The delight of surprise memories

Life is full: rich and colourful, dark and painful, replete with abundance, plagued with scarcity. For all these reasons, I've not posted to my blog in too long. I have several thoughts started, but a scarcity of time has prevented me from completing them. I will, though.

For now, though, I feel an urge to post this: Earlier this week, two memories surfaced for me. They were good memories. Memories of my mother, and my maternal grandfather. I was talking to 'Doc' (Bob) at HypnoFantasy about the possibility of doing hypnotic scripts. I told him I did not know much about hypnosis and wanted to understand it better before I attempted to hypnotize anyone else.

At some point in the conversation, I felt some internal pressure, some resistance to the idea of hypnosis for some reason, and I took a moment to examine it. And when I did, I suddenly remembered why I've always found it so easy to meditate, to fall into trance--I remembered that my mother used to hypnotize me and my sisters. WHAT?! I felt this little jab of panic as my old distrust of her surfaced. What did she say to me, when I was in trance, what suggestions did she make? I've no idea. I'll never know, because she is dead. I have decided to trust that the suggestions she made to me were intended to be beneficial. It is difficult for me, this trust, because she demonstrated so little in the way of maternal feeling, and I have so little childhood knowledge or memory of her.

But I found it inside me to trust that when he hypnotized me, she meant well, because I carry that memory of her brushing my hair when I was a child. I remembered the pleasure of the brush scraping lightly against my scalp and pulling gently at the roots of my hair, running down my back, and the waves of gooseflesh that ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of the brush... I remembered the sun on my face and on my skin, warming me as I sat naked before her, my knees pulled up under my chin. And I remembered her voice, her beautiful, mellifluous, soothing voice, saying my name. And I was grateful for that one memory, and I held it until it glowed, and I basked the light of my mother's love once again--and the pressure, the resistance to the idea of hypnosis, faded. My unconventional, counter-culture mother helped make me the woman I am today. And I like who I am :)

The other memory was of her father. He died the same year she took off and I have very few memories of him. But I was talking to someone about voice-over recording, and microphones, and I suddenly remembered Grandfather. He had a radio show! I could feel laughter burbling up inside me as I remembered. He, too, had a wonderful voice, which he learned put to good use as a missionary evangelist. He was one of Aimee Semple McPherson's students, having graduated from Life Bible College at Angelus Temple in the late 1920's, and she had a radio show. So did he. Even during the years he battled cancer, after he retired from the pulpit, he was on the air. I remember that he had taken over one of the closets in the guest room, the one that had the pull-down door to the attic. I remember him sitting in that little room stacked with books and papers, with the big microphone in front of him and the reel-to-reel tape machine running as he sermonized, his voice resonant and his blue eyes blazing. He put the 'charismatic' in 'Christian', Grandfather did.

So here I am, by some cosmic convolution, sitting at a desk, surrounded by books and papers, with a big microphone hanging in front of me, spinning tales on sexuality in my mother's voice for an audience that likes to be hypnotized. It makes me smile. There is something fitting in that.

Free-spirit

"It is easy for you to say, you were raised to be a free-spirit," said a friend I've made this past year. He had asked my thoughts on the imminent 'big step' he and his girlfriend of 18 months were about to embark upon: moving in together. The last girlfriend he lived with drove him nuts in short order and he was reluctant to put himself into the same position again. I told him I could understand that all too well, but at the same time, that I considered the practice of using past experience to predict relationship outcomes to be a form of self-fulfilling prophecy. I told him to take the reasonable precautions and then relax and be open to the possibilities in this relationship, which has nothing to do with the old one, unless he makes it so. His comment about it being easy for me to say made me smile. The road to this place has been far from easy, as my closest friends will attest.


