Dolphin's Dreams

I will pour myself into my work...

2012-01-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

When I had my worst struggles prior to this, ironically the very year and only a month after the horrible words were written, I determined that I must pour myself into the book. I determined that my saving grace was to write a book which explored and indeed explained my sensibility, which was romantic, erotic, and also spoke to the gravity and dark underbelly of the reality of being wired this way. I would write something that contained the beauty and the darkness, I would at last find redemption in the words, and I would carve for myself a creative life that would give me financial independence and help me fiscally contribute to my family's wellfare.

I'm half done.

Well, nearly half.

I've written the romance.

Now I have to sell it.

And I have to write the other half.

The novel, writing, is still my saving grace.

Thought for the day...

2012-01-19T08:20:00.002-05:00

God has everything worked out because nothing takes Him by surprise.

- Ray Lessin

I hate secrets.

2011-11-07T09:48:00.001-05:00

I hate them. Secrets breed mistrust; they imply and necessitate lies. I fucking hate them. Just saying.

Good Old Bette

2011-07-27T08:30:00.000-04:00

"This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
- Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

Rewrite is complete, and I've started what I'm calling 'the polishing draft.' Actually, I'm 3/4 of the way through the polishing draft,believe it or not. I'm shooting for 13 queries out the door by Sept. 1. Please God, let someone pick it up.

Cross your fingers.

Going for a swim before I get to work.

Be Drunken

2011-06-06T16:06:00.002-04:00

* A prose poem by Charles Beaudelaire.

Be Drunken

Be drunken, always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green glass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkeness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that sighs, of all that moves, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, as you please.”

Saturday

2011-05-28T09:28:00.003-04:00

Still, grey morning. Wet earth. Birdsong. Nina Simone. Candles. Coffee. Beloved.

Get to work.

Living the Dream

2011-05-18T19:25:00.004-04:00

Sounds silly perhaps.

Sitting at my massive, mahogany desk this evening, reading my manuscript and beginning the long work of the revision/writing of book two. Looking occassionally over the notebook and out the patio door at the sunset, the spring trees, and our pool. Candle lit. Citron vodka over tinkling ice beside me. Jazz in the background. My daughter at her desk across from mine, doing homework quietly. My husband working at his desk further over beside the big window. I would see a scene like this in a movie and fantasize about living this life I have.

Thanks, Lord.

Oooo P.S. Was looking at that last post and want to do a wee reflection on resolutions:

1. Finish the rewrite.

Going extremely well. Finished the first half today and starting the second this evening. Woot!

2. Lose some weight.

Also going extremely well! I'd tell ya how much I've lost, but that would mean acknowledging how much I had to lose! Happy and still at it.

3. Exercise.

Hated having to list this one. haha. Nevertheless, the pool's supposed to be open in the next week or so, which will put an end to my excuses.

4. Be a whole lot nicer and more forgiving of myself.

Sometimes. Still not great. But self-awareness is all we can manage sometimes, isn't it?

5. Pray a lot more.

Have been a bit more lax than I'd like to admit on this one lately, though I did go to Ash Wednesday and Easter services. Was sooo lucky too to have been at the Easter service I was. It was back in Cleveland at the church I grew up in. I have copied it and will post it here, for the edification of anyone interested. I believe that our spiritual life must inform how we live, or it becomes useless verbiage... This sermon managed to convey so much, without the didacticism and dogmatic focus all too often prevalent in such speeches.

A sermon given on Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011
at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights, Ohio,
by the Reverend Alan M. Gates, Rector

Your Second Life

Do you know about the Six-Word Memoir Project? It all started with an enduring legend about Ernest Hemingway. Allegedly he was challenged to write a meaningful story in only six words. So he did: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Poignant, evocative, just six words. Recently a literary project began asking readers for their own Six-Word Memoirs. It has become a blogging phenomenon.

Some of these six-word formulations are philosophical one-liners: “Marry the positive; divorce the negative.” “My bucket list kicked me back.” “Multi-tasking is making several mistakes simultaneously.” Others focus on a particular theme. In a recent series on the topic of Hope, for instance, someone wrote: “Really hope my son calls today.” And, for this coming week in particular: “Hope Kate fares better than Diana.”

Most interesting of all are those which actually attempt to respond to the memoir challenge: Can you sum up your life in six words? Here we get the wistful: “Analog man in a digital world.” Or the regretful: “Wedding dress lasted longer than husband.” Or the poignant: “Mom’s Alzheimer’s. She forgets. I remember.” Or the tender: “I still make coffee for two.” The journalist Gloria Steinem
summarized: “Life is one big editorial meeting.” And the 6-Word Memoir by chef Mario Batali is: “Brought it to a boil often.”

So, here is your task for today – your conversational challenge for the Easter dinner table. Can you sum up your life in six words? What would you choose to highlight? What matters most? How will you characterize the life you are living? Or the life for which you hope?

Fifteen years ago a colleague of mine in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts suffered a brain aneurysm. There she was, standing at the altar celebrating the eucharist, when the aneurysm ruptured. The congregation was shocked, the paramedics were called, earnest prayers were offered. And, by the grace of God, Jenni survived.

The story circulated that the congregation wanted to replace the chasuble
which she had been wearing and which the EMT’s had cut from bottom to top when removing her from the chancel. But, according to the tale, the priest continued to wear it at the altar, crudely stitched back up, as a visible sign of the fragility of life.

I never heard Jenni say whether the chasuble story was true, but I did hear her testify to the way the experience changed her life. It focused her, she said, on significant things. She spent more time with the people who mattered to her most. It freed her to say No to a lot of things. She refused to drive two hours each way for some long diocesan meeting that held little prospect for significance. She had
little patience for anything that seemed a waste of time.

This wasn’t a question of maximum productivity at every moment – she might spend hours puttering in the garden. It was, rather, a question of meaning, enjoyment, and gratitude. She wanted to use her renewed life for things that expressed significance, or joy, or thanksgiving.

Like the exercise of the 6-word memoir, Jenni’s near-death experience was a moment which engendered focus and choice and selective meaning. It got her attention! And it gave her a second life.

As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord … came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. … For fear of him the guards shook… But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.’ [Mt 28:1-4]

In the realm of attention-getting, an earthquake is pretty good. An earthquake, and an angel. We can fairly bet that God captured the attention of these women. And the disciples, who were met by the risen Christ shortly thereafter – he got their attention, too. A dead man risen is liable to do that. He got
their attention – and he gave them a second life. Which they needed. They needed a second life. For in a manner of speaking, Jesus was not the only one who had been in a tomb those past two days.

Grief is a kind of tomb, surely. If you have been deep in grief, you know what I mean. Grief is as deep and dark and solitary as any tomb of stone. The women named Mary were in such a tomb.

What was there to do but keep vigil and mourn?
Confusion is a kind of tomb as well. You can’t see where you are, where you came from, where you’re headed. Caught in the dusk of uncertainty, no direction is clear. The disciples were in such a tomb. This had not been the plan. This was not what they expected. What was there to do but lock the doors?

Regret is another tomb, is it not? An inward focus on failures and irretrievable moments. Regret, and its cousin remorse, do not allow us to move forward because they fix us in the past. Peter was in such a tomb. He had failed his friend. Once, twice, three times he had missed his chance to be loyal and courageous. What was there to do but weep bitterly?

The story of Easter morning is not just the account of one man’s Resurrection from the Tomb. It is that, to be sure. “He is not here, for he has been raised!” said the messenger. And so he had. But he was not the only one. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who ran to tell the others – they also were raised, delivered from their tomb of grief. And the disciples, who joyously fell upon the feet of the risen
Christ and worshipped him – they also were raised, delivered from their tomb of confusion and fear.

