me this dumb look and I try so hard to help them sense what I am feeling but they cannot. I think sometimes that is why I enjoy photography so much. Because sometimes I can get others to see not only what I am seeing, but how I am seeing it.

Anyway. Given some more time, I think I'll be laying another demon to rest, perhaps even embrace some more of the abandoned gifts that my shadow has been holding in safe-keeping for me.

Fantabulous Weekend

I think this has been one of the best weekends of my life.

1-My sister is doing better. One might even go so far as to say that she is recovering, keeping in mind that a few good weeks does not a recovery make, not with an illness that cost her 10 months of her life and half her body mass.

2-CD has not only finished his manuscript, but will be handing it over to his editor in a week. Even better tho, are the poems and prose he is now free to write, brightening my days, like this:

Opposable Thumbs

Because of our opposable thumbs, we human beings have unique capabilities. Our muscled, contrary digits allow us to pull, twist, manipulate, and grip; to use tools, to control, even "civilize" our environment. There is, however, one essential human quality that does NOT respond well to this wondrous digital opposability...

Love.

Love is given; it is to be received with open hands, as if it was a gift of pure, clear, life-giving water, flowing into and over our cupped palms.

Love is not to be pulled, twisted, manipulated, leveraged, or squeezed. Love is not to be hijacked, hitchhiked, clamped, or hammered.

No.

Use your opposable thumbs on love, and its life-giving magic will disappear, as surely as water flows through a grasping hand.

3-I went to two birthday parties on Saturday. Yes, two!

J's was at a meditation center. I wish I could have spent more time there, because there were some amazing people there, and J needed some serious bodywork. Still, I got his low back relaxed enough that he stopped wincing every time he moved, and he gave me a peek at the library. Mmm... books. A good thing he doesn't know what a turn-on books in general and libraries in particular are for me :)

I had to leave J's party because B's was starting, and well, no offence to J, but who would want to miss a party involving a chocolate fountain, a basement lair draped in billowing fabrics, a wine cellar, a chocolate fountain, one man, 10 women, (did I mention a chocolate fountain) and a camera?

4-Sunday Sacred Dance Circle. Wow. The energy was amazing. I had gooseflesh the entire time I was there. Between that and the endorphine high from multiple orgasms, I was guaranteed a great day.

6-Snuggle Salon. I invited a different J to come along and he accepted. It was the smallest snuggle I've been to, maybe 10 people. Still, both the birthday boys were there, and there were only two other women besides myself, so I had a great time snuggling and being massaged. And I loved the five-person snuggle at the end of the night, sandwiched between the J I'd invited and J the birthday boy. YUM!

7-I got to talk to my other sister about all sorts of deep and personal things, and gave her the good news that I will be taking vacation in November afterall, so we're both really stoked. Its been a few years since my sisters and I were together last.

8-Oh! and I have pretty toes, courtesy of my lovely girl C, who loves me so much that she gave me a pedicure this weekend. French, with pretty nail art.

Its nearly 1am and I'm still high on life. I love my life. Life is good.

"A good day," a friend said to me. "Why are they so rare?"
"I don't know," I answered, "Somedays we dont know a good day when we are in one."

Sunday was a good day. So was Saturday. Here's to Monday.

Contemplating obstinacy

I've recently been contacted by someone through Literotica. An interesting man, who claims to be an editor, and who insists on calling me a writer, much to my chagrin. We had a bit of an argument about it, which he cut short by changing topics, I think becuase he felt that he, as one who edits writers, knows far better than I what one is. After our conversation ended, I went about making dinner, and as I ate it, thought about what we had discussed. And with a glass of wine in hand, I mailed him this:

You are not the only one who calls me a writer, if it is any consolation to you.

I do not know why I resist the label so. Perhaps it is a habit: I do not care for labels.

Or perhaps it is that writing comes too easily, or that I put so little effort into it. I mean really, I write what I think or feel or see or notice. There is no craft in that, no art, it is merely transcription.