For all that I grew up around a bunch of carefree hedonists, there was little stability, consistency, or parenting. In one form or another I raised myself, four sisters, and three parents. My parents were young, self-absorbed, and oblivious to the danger they put their daughters in. I learned first-hand what could happen, and spent my teen years vigilantly trying to protect my siblings from predators. I developed stress-responses and habits, expectations and fears, that stood me in good stead for survival, but handicapped me when I attempted to join the mainstream, to attempt to seem 'normal', to develop and sustain romantic relationships. When I was 18 I returned from a few months in Europe and developed an inexplicable aversion to strangers and unfamiliar places that grew until I was afraid to leave my home. The world of possibilities was terribly large, and my experience of it quite dark in ways. I wanted to try to make sure that whatever I did, whoever I met, created only positive outcomes. I was young and foolish, and terribly controlling. Eventually, I overcame the fear of people, but the fear of the unknown, unknowable, and uncertain became the core of my existence. I did not feel afraid--I was afraid. I did my best to cope, and I grew in and changed in spurts and often lost as much ground as I gained. But I kept working at it, trying to learn what I needed to do to reach for the next rung on the ladder. Striving to become more fully alive and aware, more fully me. All the while keeping in mind that as difficult and slow a process as it seems, even plants can climb ladders.


Just three years ago I was in a miserable relationship that should have ended years earlier but did not, for reasons I cannot recall. We rarely had sex, argued often, had different wants, needs, desires. But we loved each other, and it seemed we thought that was enough. I suppose we preferred being miserable together to being miserable alone. Admittedly, it was a difficult time for me--four people I loved died in as many years and I think I could not face any more loss. When that relationship ended I went into therapy, determined to learn new coping mechanisms and break old patterns, determined to address the issues and complaints my partners had given voice to over the years. And in the therapy- process I chose meditation instead of medication, and did the hard internal work, and read and explored and conversed and contemplated and slowly came to the realization that nearly everything I need I already have within me, and that fear of loss, of death and uncertainty and the 'other', is natural. But rather than deny those fears, rather than sublimate or ridicule them, I realized that it was best to recognize fear for what it was, and allow myself to feel it--let it fill me and flow out of me and let another emotion fill me--love, hope, joy. One day I realized that while I will never be rid of fear, I do not have to be ruled by it.


And I have to remind myself of this daily. I no longer tell myself not to be afraid, or to stop being silly. I remind myself that it is ok to feel afraid. I tell myself that it is ok to feel afraid, but it is not ok to use fear as an excuse not to live every day as fully as I can, to use it as an excuse to avoid embracing the fullness of life. It is not easy. I am flattered that, for all I feel that I am struggling and flailing around, I am somehow managing to meet the challenges of life with enough grace that others think it comes easily to me. But at the same time, I admit that it is coming easier to me--more and more I find myself practicing acceptance and facing each moment with equanimity and spontaneity. They are coming more easily. And perhaps one day I really will be a free-spirit. Who knows? For now I'll savor feeling free-spirited every moment that I can.

2006: The year of love and friendship

In the past year, especially, I've learned the value of open and honest communication, and more, of putting myself out there emotionally and being vulnerable. My awareness of the world and my inner life has deepened with both therapy and my meditation practice. I've had some insights and put into effect some changes in my life and I've found that my ability to relate with others has increased dramatically. Yes, in putting myself out there, I risk emotional pain, but life is as transient and uncertain as it is beautiful , and I've realized that if I'm unwilling to embrace the possibility of negative consequences, I'm not really living my life--I'm playing it safe.

These flowers are from a friend I've made this year. A wonderful man of intelligence, wisdom, and kindness whom I never would have met if it was not for the changes I've made in my life this year--of my choice to take risks, to be spontaneous, to follow my intuitions.

A retrospective of 2006:
I am, mostly, well. 2006 was a tough year--My sister spent January through September in and out of the hospital and I did a lot of travelling back and forth to Massachusetts. She seems to have stabilized, but the medical estabilishment says it will be another year before they know what the lasting effects of the illness will be, and if she will require convalescent care for the rest of her life. We did not think she would make it to her 37th birthday, but she is a stubborn wench and surprised us all. Work has been awful--so short-staffed that I was asked to stay on even after I offered to resign because I was having to leave for MA for weeks on end and at a moment's notice.

And yet, for all that, it has been a great year, too. I've been dating some amazing men, completed two years of counselling/therapy, seen friends and family, and done a fair bit of travelling. I am participating in an ecstatic dance group, have been exploring tantra and intimacy, and I've been developing my abilities as a writer and a photographer with the encouragement of professionals in both fields.