And Peter, who went on to become the rock-solid leader of the early church – he also was raised, delivered from his tomb of regret. Peter and Mary and Thomas and John … every one of them was given a second life that day. The grief-stricken were consoled. The remorseful were forgiven. The confused given direction, the fearful given courage. Their lives from that day forward were not perfect, were not placid, were not painless. But they were faithful and grateful and generous. Inside their tombs, they were as good as dead. Now, they were given a second life.

So, what of us? What of you and me? Must we suffer a brain aneurysm, or be shaken by an earthquake, or visited by an angel? May God not have our attention until then? Or might we yet be reminded by the simple glory of this, our own Easter morning? Can we feel our own life tremble beneath our feet, and in our mind’s eye catch a glimpse of the Risen Christ – who says to us, as he said to the disciples, and has said ever since, “Greetings! Do not be afraid!”

What is the tomb which encloses you? Grief? Confusion? Fear? Regret? No tomb is too deep for the love of God to reach you. No tomb is too dark for the Light of Christ to illumine your way. A second life is yours to claim. As people of the Tomb, we are uncertain, and afraid, and weary – and thus also selfish, and grudging, and wary. But as Easter people we are forgiven, and loved, and trusting –
and thus also tolerant, and generous, and courageous.

Dear sisters and brothers: What will you do, outside of the tomb? What will you do with your second life? And what will your own 6-word Memoir be? What will comprise your carefully-chosen six words? For today, let it be this:
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Risen, indeed!

Or, perhaps this:

Easter morning, life begins, for you!

In the Name of the Risen Christ. Amen.

New Years Resolutions: Report The First

2011-01-28T09:25:00.003-05:00

So far, so good?

Well, kind of.

1. Finish the rewrite:

Have gotten a lot done on this, however, have recently run into yet another structural flaw that needs repairing and have, for the past week, allowed that to stymie me. I have spent the week pouting over it, rather than moving forward, a situation I hope to remedy today after this post.

Likewise, a very dear friend of mine, also a professional playwrite who's mind and talent I have extraordinary respect for, read the rewrite thus far last weekend. She gave me some invaluable feedback, which has given me a lot to mull over and ultimately will help the structural issues I've been having, although it's given me a LOT to mull over.

2. Lose some weight.

Ok, not yet. I HAVE got the plan now, however, we are waiting until the next pay period to impliment it, first week in February. Still, I've been trying to generally watch my consumption and take better care of myself overall and that's been going quite well.

3. Exercise.

Ok, given I was starting with the pool opening, and it's January 28th and -3 C I'm cool with this one so far. Right? Right? Eep. Perhaps I should see if I can come up with something to do before then... ahem...

4. Be a whole lot nicer and more forgiving of myself.

I think I'm doing pretty well with this, honestly. With the possible exception of a few times this week,beating myself up over the book rather than taking the necessary few days to mull things over and not stress over it. hmmm.

But I have been trying to not get on myself when my teenage son gets grumpy with me, as is his way pretty regularly right now. I've been trying to not get hurt or steamed by it, and instead to just go on with my life, confident in the knowledge that I'm ok, and that freshman year will end eventually.

Ah! Also, it just struck me that coming here and spending time with this blog and my goals is an element of being nicer to myself. So yay me! *blush*

5. Pray a lot more.

This one has definitely been going pretty well. I'm not back to daily yet, though I was doing alright with that at first. However, I have been praying more regularly and am also reading an extraordinary book right now called An Altar in the World, by Barbara Brown Taylor. Simply fantastic, whether one is Christian, Jewish, Bhuddist, Agnostic or even Atheistic. A wonderful read.

6. Keep forcind myself to stick to and keep looking at this list.

Well, I'm here, ain't I? *grin*

Ring Out, Wild Bells

2011-01-01T10:46:00.002-05:00

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1850

Resolutions 2011:

1. Finish the rewrite.

This one is really focused on the time commitment remaining consistent. National Writers Month exercise helped a LOT. Need to try to sustain that schedule now that the holidays are past us.

2. Lose some weight.

Not sure how I’m going to do this yet, but I shall find out by my birthday. Short term goal: By my birthday I will have picked what I’m going to do and have started or start immediately thereafter. Tantara! No fucking around.

3. Exercise.

The MINUTE it is warm enough to open the pool, I will exercise every day in the morning before I begin to write or send out queries (If I’m lucky enough to be done by then.)

4. Be a whole lot nicer and more forgiving of myself.

This really involves taking at least as good care of myself as I do of anyone else, and being at least as nice to myself as I am to anyone else. It also involves remembering to do my affirmations... even if it does make me feel a bit like Stuart Smalley.

5. Pray a lot more. (Daily would be the goal. Even several times daily.)

6. Keep forcing myself to stick to and keep looking at this list.

***

I don't recall ever publicly listing resolutions before, but in the spirit of optimism and faith, I'm going to try it this year.

Happy New Year to one and all!

You don't mean it.

2010-12-16T11:27:00.001-05:00

That's what he said.

November Days and National Novel Writing Month

2010-11-11T10:02:00.002-05:00

‎"Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing way at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace."

— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

Bossa Nova Sky FM and my rewrite.

I'm finding that rewriting is an entirely different and far more daunting enterprise than writing was. Structural changes can cause massive upheaval and require an attention to detail that seems to me as intricate as I'd imagine brain or heart surgery to be, but without the pre-charted course of action.

In honor of National Novel Writing Month, and because I'd been struggling lately to remain disciplined, I have set a schedule and goal for November which I believe I can achieve and which I believe will help me get back on track with this work.

Working this morning is part of that discipline, but I did feel the need to put that little quote out there to connect to and inspire me.

Inspiring and Terrifying

2010-10-28T09:08:00.000-04:00

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.
Tony Robbins

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success. -Thomas A. Edison

2010-10-18T11:32:00.000-04:00

Hard to remember that at times. The journey is as important as the destination.

Franklin's Broad Spirit

2010-06-17T12:52:00.002-04:00

"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this."

-Benjamin Franklin

Have more to say about this really. Unfortunately, I haven't the time or inclination just now. Ha. Still, thought it a quote worth preserving and where better than here.

2010-06-12T10:31:00.002-04:00

More than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting. I wouldn't say I have a talent that's special. It strikes me that I have an unusual kind of stamina. -John Irving

Focus, young lady. Focus.

Already I can see improvements in just the first chapter.

BUT, I need to make sure I know where I'm going, globally and where each minute piece fits in that puzzle. I need to remove the extraneous and make what is there crystal clear and on point. A diamond. I think that is the biggest overall problem with the book as it stands. It meanders a bit much and some of what is there is redundant.

And so, back to basics. Back to the bones.

The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary." - Thomas Edison

2010-06-04T10:52:00.003-04:00

Need that one today.

I have discovered in the last little while that I am the Queen of the Query Letter.

I have been ruthless and hacked away the chaff and come up with one hell of a letter. I mean this letter could win awards. This letter meets with resounding approval.

Problem is, I failed to do the same with the book itself.

I was so bloody happy to "be done," that I completely missed the fact that I wasn't really done at all. I edit while I write, so when I conclude a chapter and move on I am pretty happy with it. But what I failed to do, was sufficiently revisit the whole with the same keen eye and merciless objectivity that I approached those successful queries. What I have, as it turns out, is a really great first draft.