And friends say to me, "Mozart and Beethoven merely transcribed the music playing in their heads. Does that make the label 'composer' less applicable? Does that lessen their genius?"

My answer is that I am no genius. Most days I feel like a fraud for being recognized for saying or writing things that simply 'are' to me. It is like saying Columbus discovered America. When I was a child I said: but it was always there! Why not recognize him for having the courage to test the theory that the world was not flat after all? Its not sexy, that is why.

I write about things that are sexy. Perhaps that is why people call me a writer? I do not know.

As for your feedback, also known as criticism, I welcome it. Truly. If nothing else it sheds light on the contrast between your perception of what a proper ending is, and my intuition that there are no endings, merely transitions from one moment, one state, to the next.

I recently wrote a poem called Compelling Question.
In it, I mention that another's consciousness is impenetrable. But it does not stop us from seeking to penetrate, to possess that other. Perhaps because I express my consciousness well, people find me more accessible, find the mystery of the other more accessible, and grasp at it. We are all so powerfully driven by the awareness, conscious or not, that we are alone, and not only that, but by the knowledge that the only certainty in life is that we will end, and we will end alone. And yet, there is a commonality, a universality to all experience, to all perceptions of reality, and in that, we are not alone. We find ourselves touched by the echoes of another's pain or self-awareness--their creative expression of it--and through it we can vicariously experience the other, or feel that they have experienced us, and know, for that moment, that we are not as alone as we felt. But people are not content to let the moment happen, and flow into the next, not if it means the possible loss of that shared consciousness. They do not want it to move on, and leave them solitary again. And so they cling to it, they close their hands about it, and forget the lesson of childhood: If you clutch the butterfly tightly in your hand so it will not fly away, you destroy the butterfly.

I think. Perhaps the better label is 'thinker'. I am a thinker. But applying that label to myself would seem vain, yes?

Better yet, call me a self-aware, self-conscious babbler.
That is a label I will not argue with :)

Kay

The irony of the above is that it is written in response not only to him, but also to CD, my friend and mentor and ardent, loving admirer, who also calls me a writer, and whose encouragement on my writing I so roundly rejected this morning. Sorry, CD.

Portland Whore

A very, very special friend wrote this for me. It is deeply meaningful and quite, quite accurate. It is perhaps the most beauitful thing anyone has ever written me. I am posting it here mainly because I do not want to lose it. I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it too much (if he does, I'll be taking it down).

Portland Whore

Slut. A slut to the gray-green wilderness that hovers over her home, the misted mistress of the environment she loves so deeply, that covers her, disguises her, renders her safely anonymous and—at the same time—places her at the center of the universe, demanding her full attention with senses, camera, and pen, embracing her with the quiet inevitability of adiabatic currents that rise from river, creek, and marshlands, gentle powers that blend air and water, seamless, the water breathes the air, the air inhales the water. Slut.


Whore. A whore to self-discovery, prostrating herself to the truth of where she comes from, selling her past to understanding, spreading herself open to redeem her future and celebrate the day in which her heart beats, now. Today. Here. Whore.


Harlot. A harlot to hedonism, to the exultant complexity of unabashed awareness--of the body, its senses, their frenetic, joyful dialog, the dance between body and soul, mind and heart, brain and genitals. Harlot.


Bitch. A bitch to her own unique principles, snapping at any bastion, shibboleth, or vestigial, arcane supposition that dares to hint at impinging on the freedom that she carves from the dense environment of ponderous, bible-bound past (not her own), a reactionary society, and a bankrupt, dumbed-down culture that would surround her with tawdry stereotypes and diminishing contempt. Bitch.


Concubine. A concubine to knowledge, knowing its power, a courtesan devoted to the nurturing of of the millennial growth of understanding, at once a geisha and a canny perpetrator of the struggle that all artists and thinkers have undergone to leave a deeper imprint of human experience for others to share. Concubine.


Goddam! What a fuckin’ whore this woman is…

Thank you, love. I may be Simone de Beauvoir to your Sartre, but you are Henry Miller to my Anais Nin.