This year my friendships have deepened, and I've learned just how secure a support system I have. I've learned that I don't always have to be 'strong' and that it takes more courage to lean on others than it does to be the one others lean on. I've learned that I can feel fear without embodying it. As a consequence of my sister's illness, which was partly brought on by self-neglect, I've come to the realization that I need to learn to live in and with my body--to fully inhabit it--rather than driving it, or using it as a tool. The seat of my self-awareness and the source of my connection with reality are my flesh and my senses, and neglecting to care for my body means that there will likely come a day when it is unable to furnish my needs.

And so, while I am not the sort of person who participates in the New Year's Resolution ritual, I am committed to making 2007 the year I make peace with my body, learning to inhabit it fully, ceasing to use it as a shield between me and a world whose attentions I'd become so averse to.

I am off to the Coast for the weekend for a quiet retreat in a little 1920's cottage, where I can recuperate from 50 to 60 hour work weeks to the sound of wild surf and blustry winds. I expect to sit by the fire, read, watch movies, and enjoy the opportunity to write and photograph.

understanding and acceptance

I find myself trembling on the edge of a realization. It is similar to that realization I had several months ago about questions and answers. That some questions cannot be answered, and that the answers aren't important--its the noticing, the asking, that matters--and the ability to let the questions go. Release.

And I am there now with 'understanding' and 'acceptance'. I am realizing I do not have to understand. I realized this as a result of my anguish over not understanding the suffering of those I love. There are things I may never be able to understand, no matter how smart I am, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many questions I ask.

If there is only one thing I have to understand, it is that I must accept that there are things I may never understand.

It sounds so simple, but its a tough lesson for me. I expect I will continue to struggle with it, but I've gone back to my meditation on practicing acceptance, and hopefully this time it will stick. In the meantime, there is nothing I would like more right now than to snuggle up to someone I love and trust and bask in the joy of just being with them. Unfortunately, all desired candidates are either otherwise occupied... or too far away.

One Year Ago Today

[audio entry]
One year ago today, P was visiting from Denmark. We'd gone to the coast, to my favorite little place in Seaside. Early in the morning, while he was still sleeping, I sat at the table in the cottage and looked out the bay window. I watched the ocean and the birds and sipped coffee and wrote the following in my journal:

There is within me--within all of us, I think--a beast which protects me from the world. Some days it is a roaring beast and others it is a beast that crawls stealthily, but always it is ever watchful--the lizard brain upon which the monkey brain rests.

I recognize that I have defenses that I use far more than I need to, and that for each thing these defences protect me from, they cost me something profound: they keep the world and the experiences and the opportunities for growth and joy at bay. I am aware that closing myself off from my feelings freed me from having to do anything about them. I know that in barricading myself away, I pushed away my own life. I am trying to reclaim so much, and to let go of what I never should have internalized. I am trying to open myself to intimacy that goes beyond the intellectual intimacy I have long enjoyed with friends.

I have come to a place where I know that venturing further will only get me lost inside myself, locked away, never to get out alive. And so I have decided to fight for my life and let life and others in. It is not easy. I have habits and defenses that rise hard and fast when I feel threatened, afraid, vulnerable. Something within me still throws up barriers even while my consciousness works to tear them down. It makes me feel like a head-case, this internal conflict, but I know it is necessary. Somehow I have confidence to push on. I am all twisted up inside and some days I think it is the knots that hold me together, instead of holding me back. Time will tell.

What a long way I have come. And how far I still have to go. Whenever I think I am not making progress in my quest to truly live life, I have but to review my past thoughts. Despite the crisis with my sister's health, despite the stumbling over ingrained stress-response habits, I have made such great strides. I've learned its not as scary as I thought it would be, putting myself out there, taking risks, being real. I've learned that my being genuine means others are more willing to meet me there, and the ones who are willing to are the kinds of people I want to get to know. I've learned the value of attempting to remain eye-level with my consciousness, to watch where feelings and thoughts originate from, so I can determine where in the past I am hung up. And upon reviewing the past year, I've come to the realization that all the 'internal work' I've done needs to be complemented with 'external work'... I need to take better care of the body that houses my spirit.