*sigh*

I've made some good contacts. I've gotten some great feedback. And I've learned a great deal. And now I have to sit down and begin all over again.

What I have now, I realize, is a truly rockin', big block of marble. I am pretty confident at this point that I have a good idea what the completed statue will look like, but right now it's still just a really nice rock.

What a bitch.

Nevertheless, this is part of the craft, right? Part of the learning. And I've made some contacts who want to see it when the revisions are done, so that's a big plus. Have to remember all that. Someone, I believe it was Edison once again, said:

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

Damn, he was one smart dude, was he not?

So it's time to get my head back in the game. To approach the novel with fresh, more objective eyes and renewed vigor.

Hmm...yes.

...

Where's my chisel?

The Art of the Synopsis

2010-05-01T10:05:00.003-04:00

Synopses suck.

That's really all there is to it. That could, in fact, be my entire post... but it doesn't give me enough procrastinating time if I only write that, so onward! Muahaha!

I've spent the past several days trying to reduce 604 pages to 1-2 which are exciting and vital enough to make an agent or editor sit up in their chair and say I MUST HAVE THIS ON MY DESK IN AN HOUR. I am still at it in fact. That is going to be the bulk of my day.

So far the few suggestions I've heard that I like the best are as follows:

1. Write it as though you're trying to pitch it to a Hollywood rep. who might be willing to make a movie of it. In fact, he wants to hear the whole story-- including the end-- BUT you only have 60 seconds in the elevator with him to get him excited about it.

2. The three act method (written backwards or forwards): Act One: Prologue of sorts. The problem presents itself. Act Two: Heart of your story. The protagonist(s) address, deal with, commit to the problem. Act Three: Climax and denouement. Write an enthralling paragraph for each.

*sigh*

But it ain't easy. The problem is that unless you are already established, or a celebrity with some cache, the synopsis is often THE thing that gets an agent or editor interested in your work. So it has to be crafted with the same enthusiasm and diligence and sweat that you spent crafting your novel in the first place.

Personally, I've spent the past three days with my head spinning.

I've tried distilling the story into it's table of contents, which reduced it thematically somewhat. I've tried distilling the story down to a timeline, which reduced it to events. I have a killer few paragraphs for the "jacket flap" reduction that I've sent with a few queries, but it doesn't really present all the main characters, events or the resolution.... NONE of these is what I need, but they've all given me a start....

So now I come here... why? To bitch, among other things. And perhaps there are others drifting in the ether who can relate. It's a good bet there are. Likewise, as I said earlier, it is a WONDERFUL way to procrastinate. hahaha...

ha?

...

Guess I'd best get back at it, eh?

Way to Make a Buck - Farewell Corey Haim

2010-03-10T08:45:00.006-05:00

I never watched "The Two Coreys" on A & E. When I heard this morning about his death, by apparrent overdose, I immediately remembered watching him in "The Lost Boys," and "Lucas" and any number of other films-- I was never a huge "fan." He was a few years younger than me, honestly and I tended to think of him as a bit of a twerp. But when I think of his movies, I remember them and him with fondness.

Anyway, I returned home this morning to tell my husband the bad news. His reply was that it was unsurprising, and he went on to tell me about "The Two Coreys."

One of the reasons I take issues with supposed "reality shows" is just this: invariably they become primarily an exploitation of fairly troubled, unhappy, flawed, or sometimes simply unpleasant people. Clearly all of this exploitation is at least partly self-made. Everyone has a choice whether or not they wish to participate.

However, the people in the industry who "conspire" to aid the process, to me are ultimately responsible for promoting the contemporary version of a "freak show." And as I'm sure any good studio exec knows, a drug-riddled, washed up, cracking up Corey Haim is more lively viewing than a happy guy who's no longer a big star, but likes to go out and have a few beers and party once in a while, right? So why spend the money to hire writers and actors and create sets, when you can instead pay some poor messed-up slob to crash and burn in front of the camera instead? It's so much more cost-effective that way, isn't it? After all, he's destroying himself anyhow, right?

I'm not saying that it was everyone's-- or anyone's-- responsibility to "heal" Corey Haim, or that anyone could have stopped what ultimately happened to him this morning. But I can fairly safely say that making a buck by following him around, capturing it all on tape and selling it as entertainment is not something I think we ought to be comfortable with-- as a species.

Damn, I wish we were a bit better than that.

Goodbye Corey.

Looking Around...Hearing the Echo

2010-02-24T17:00:00.003-05:00

Hello old friend.

Haven't been here for a while. And so very many reasons why. But today, almost by accident I chanced across a blog I used to know. It hadn't been written in since 2007. And that made me a bit sad. I wondered what became of the person. Where they had vanished to. I went to a few of the blogs that linked to theirs, also people I used to read, and most of them were gone as well. Most of the blogs my blog links to are like that, in fact. Don't quite want to change them yet. And God bless Lisa who still writes. I would very much like to speak with her again.

So.

All this made me want to come say hello, Little Blog. Little Dream Space.

Life has been good. Life has been hard. What can I say, it's life.

I have lost another baby. I have written most of a book.

I've worked joyfully in two fields that I love with people both wonderful and shitty.

I have learned much more of love.

Perhaps I can begin to write in here again now.

The Book

2009-05-21T12:49:00.002-04:00

I love it. And I'm proud of it. But I guess there are bits I'm a bit embarassed by-- especially the idea of people I know reading it and knowing it was me. On the other hand, to publish and NOT be able to tell anyone I know seems... well... odd.

Ramifications?

Bravery?

Depends on how it all comes out in the end I suppose, doesn't it?

Things to think about.

Found this...

2009-02-24T09:03:00.003-05:00

2/24/02

On another note. Need to start working myself, and keep working no matter what. Portrait was going well until I left it again. And Portrait’s all well and good to work on, but I do feel I need to be working on my own original scripts as well. And on my novel- A novel. Christ. Today everything seems full of self mockery and self-loathing. Who is this woman? I recognize her from my past. I thought I’d done away with her. Mustn’t allow sense of self worth to become too much caught up in someone else’s life. My sense of self worth must come from me. From within me. And if it is to do that, I have to stay motivated and working at something. It seems to me that this time I will keep working until the board is set up. Time to play. Time to play. Time to play. Why do I feel so stagnated????

2-26-02 6:15 pm

Should write in here when I am feeling good, which I am. Am finishing again The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I feel that if ever I should publish, I should dedicate my first book, play, film, whatever, to Malcolm, to my mother, and to people who face facts and reinvent themselves accordingly, as they are able. These people are my heroes. Malcolm wrote (p. 340)

“Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexability that must go hand in hand with ever form of intelligent search for truth.”

May God, Allah, Buddha, the Universe, bless him, his spirit, his courage, and his soul.

May God bless us all and help us too, to be seekers and changers. Amen.

Fuck everything.

2008-09-10T10:49:00.001-04:00

Nuff said.