Process vs Result Orientation & Pleasure

"Invest in the “process” rather than the product. Process living neutralizes the depleting and impoverishing effects of chronically living in anticipation. Even when impossible goals occasionally are reached, satisfactions derived from them are invariably disappointing unless the process has given ample satisfaction along the way."--Theodore Rubin

Being process-oriented rather than product/results-oriented means that I get my enjoyment from being in the moment, from the 'doing'. I've become more and more process-oriented as I grow older, and I noticed a live-in-the-moment paradigm shift after so many loved-ones died suddenly and in such rapid succession. So many people living for tomorrow, living for the day they could quit their job or start their own business or stay home with their children or go on vacation or retire and finally do what they wanted... so many people waiting for a result or product before they could finally be happy and enjoy living... so sad when they put off living today in hopes they would live tomorrow... and then tomorrow never came. It was a powerful 'lesson'. It still shapes me.

I've become more focussed on doing what I am doing now very well, and taking enjoyment in it--which is why doing things like working for the SoCal office made me so nuts. I was unable to perform to my standards and I was rarely able to find enjoyment in what I was doing. Thus, I remind myself a bit of my friend T.I., a first-generation American of Japanese descent. She is never content for the end result of anything she does to be artful or perfect...the entire process has to be. I loved to watch her cook, paint, knit, even brush her hair. Everything she did was graceful and contemplative and the focus was on incremental improvement through repetition. But, T.I. does not like being rushed. She is capable of spontaneity so long as she is within her comfort zone. And she can be difficult to know and understand because her motivations are complex and internal while her ability to be satisfied appears so deceptively simple.

Running parallel to this train of thought is an expanding realization that Freud's Pleasure Principle, while valid when applied toward infants, becomes misleading when applied to adults---because his theories were based on the male pleasure model, and when it comes to pleasure, men get the short end of the stick. I've queried most of my friends, and I've decided that, as a general rule, men are results-oriented pleasure-seekers and women are process-oriented pleasure seekers. Men get aroused and orgasm, all very quickly. They want the big-bang, the ultimate superfeeling, and they want it now. Theirs is results-oriented pleasure. Whatever it takes to "get 'er done." Women get aroused, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and orgasm usually takes time, but orgasm itself is not the ultimate goal. The pleasure is in the arousal itself, in the slow build of orgasmic tension and its slow decline. During sex a woman may not orgasm or she may, or she may do so many times, but the emphasis for her is actually on intimacy and the arousal process--on feeling good for as long as possible--not on achieving climax. Thus my assertion that women's pleasure is process-oriented.

This difference in the pleasure-seeking methods is the reason why there are so many problems between men and women, I think. I've had some frustrating conversations with men-friends about sex... One of them, particularly, discounts the feminine emphasis on physical pleasure. He is unconvinced that he could ever be "possessed by pleasure" as I am. He thinks that my extreme sensitivity to pleasure is related to my tendancy to dissociate emotion and sex. And he's probably right... But a lot of women talk openly with each other about sex, and I'm convinced that I'm on to something here. Men, both circumsized and uncut, do not seem to be able to relate to the levels of sensitivity to pleasure which a woman can achieve. Masters and Johnson reported more than 50 years ago that a woman's capacity for pleasure puts all men to shame. Its true. But documenting it doesn't seemed to have done much more than emphasize achieving orgasm for women--an emphasis that often makes men and women feel inadequate when it doesn't happen.

Thar Be Dragons Here!

Click here for audio/podcast.
I've been giving some thought to my relationships and the people in my life, organizing my thoughts on why monogamy and monofidelity feel unnatural to me, and why polyamory and similar 'alternative' love-styles make sense to me, particularly in the context of the human dilemma of loneliness and isolation.

I've thought about how easy it is for us to spend our lives looking for that elusive something, always holding out for what we don't quite know, and how many of us do it, day in and day out, without recognizing that we are looking for ourselves.

Yes. The search for the perfect other is always a search for what we sense we lack. And the reason that we never find them is because the search goes on as long as we feel inadequate to ourselves, to our own needs.

Another 'yes'. There it is. Too many people hope to get from others what can only be provided by themselves. What a terrible thing this hope is. Such a great source of unhappiness.

For in our conviction that there is one special someone out there who will meet all our needs, all the time, we are transformed into needy, demanding children rather than healthy adults with resources enough for ourselves and for others who might need us.

What a terrible thing is the hope that keeps us living our lives as though we are but half of a whole, either constantly waiting for the other half, or making do with what is out there.

And what a moment of clarity it is to realize that we are each one person complete and total in ourselves, with multiple sources of supply and many people to love, and that we have only to be love, rather than to seek love, so that love grows from us and and flows from us as something to be shared, rather than consumed, or hoarded like a dragon's treasure.

I think that Life, love, relationships--these are a wires in which the current runs back and forth and around, from each to each, returning via different paths and with varying amplitudes, so that each exchange, each cycle, enhances and supplies energy to all parties involved.

And this thought leads to another realization, that when we limit ourselves to one or two others outside ourselves, to one mate, to one friend, to one mentor, we form closed circuits that isolate us from others. And the fewer intimate others in our lives, the more isolate we become.

Instead of forming relationships that close us off, instead of closing ourselves off in our disappointment, we humans need to form relationships that open us to ourselves, relationships that help us reach outside ourselves and become more than we are.

And we need more than one person in our lives. We need intimate friends, because they are the windows through which we see the world and peer into in order to see ourselves. They are the social mirror through which we determine the worth and purpose of our lives, and if we don't have friends, we see and understand much less about ourselves and the world than we otherwise would.

It is incomplete, this thought-process, but there it is. Not bad for a weekend's contemplation. And at the close of the weekend I have pondered what I am grateful for, and of course, I am most thankful for my friends and lovers. They enrich my life. They provide me with so many sources of love, with so many reasons to continue living and learning and growing.

I can only hope that I do the same for them.

On bathing and shaving

Sunday night is bath night.

And what a yummy bath I had.... Tonight's soap was a french-milled mandarin and olive-oil, and the oil in the bathwater was lemon-grass, as was the incense. A few candles, a glass of very cold pinot blanc, and a playlist consisting mostly of moroccan music completed this very languid, sensual, and ritual experience.

Sundays and Wednesdays are bath nights, and on bath nights I soak and shave. I may or may not shave my legs, but I always shave my mound bare. And tonight, as I was shaving, I remembered a conversation I had with one of my sisters last week. We both shave. In fact, all three of us do. I knew one of them did, but I did not know that both of them did, not until she asked me for a massage last weekend, and when I said yes, she whipped off her nightie and lay down on the bed, all splendidly golden-skinned and blatantly bare.

And us being sisters and utterly lacking in body-modesty (having grown up as we did in a communal environment in which nudity was the norm) I smiled and commented to her that I did not know that she shaved, too.

As soon as I started growing hair, I began shaving it off. I did not like it. It was unaesthetic to me, both visually, and tactilely. I preferred being bare, and smooth. I realize now, as an adult, that part of it had to do with not wanting to grow up, to enter womanhood, because I knew, even at the tender age of 14, that the two tests for a female being 'old enough' was being 'big enough', and having pubic hair.

When I took my first adult male lover, I was still under-age, and he was more than a decade older. He asked me to let my hair grow in, because seeing me bare made him feel pedophilic. And so I tried. But the hair I grew was so sparse as to make the adjective 'mossy' seem effusive. Disgusted with my sorry excuse of a muff, I shaved it off again. I thought perhaps my shaving had ruined the possibility of me growing a bush, until I talked to my sister.

She, too, grows hair very sparsely.

She, too, likes being smooth and bare, and likes the cleanliness factor as well. We are much less worried about muss and mess during Aunt Flow's monthly visit when we are shaved.

And then there is the sheer sensuality of it. It can be quite arousing, lathering up, running the razor over skin, following it with the sensitive tips of fingers questing, questing, seeking out any roughness that marrs that symphony of smoothness. It is an act of self-love, done to please the self, and no one else, though certainly our partners love the bareness, too.... I makes oral sex so much more pleasant for them--and us :)

Some people react very viscerally to shaving. There are those who think it is pedophilic. There are those who find it erotic, being able to see so clearly that aspect of a woman that has always been shrouded in mystery.