January 23, 1969

2008-05-21T09:45:00.002-04:00

Native American Zodiac:

Otter

Birth Dates: January 20th - February 18th
Earth Influence: The Cleansing time
Influencing Wind: The North wind
Totem: Buffalo
Direction: North
Element: Air
Elemental: Butterfly (air) Clan
Function: To Carry through
Birth & Animal Totem: Otter
Plant Totem: Fern
Stone Totem: Turquoise
Polarity Totem: Salmon
Affinity Color: Silver
Musical Vibration: E Natural an octave above Deer
Personality: Friendly, unconventional, independent, & dynamic
Feelings: Detached
Intention: Imagination
Nature: Humanitarian
Positive Traits: Inventive, reforming, & perceptive
Negative Traits: Unpredictable, rebellious, tactless & eccentric
Sex Drive: Hot & Cold
Compatibilities: Crows, Falcons & Deer
Conscious Aim: Knowledge
Subconscious Desire: Wisdom
Life Path: Creative Strength
Spiritual Alchemy: Yin Predominates
Should Cultivate: Inventiveness, Tolerance, Courage
Should Avoid: Rebelliousness & eccentricity

A little quirky, and unorthodox, the Otter is a hard one to figure sometimes. Perceived as unconventional, the Otter methods aren't the first ones chosen to get the job done. This is a big mistake on the part of others – because although unconventional, the Otter's methods are usually quite effective. Yes, the Otter has unusual way of looking at things, but he/she is equipped with a brilliant imagination and intelligence, allowing him/her an edge over every one else. Often very perceptive and intuitive, the Otter makes a very good friend, and can be very attentive. In a nurturing environment the Otter is sensitive, sympathetic, courageous, and honest. Left to his/her own devices, the Otter can be unscrupulous, lewd, rebellious, and isolated.

Wow

2008-01-16T13:51:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've recently (as in today) gotten some really positive and interesting feedback regarding the "Evolution of an Innergirl" work I was doing here a long long while back...I'm going to have to revisit that work. Was one of the first things to really fire me up in a long while, talking about it. And was also both fascinating and extremely liberating to be talking about it in the context that I was...

So much to think about with regards to this.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T17:02:00.001-05:00

Thought for the Day:

2007-12-28T15:10:00.000-05:00

"It seems to me, that if there is a bad taste in your mouth, you spit it out. You don't constantly swallow it back. "

Barbara Wilberforce
"Amazing Grace"

Decent advice for anyone I should think. And a tremendous movie if you've not seen it.

Mirco Phone Home

2007-12-14T17:33:00.001-05:00

Ok...now for anyone out of this particular reality loop this photo is of the Mixed Martial Artist Mirco Filopovic, who is usually billed as Mirco CroCop. He is a fighter from Croatia famous for his high kicks which are known to knock out his opponents. He was also formerly a member of the Croatian Special Forces, and is now a member of Croatian Parliment as well as being a fighter. As an unlikely fan of MMA I find him a fascinating character, and an example of the extraordinary diversity of the people drawn to participate in this emerging sport. Anyway, this picture is so entirely out of character with Mirco's image as a fighter it just made me laugh and laugh and laugh. I hope he'd get a kick out of it too.

Thought for the Day:

2007-12-09T12:30:00.000-05:00

Something I learned from "Evan Almighty" of all things:

God: "Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?"

Tyger

2007-12-03T12:49:00.000-05:00

Really flippin cool and worth the watch.

Short film by Guilherme Marcondes which utilized William Blake's poem "The Tyger" from "Songs of Experience" as a starting point. Here's the poem too, for anyone interested:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

You can read about Marcondes intent here:

about tyger

"It is ordained in the constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

2007-12-03T08:22:00.000-05:00

-Edmund Burke

Now Edmund was talking about the then current revolution in France. And assuredly that sentiment applies to the current state of government/citizen relations worldwide... But I am struck with how it pertains to just our general humanity... To a freedom of spirit and action that transcends things politic.

Wrote this sometime ago and "saved as draft." When I revisited it this morning it seemed apt, and even though I'm still saving many things "as draft" this I shall post. This was originally from Sunday, Nov. 11th. But it's from today too. ;)

My problem...well, ok, one of my problems, is that I'm too smart for my own good. It's much easier to be a lemming in one's life when one is prone to not paying attention. But here's the thing. Like someone's therapist said recently, "Once you know, you can't not know anymore."

What to do with what one knows is sometimes an issue though.

Best Runescape Video I've Seen

2007-12-01T15:39:00.000-05:00

Great song, great RS vid.

Help

2007-12-01T14:31:00.000-05:00

Help, I need somebody,
Help, not just anybody,
Help, you know I need someone, help.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways,
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like I've never done before.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me.

When I was younger, so much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in any way.
But now these daya are gone, I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being round.
Help me, get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me, oh.

-the Beatles

****

All things are part of a great pattern. Change can only come from within.

***

Lord, grant me the serenety
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

***

Today marks the 7 year anniversary of the first day he ever said he loved me.

****

****

****

****

****

***

Sometimes I miss playing Tony Hawk.

Ninja For Hire...

2007-11-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

wow.

This wierd-ass clock thing

2007-10-29T10:54:00.000-04:00

Been a sad season. I've written countless drafts of stuff that's simply too dismal to post. They're saved, just for posterity and maybe I should put them up here, but maybe not. For now, not.

Lots going on in this dolphin's universe and the time of chaos is not ended, but I'm still swimming. Feel more like a salmon fighting upstream lately, than I do like a dolphin, but still believe that "Oooo child, things are gonna get easier." *small grin*

Anyway, while slipping through the ether today I saw this wierd-ass clock thing and felt the need to come share it with anyone still about. So enjoy. There's other cool stuff on there too if you've a mind to click around once you've seen the clock thing.

Life, love and "Claire de Lune"

2007-06-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

Gosh but I love Debussy. I am listening to "Claire de Lune" now.

It has been something of an extraordinary morning. I took my daughter to school this morning (my son's out already) and we arrived early enough to stop on a sunlit dappled green spring street and have a chat. She loathes being dropped off too early.

We've had so many good talks lately...even yesterday just shopping for groceries together. Anyway, of late there have been a few times when my son has slept in her room in the other twin bed, and we find them there together in the morning. Last night, she said, they were up talking together again, so he just stayed in there. I asked her what they were talking about, and she said Thomas Adam.

Among other special, sometimes sad, sometimes peaceful, secret brother-sister things, they have named a star outside her window Thomas Adam's star. It is a very very bright star (so I am told) that she said she hadn't noticed before he died. Evidently the two of them stayed up after the lights were out, looking out at it and talking to him, telling him happy things about our family, and eventually telling him it was time for him to go to bed....

I have to admit that I started crying in the car...

I am a lucky woman to have the family I have.

the curse

2007-06-04T09:08:00.000-04:00

I am far too 'earnest' for my own good. I've always known it and there seems to be no way around it. It is simply who I am. Throughout my life, at various times, I've attempted to develop a more caustic, hard edged side. A more sarcastic, sharper edged side. I've wanted it for self-protection, more than anything else. A side that can "take it and dish it out" with the best of them. But I'm simply not very good at it and I don't know that I shall ever be.

It does not equate, as some seem to have felt, to a simplicity of thought or of intellect. And in it's time, that 'earnestness' has helped me immeasurably to regroup and refocus and renew my life and my dreams through any number of unfortunate circumstances. And too, when it comes to defense of others, I tend to be far better at it than I am when it comes to defending myself. I'm unsure why that should be.

But it is a weakness that can fairly easily be capitalized on. It is a way in which I can fairly easily be hurt. And it is a weakness wherein at times I can be hurt when that isn't even the intention. And that is simply the worst. That is just embarassing.

I am decent enough at it on paper I suppose. It's far easier with time and a world of distance to be able to be sharp and witty and to think up the right barb at the right time. But in person...not so much. I always end up feel like that baby mouse in Tom and Jerry, "Touche, Pussycat!" What a threat.

And speaking of the baby mouse, my IK is very much comprised of that over-earnest, completely defenseless part of me. Which is why I so often have trouble not really hating that part of myself. I waffle back and forth between acceptance, and even appreciation of that earnestness, and absolutely despising it. Today is one of the latter days. Still, writing about it makes me feel a bit better.

Dolphin's Dreams

2007-05-28T08:59:00.000-04:00

I have embarked on an experiment. I shall let you know how it goes, but I have great faith in it's working. I am on my second day of the experiment and so far...so good. hehe.

My backyard is simply glorious this time of year. I have sooo been enjoying it. I would like to garden today, but there's much else to be done. This afternoon we are going to meet with a designer about the kitchen as well! I can't wait until it's all finished and as it should be. I can picture it in my mind and it's wonderful.

the journey...

2007-05-27T19:18:00.000-04:00

Reflections of the Spirit?

You reflect the journey of the spirit. The journey of life as we grow, learn, face our everyday trials. You strive to accomplish tasks and rise above. This is where your spirit finds its strengths. Your journey is sure to have a happy ending, in whatever small form it my come.

Take this quiz!

Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

...the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown...

2007-05-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

--Li Bai

I think I am having something of a zen moment, though I am without a teacher.

I sense almost palpably the limitless and ethereal part of myself today.
And yet simultaneously I feel very deeply burdens of my mortality.

The two sides are...regarding one one another...communing with one another.

***

On a somewhat related note: Being a tree or a rock or a cloud doesn't seem such a bad lot.

how nice of the quiz...

2007-05-25T13:52:00.000-04:00

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

...I should rather like to be the Star, based on that description. Find myself stirred and quieted at the same time. Paradoxical, but nonetheless true.

~ The Secret Garden ~

2007-05-21T15:32:00.000-04:00

I've been out gardening today. Have been meaning to for a few weeks, but today was the day. The Beast and I both, he with mower I with hoe and trowel. Sunlight and cool grass. There is nothing like a garden for the soul.

God bless Francis Hodgson Burnett. Can't garden or think of it without thinking of "The Secret Garden." Here are just a few quotes from the book, that I rather encapsulated my sentiments today while digging in the dirt and weeding the flower beds...

"The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite."

***

"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so...And it was like that with Colin when he first saw and heard and felt the Springtime inside the four high walls of a hidden garden. That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy. Perhaps out of pure heavenly goodness the spring came and crowned everything it possibly could into that one place."

***

"One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place."

I shall need to be out there regularly if I am to keep it tamed and lovely as it is. What luck for me.

Everything Stings

2007-05-16T09:09:00.000-04:00

I feel such a need for Perfect Love right now. Difficult, but vital to remember in all this is that the only Perfect Love is God. The rest of us are just human.

It is as though every disappointment in my entire life culminated with the loss of T.A. and I simply haven't room for any more. Not a single straw. The most minor slight, actual or perceived, can bring me to tears of rage and despair. If I don't let them out, which I don't unless I'm alone, my chest gets so tight that it is physically painful. It's gotten so when I'm upset now I'm actually in physical pain, and now even when I'm not upset sometimes I have that pain, like a fist in my chest.

The problem is, of course, everyone is human.

An example:

My family is a jovially sarcastic bunch. That caustic humor for them is as much about camaraderie and love as anything. It is part of them and part of their fun with each other and with me. But right now, the sharpness scalds me. Incisive sarcasm has never been my strong suit. It always felt to me like it was humor at someone else's expense, and I'm far too sincere for that and really far too sincere for my own good. Always have been. And now, in being scalded by it I drive a wedge between myself and those I love. They are hurt by my hurt.

I am finding that writing is calming me. Trying to find words to navigate the sensibility. Write what you know. Makes me think of Jo and her Professor...

Went hunting for a quote from Little Women about it, remembering the Professor's admonishing Jo for writing such fantastical stories and not sticking to what was in her own heart. Didn't find the quote, but ended up reading quite a good bit of that dear little book. Did my heart and soul good. When I told Mother about my Beast for the first time, I told her he was my Professor Bhaer. He is.

A new day

2007-05-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

Today is one. I am going to keep going. I have been such a complete mess. I'm not sure if it's just hormonal or what. I never bought into hormones until I was pregnant. Now it seems I am at their mercy with a vengeance once a month for a week or more.

But now in the aftermath of the monthly agonies, I am also aware that there is so much more going on than just that. That hormonal insanity merely opens the door for everything I'm carrying around the rest of the month to flood to the surface... unimpeded by any conscious ability to control it.

I find I am just unbearably sad much of the time. I thought once I was past the due date I would be better, but it hasn't been. And every reminder that I'm not my kids "real mother" is awful. And I feel horribly jealous and resentful of "real parents" in ways that are so out of keeping with my nature...or at least out of keeping with who I've always striven to be.

I've never experienced a sense of grief or loss that in any way compares to this. And I can't seem to make it stop. I have good days and bad days, but invariably it resurfaces and is just as real and immediate and enormous as ever and I can't change it.

Nevertheless.

Have to keep going, right? Must. What else is there to do. And everything I've ever said about what I'd like T.A. to mean in my life and the life of my marriage remains as true as ever. Thus the battle is still to be waged. A battle of love winning over death. I have faith that it can be won.

Also, today the Beast and I begin a somewhat monastic diet. I'm rather excited about it. It feels necessary on a number of levels. I will talk more about that at another time. For now, suffice it to say that I am charging into the battle with renewed vigor.

and so it goes

2007-05-10T09:39:00.000-04:00

Nothing is going as planned. And I feel entirely adrift. Actually, adrift would be better perhaps. I love the ocean.

I just feel... alone.

what finger are you?

2007-04-21T15:20:00.000-04:00

You Are a Ring Finger

You are romantic, expressive, and hopeful. You see the best in everything.
You are very artistic, and you see the world as your canvas. You are also drawn to the written word.
Inventive and unique, you are often away in your own inner world.

You get along well with: The Pinky

Stay away from: The Index Finger

What Finger Are You?

Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

2007-04-19T21:19:00.000-04:00

If you haven't seen this, which I hadn't until today (yes, sometimes I think I do live under a rock), it is well worth a viewing. The 21 dancers are complete deaf-mutes, but even if they were not, their achievement here would be extraordinary. It is in many ways like watching a dream. The ethereal and deeply stirring dance is evidently achieved relying only on signals from their choreographers at the four corners of the stage. It was performed at the closing ceremonies for the 2004 Paralympics, but had been in the repertoire of the Chinese Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe for years and had already been seen in over 40 countries. The lead dancer is Tai Lihua, who has a BA from the Hubei Fine Arts Institute and is 29 years old. This video was recorded in Beijing during the
Spring Festival this year.

If you want to read a very good description of who Guan Yin is, and what the dance was about, as well as a koan from the choreographer who created the dance, stop over here:

Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

Pit Bull vs. Kitten...who will win...

2007-04-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

Click here to find out...

Trust me, grasshopper.

Funny thing the Beast Found...

2007-04-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

I can think of soo many sites where this is too true...

The Wheel Keeps Turning

2007-03-07T12:56:00.000-05:00

Seems of late there have been good days and bad days in the extreme of late...

Just read my last post, or part of it, and I'm feeling so distant from that sense of security and well being now, it's hard to fathom.

Oh well.

Growing up, growing little

2007-02-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

When Thomas Adam left us, my Beast and I promised ourselves that he would make a difference in our lives. That in memory and in honor of him we would strive to be better parents, a better couple, and better people. It was and is so very important to us that we show in some way, God and the universe and ourselves how very much he *matterred.*

***

And I promised myself I was going to "grow up."

So far, the outward changes have been small, and incremental, but they are there. And I can see them in my Beloved as well. And more than those practical changes I can see those that are far more subtle and more important: in our relationships, to one another, and with our children, and with others.