And then there are those who consider shaving their mounds akin to shaving their heads: that removal of their pubic hair is disempowering, as evinced by a conversation I had a few weeks ago... One day after a particularly contemplative bathtime, I logged into the BDSM Social Room on Literotica Chat. Someone asked me how I was, and I said I had been thinking about shaving, and immediately a female asked me "Why, are you owned?" This surprised me. It had not occurred to me that shaving had a part to play in the psychology of Dominance and submission. But after thinking about it, it makes sense. A woman, shaved bare, is utterly exposed, and completely visually accessible--she cannot hide from her Master. Without her shroud of hair, she is stripped of another layer she could hide behind, a layer of resistance to his claim upon her. And so I can see where a Domme would ask me if I was a slave.

But I'm not in the lifestyle. I'm not into Daddy Doms, or playing pre-pubescent games. I have very adult genitalia--there is no doubt that I am a grown woman. I like being shaved because it pleases me to be smooth and bare and clean. And I like my partners to be shaved, or very closely trimmed, too. And after all this thinking about the subject, I've come to the realization that it doesn't matter why I like it. I just do.

Writing about fucking

A fellow writer at Literotica asked me to read and give feedback on his stories. And so I did. One was excellent, one was very good, one was better than average. When he wrote me back, thanking me for my comments, he said something that sparked a response in me. He said:

I am not interested in writing about fucking. The role that sex plays in who we are, who we think we are, who we want to be - these are the issues that intrigue me. A natural and instictive act that some take as a mere matter of pleasure is so much more critical and powerful in terms of our self image. Hell, our very survival.

To which I responded, in a rather lengthy email as follows:

Sex. It is central to our lives because it is as fundamental a compulsion as the need to eat, or piss, or think. We are programmed to need it, because it is how we perpetuate our species. But we are also addicted to it because it feels so damned good. Its the pleasure principle.

I am polyamorous by nature and nurture--I grew up on a hippie commune of sorts and had no idea that for most people 'marriage' meant monogamy--in childhood it was not uncommon for me to see my parents in bed with someone else, or with multiple partners. Thus the possessive exclusivity of monogamous marriage is something that I neither understand, nor tolerate. I have never married, and doubt I ever will.

Men like the idea of me, or women like me, but the reality makes them doubt their manhood. I am neither insatiable nor promiscuous, but I am sensually aware of nearly every moment--and since most people do not understand the difference between sensual and sexual--eventually my partners awaken to an ego-involved realization that they are not 'enough' for me, and not only that, but something deep inside them wanted to be the one who could be. And so it goes.

Thus, my perception of sexuality is not only skewed for a member of my society, but also skewed for a woman. I like sex. I am unashamedly carnal. I like spending hours in bed with my lover, exploring each other, driving each other, attentive to the moment and his or her needs as they arise. I like going on walks, leaning over a park bench, and asking my lover to fuck me hard and fast, before someone comes along. I love being bound, I love the feel of a cock in my mouth and the scent of ball musk. I love sucking pussy, the feel of a woman's thighs pressed against my cheeks, the sound of moans erupting from her. I love the feel of a cock sliding in and out of my ass while I'm riding the magic wand on my clit. I love speeding down the highway with my lover in the driver's seat and me with my feet up on the dash, playing with myself, perfuming the air with my scent and my cries... and then switching, me driving while he uses my vibrator on his cock, talking to him, egging him on toward orgasm, and all the while, people in their SUV's and trucks looking on, eyes wide, silly grins on their faces, passing us with a thumbs up in their rear-view mirrors.

I am not twisted up about sex like most people, obviously. And so I can write about it with child-like enthusiasm and delight--with the same delight most people wish they could experience. And that is the need I feed with my stories... the need for pure sensuality and joy in one's sensual self. Do I write just about fucking? I think so. I create the setting, and then I write, as evocatively as possible, about the actions, the sensations, the thoughts and emotions that occur between the lovers in that scene. That occur the way the should occur--and would--if our thoughts and fears and egos and socialization did not get in the way.

I wonder if he will understand what I mean?