And for a while I didn't know how my little side was going to handle all of it. And for a while she couldn't. And even now I must be very careful of her, lest she get scared and resultantly self-destructive.

But something else is helping me with that...

Another gift from God.

Daddy.

There is a safety here. There is palpable, deep and abiding safety.

He Loves Me.

He takes care of me. He watches out for me. He actually *wants* me to be fully Me. AND he is still keeping me.

The Real Me, not a pretend and impossible me that only is pleasant and perfect and is good all the time and perfectly submissive. Daddy is keeping the real me with my ugly feet and allergies and my shrillness when I'm worried about stuff, and my breathing machine at night. He is keeping me even though I like anizette and he doesn't, and we don't always want to watch the same thing on tv. Daddy is keeping me even though my family is sometimes way too close for him, and even though sometimes we disagree about what's the best approach to something with the kids. He is keeping me even though at times I'm really kinda pushy and I talk too much and get defensive and even though I have real honest-to-goodness-and-annoying-as-hell trouble like the post I put just before this one!!

He is keeping Me.

Can you believe it...?

*blush*

And the thing is...with Daddy I can grow up...and still be little.

***

This morning, I got spanked for leaving the bank card in the car door again.

I been trying to do better with that, honestly, but it's rilly hard for me sometimes. I forgot it in the car door a few days ago actually, but we hadda wait on my punishment for a bunch of reasons.

But this is the first time when there was time and Daddy remembered. I had to go get the hairbrush and come back to the bed and then I got talked to about it.

Daddy wrapped me all up, safe in his big strong arms and held me tight against his broad chest. He talked to me a long while, and told me he was rilly prouda me because he knows I been tryin hard to change stuff.

Daddy said he loves me. He said he wants me to be able to be my best me, and he knows how hard I am trying to do that and that he is gonna keep helping me with that. He reminded me about the bank card and how I left it in the door when I had been warned about that. More importantly than even the card itself was that he specifically had told me not to leave it in the door again. Daddy said I gotta do what I'm told, because he has my best interests at heart and watches out for me.

Then he told me to lie in front of him with my hands on the floor. He kept talking to me...and askin me questions....and he spanked my bottom but good with the hairbrush. *blush*

After, he held me close again and talked to me, and stroked me. He told me again that I was a good girl and he was proud of me...

And after that..*blush* he made me come... over and over and over and over. And there were kisses that go on and on and never end. Dizzying kisses. Kisses to happily drown in.

And after that...*blush* I gotta have him in my mouth...

My bum is still so sore.

But I am such a happy and very blessed little girl.

Thanks God.

Inside and Out and Inside-out

2007-02-19T14:47:00.000-05:00

I've got trouble, my friends. Right here, I say, trouble right here in River City. With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for...

Punishment? Pain in the Ass?

Not literally.

I'm sure it's a product of my past, but when Daddy wakes up cranky, I can't take it.

I'm not saying he's the easiest man to live with all the time, because he's not. But the poor man is certainly entitled to a bad day once in a while, or a crabby day. And intellectually I know this. I understand it. I know that the Beast loves me. I know he is great to me and that in a million years I wouldn't want to be wed to anyone else. I know that we're happy together and I know that we're more in love than ever.

But oh my God, when he has a bad day, deep inside something happens to me. I always start out rather well. I try to glide along, keeping myself on track, trying to do whatever tasks are at hand and keep a level head. But inevitably like a morning glory blooming, I blossom into a mass of insecurity. The ability to retain my sense of myself, my sense of self-worth, everything, just dissolves in fear and hurt which drip, drip drips until I'm left with a simmering puddle of them which combines and recombines and eventually becomes anger.

And it's not anger at Daddy. Or more specifically it's not just anger at Daddy, because there is some anger at him, because I want him to see me in there losing myself and come make the bad feelings stop. But if there's anger at Daddy the far bigger portion of it turns right in on myself. And it is viscious.

And it's because intellectually I know how ridiculous I'm being.

The problem is, of course, that these sensibilities all feed one another in a dreadful, paradoxically inescapable way until sometimes not one day, but several are wasted in clenched, hurt fury that my husband naturally wants to avoid, and often doesn't understand.

So, what does one do? It's something that needs sorting...So what does one do?

One journals....

...?

Fear of Flying

2007-02-12T10:16:00.000-05:00

I used to love to fly. I did. There was the exhilaration that comes with something that is relatively unknown and feels a wee bit dangerous, especially upon taking off! But once I was up there, over the distorted checkerboard of the earth I felt in heaven. Viewing the land below, or the mountain ranges of fluffy white clouds...flying always felt like another, sometimes better, world. And going along with that was the sense of adventure, even if I was returning home. The overwhelming sense of movement forward that came with the entire experience.

***

After 9/11 I started to fear flying. I did. And it wasn't just that for the first time in my life the site of a plane meant possible danger (that sense has receded again with time, thank God). It was other things too. The entire world seemed to have flipped upside down. The sense that disaster movies could become "reality" was at hand.

I was new to Canada then as well. I had never lived outside the U.S. and faced that feeling of being "an alien" before. I knew that there were negative feelings about the U.S. in various places overseas, but had not realized the extent of some of the negativity that existed just beyond her borders. The justifications and/or lack thereof of those sensibilities isn't really my topic today, and is a complicated issue that could take hours to do justice to. Hell, a book couldn't probably *really* do it justice. But it did impact, I think, a sense of fear that extended itself into a paranoya about flying.

But there are many other reasons too that I have feared flying. I've developed a different sense of my mortality in the past two years, for a number of reasons. Pneumonia, Mother's illness, my baby... The list goes on.

And suddenly this isn't quite the fun and frolicsome post I'd originally envisioned.

So let me get to the good part, and quick!!

I have only very very rarely dreamt of flying. I have heard that for some it is a regular and familiar dream, but not for me. In fact, I can only remember one other dream where I flew and it was when I was in California. I think I wrote of that one too, though I can't remember it.

But last night I dreamt of it again. Interestingly I dreamt also of Superman. And even more interestingly when I think of it, I was on a bit of a crusade myself.

I dreamt that someone claimed to know where the Fortress of Solitude was. They claimed that it was in this place under the ocean. I was trying to find this place before they did, because whatever it was, it was going to be of real import to the whole world and I wanted to ensure that it was handled properly.

What I remember first is swimming like a fish, and the ability to breathe underwater. And swimming at lightning speeds, and staying just below the surface of the water. Finally I reached the area where this "fortress" was. Deep, deep below me, out of the murk, I could see glowing shapes of buildings. It was unmistakably a city, or fortress with what was a tower, and almost looked like a steeple, in the middle. All of the buildings had a green glow. I was not approaching it yet, but studying its shape from far above. I thought to myself that it was unlikely this was the actual "Fortress of Solitude." But I also thought it likely that it was a major archeological find. I even thought of the possibility of its being Atlantis. What I couldn't understand is how it managed to glow so brightly, so deep beneath the sea.

I knew I needed to find Graham Hancock and that he would know who to call to investigate. Likewise I wanted to involve traditionalist archaeologists as well. When I had thought all this through, I looked at this city rising out of the darkness so far away for the last time, and came up out of the water...flew, up out of the water.

I flew into the air, where I was instantly dry, and found myself hovering just over the surface of the water. In front of me was a long, impossibly tall wall of an almost cream colored sandstone with minute threads of rust and grey accenting it occassionally. The stone was rough to the touch and had a slightly pink cast from the sun which was beginning to set.

So anyway, I was flying up to get over and past this stone wall, sort of bobbing up and floating a bit lower and then kind of flapping slowly to get higher and so forth. I remember specifically the excitement of it. I remember not being scared at all, but determined and exhilerated. I remember feeling that I was on a mission, but that it was one that I *wanted* to be on. I remember feeling like I was full of helium. I remember the face of the stone and the rough, sparkly feeling of it under my hands as I pressed off of it, looked to the top of the wall where I was headed. I remember the feeling of the vastness of the sea at my back. I remember a sense of being exactly where I should be. And what's the easiest way over this wall...hmm...

Then the alarm went off.

And voila.

They say, the infamous they, that flying dreams reflect positive outlooks and progress. There are many variations to that theme. Different people claim that different types of flying signify different types of personal progress, personal freedom, happiness, etc. but all of them reflect that positivity in one way or another.

And that dream was positive. The inhuman abilities and my resultant exhilaration were in some ways the icing on the cake. The sense of discovery and of a mission was enormous. The sense of the power to influence and achieve and help and heal...

And I am so amazed by how much of life feels like that birth from the chrysalis. Maybe, that's all life really is? Or at least all it is meant to be? Because in reflecting upon it, there is so often that sense of continued evolution. The good, the bad, the beautiful and ugly... still, inevitably I find myself with that sense of coming awake. That sense of progression. Wonder at the...*newness.*

Truthfully, from very early on in my life I knew what there was to know, about love.

I know, I know how entirely foolish and arrogant of me, yes?

But I honestly did. I think I rather thought, for a long time, that it was just the people I saw around me, or the partner I was with at the time that had it wrong. Frankly, my choice in partners for a very long time were very helpful in my sustaining that belief, but nevertheless, as Judge Judy would say, *I picked them.*

But at any rate, in this life with my Beloved, there can be no mistaking that I know so very little about love. The whole lot I *do* know seems minute against what I find every day I wake next to him. This has been true for so long that I cannot imagine it ceasing, and so my current knowledge, though it grows, daily seems even smaller.

I don't want to diminish this reality with specifics... because as so often happens when we explore the infinite, labels and specifics can and do, often diminish truth as much as they can and do express it.

But I will say this. Both my dream and this post was made possible partly because Daddy came and found my little girl last night and loved her.

Thank you, God. And thank you, Daddy. I hope to be worthy.

Thursday's Child Has Far To Go

2007-02-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

The little part of me ran shrieking and sobbing a few months ago when tragedy struck.

I know she's still there though because I feel her deeply. But a lot of what she's been feeling lately is guilt and horror. Guilt for continuing to exist. Horror for...well, you know.

So the big part of me has taken over.

But I keep feeling her in there...like a small clenched fist.

Tea...is a religion of the art of life. ~Okakura

2007-01-31T17:18:00.000-05:00

Today, my daughter and I took high tea together for the first time. It was an event to mark her entrance into womanhood, something I've been thinking of doing with her for several years. Finally, earlier this week, the time arrived. So today, I went and fetched her from school, at 1:30 and off we went, downtown, where we had a reservation for two, at two.

The tea was simply lovely. The whole shop is painted to make it look as though you're in a garden, and the tea is served in beautiful antique china cups, on white linen. We each had our own pot, and chose a tea that most appealed to us. Mine was called Monk's Prayer from Sri Lanka, and was a rich black tea with hints of vanilla and grenadine. My daughter chose Cherry Rose Parade from China, a green tea with deep notes of cherry and jasmine. We had planned to try one another's, and had tried to get two that would compliment each other. Interestingly, upon trying them both, we found that we each preferred the other's and after our first cups, switched both pots and cups! But really, both teas were extraordinary. The picture above, is me pouring Cherry Rose Parade.

When they brought out the wee two tiered plates, she gasped in delight! The bottom tier had wee finger sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, eggsalad, tuna salad, ham, and cheese, and a cranberry and apple scone. The top tier had petit fours and tea cakes, and a wee bowl each of clotted cream and jam for the scone (I put the picture of my plate below).

I believe it was a special day for her. When we'd finished our tea, we looked around the shop, where at the front they had a selection of teas, tea accessories and other victorian style adornments you could purchase, and she selected a beautiful antique teacup very like the one pictured, to take home. We also brought home scones for Daddy and my son to try, and the very same type of teas that we drank.

We've decided to make it a ritual of sorts between us two, and each time try 2 new teas and bring them home.

"On the hob was a little brass kettle, hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a warm, thick rug; before the fire was a folding-chair, unfolded and with cushions upon it, by the chair was a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it were spread small covered dishes, a cup and saucer, and a tea-pot; on the bed were new, warm coverings, a curious wadded silk robe, and some books. The little, cold, miserable room seemed changed into Fairyland. It was actually warm and glowing... ...The mug from the washstand was used as Becky's tea cup, and the tea was so delicious that it was not necessary to pretend that it was anything but tea."

-Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Little Princess"

Today

2007-01-29T17:44:00.000-05:00

Today was a pastel blue, pink and yellow day. Sunlight shone on the snow, the air was crisp and seemed itself to sparkle. Our lives are getting better daily. We are more together, more in love, and more stable and secure than we have ever been. We are building our foundation with solid, warm brick.

Oh, but I miss him so.

I was in the car, and turned on the radio, and Celebrate came on by Kool & the Gang; that fun, silly old song. I danced once at a wedding with my Grandpa to that song when I was about 16 years old, and to this day it makes me smile and reminds me of him. And I was cranking it up, and just beginning to groove, when suddenly it struck me that I will never play this song for Thomas Adam. And suddenly I was in tears so hard and fast and uncontrollable I thought I might have to pull over.

When I got home, my Love took me in his arms and just held me for a while. And tonight we're off to rehearsal, which is another blessing in our lives. The bustle and the work we love to do. These are good things.

Oh, but I miss him.

Birthday Girl

2007-01-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

This is one of Daddy's watercolors of my birthday a few days ago.

***

It has been a while since I have been here. Pushing open the door, some cobwebs must be brushed aside, and there is a light swirl, like a light snow, of dust motes, dancing in the light. Entering, my feet leave tracks on the dusty floor.

It is quite bright here, even though the sun pours through a cloudy window...

Time to make it clean and new in here again.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

2006-12-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

Thomas Adam was born several weeks too early to survive as a premie on November 28, 2006. He was 18 1/2 weeks old and was beautiful and perfect. He will remain in our minds and hearts always and hopefully one day we will meet him again.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-23T20:33:00.000-05:00

Things I am thankful for, today and always:

My Daddy.
My children.
This tiny, amazing wee life inside me that is holding on and growing strong, sometimes I think, despite me.
Our new home.
My parents.
My brother.
My friends.

The ability to perceive.
The beauty in and of this world and universe.
Empathy.
Forgiveness.
Love.

***

I have missed here. It has been so busy and crazy here that I have neglected to come here and I have missed it. Part of the time of course we actually had no access to the internet or the phone (waiting for the new line to be put in), but in other times it just seemed too crazy to come.

The thing is, I think in many ways neglecting *here* is neglecting Me. I shall try not to do that henceforth. *blush* Besides which, having a baby and an IK is an interesting and challenging situation to examine methinks. Certainly one that merits paying close attention to. Parenting is an awesome and daunting responsibility, and with the IK temperment a known and substantial part of my makeup I think self-awareness and caution is a must.

It is an odd holiday. Here in Canada we have Thanksgiving in October, closer to the Harvest. But Yankee Thanksgiving still remains a big deal in my memory. Waking up and heading bleary eyed for the living room to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in my pajamas. Dad would complain that it was now a "show" and not a parade, and get angry when they didn't show enough of the marching bands (his favorite part). Wondrous aromas drifted throughout the house all day, and even the day before, and there was always a kitchen crowded with laughter and bickering as too many tried to fit in to finish whatever cooking, baking, stirring there was left.

And as the day progressed, there was the reassuringly familiar bitterness of my father and brother as our Cleveland Browns went down in yet another defeat! Family members drift in and out of those memories, my great grandpa playing checkers with 5 or 6 year old me, when he was 96. Grandma's cooking which seemed like ambrosia to me. Aunts and Uncles' faces drift in and out of those memories, kissing, laughing, eating. And family friends too.

There was always music. My father and brother and I would sing doing the dishes, all the Christmas songs we knew, in three part harmony, and of course: "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go!" And later there was my Green Peanut of a Grandpa, short and stout and big bellied and bald and dark and Italian, falling asleep in his chair in front of the TV after dinner, and snoring through Gene Wilder in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", making my brother and I giggle.

At the end of the parade, which was usually about noon and before the bustle of the enormous meal, there was Santa Claus. He would be riding in his beautiful, magic sleigh and chuckling and waving and streamers and confetti would fall around him like snow, and sometimes there was real snow too. That moment, nestled right in the middle of that warm feasting day, always seemed to herald beginning of the Christmas season for me.

Whatever sadnesses there were in my childhood, I will always recall the glory of this season, from Thanksgiving until Christmas, and try my best to keep it and to pass it on. Even when there were arguments on Thanksgiving-- there was *still* magic there, and love and joy, that somehow managed to surpass so much of the sorrow and anger that often permeated the rest of the year.

I can still see it, that magic, in my minds eye, as though it were captured in a snowglobe...

Anyway, normally my family here does celebrate this holiday too. We take the children out of school (which of course gives them reason enough to celebrate) and watch the Macy's parade and the Dog Show and have a turkey and celebrate and love each other. But this year we have just moved. And we're living merrily, but out of boxes as we slowly get unpacked. And the Beast has a show going up. And to top it off, it's our anniversary today too-- and to top *that* off, my poor Beast is ill. He's been so amazing during this move and the complications we've had with the wee life in me, and the play and his job-- but his body, I think, is demanding that he rest at last.

So today, we will rest and we will love each other.
And I will celebrate this moment, and this turn in the season, by loving him and our family and this world and this life. And I celebrate too, in simply remembering.

Thank you for everything, God.

Hello Little Blog, It's Been A While...

2006-09-26T10:10:00.000-04:00

It is a truly spectacular day here. Reminds me of the day I was trying to capture when at fourteen I spent an hour working on one sentance, and thought I was a writer for the first time...

"One blue afternoon in October was rapidly falling into twilight over a particularly uninterested city."

That was it, I think. Went on to discuss how the trees stood out so sharply against the sky and how the girl, who had left the fighting indoors and was standing in her backyard next to a forgotten bag of garbage, felt as though she were the only one in the world who was noticing it...

Makes me smile to remember.

By the way...guess what?

I am going to have a baby. :o It has taken me a little while to actually come to grips with that fact, but I am actually going to have a baby. God, please let me be up to the task. Please.

A whole wee life in our hands. Another life to enter this unbelievable world we live in. Another tiny (enormous?) soul who will have the blessing of perception, the same way that I have, or you have, or any one of us have.

That's the true gift, isn't it? That's why we must be grateful, isn't it? Because in the whole enormity of the universe the minutia of the matter that comprises Us is allowed to percieve-- anything?? Anything! Beauty or ugliness, sadness, ecstacy, love, hate-- all of it-- any of it...

I feel part of the circle in a way that I didn't before.

And in truth, I still don't entirely believe it. Thank God for the calmness of the Beast. I have been on an emotional rollercoaster since just before we found out. Yes, that accounts for the turbid ebb and flow post...heh heh.

How to describe the experience thus far...

I feel like a complete idiot much of the time. I can't remember things from one minute to the next and feel disoriented, confused and, frankly, rather stupid, on a regular basis. Women (and men) I have spoken to recently about this call it "baby brain," but it can be little comfort when sitting around saying Duhhhhh and drooling much of the time. heehee. When I am not feeling stupid I am crying at song lyrics, commercials and sunsets, laughing hillariously at not so funny things, or tremendously pissed off over hangnails. A lot of the time when I am alone I talk to the baby. When I'm not asleep.

I am tired CONSTANTLY. Which accounts for my absence here and other places I care about for the last little while. I am also sore in ways I didn't expect. My breasts hurt, and I can feel ligaments in wierd places in my tummy stretching. I roll over in bed at night and wake up from the sharpness sometimes. I have nausea that comes over me in waves every few days but has yet to result in actual throwing up (thank God). But boy, when it comes it's hiddeous. Still, at the end you actually get a baby, so you can't really complain.

In other news, I am DYING to get back to work on the site. This happenning threw such a wrench in our machinery in the midst of so many other life changes that it's been impossible to focus. And the Beast has been adjusting to his new job too, but we are determined to get back in the swing, now that the first trimester is drawing to a close.

Ok....I guess that's all for now. I'm too discombobulated (and yes, tired) to be poetic or organized about closing. *blush*

"....the turbid ebb and flow..."

2006-09-14T16:18:00.000-04:00

I have not posted for some time.

I had intended to post nearly every day. However, the day after the last post, I recieved some rather remarkable news that has virtually stopped me in my tracks ever since. I am not entirely ready to disclose as yet. Perhaps a bit later when I believe it.

And on top of that news we have recently bid on, and lost, two seperate houses.

And on top of that, for the first time in my life I'm utterly aware that my emotions are virtually out of control, and that it is entirely hormonal. I've never been one to "play the girl card" of having PMS or claiming some allowance towards bitchiness or moodiness for a week once a month. I've always rather felt that anything like that ought to be shunted to ground and dealt with and that there's no excuse for poor behavior along those lines.

Seems I was a bit overharsh at this point. My apologies to all the women out there who have ever suffered from the effects of substantive PMS, etc. It was beyond the realm of my understanding. Until now. My humble apologies. Let me assure you all, I am being paid back for my disbelief and dismissal in spades. Because for the life of me, for the past two weeks or so I can't seem to stop myself from being overly weepy when sad or happy, overly angry when angry, and generally ragingly-- WHATEVER I am at any given moment. It is a disconcerting state of being. And although it has been making me miserable, I am not ready to entirely discount that there may be a benefit to being so unabashedly forthcoming with how one feels. It has never been my "way..." and so far it has proved largely disastrous. Nevertheless, God works in strange ways, and I am not entirely sure what I make of it yet.

More soon....

The Productivity of Anger... and other Helpful Emotions

2006-09-04T01:10:00.000-04:00

Tonight I was looking up Gestalt therapy again, because I'm looking to get back into it and reaquaint myself with...myself. In fact, I would like to even consider getting certified in it, as I really need a decent job and it strikes me that much of my life has been unofficially dedicated in that capacity.

Anyway, in reading I came across this passage (the italics are my own):

First, we'll agree that our collective goal is to cure you of your unhealthy tendancies.

Second, my goal as Therapist is to facilitate your awareness of where or when you "get stuck" in your patterns of behavior. Once with awareness you are then empowered to make your own choice of action that leads to change.

Gestalt is a present-centered, in-the-moment therapy. There are no notes. There is no pre-concieved agenda. In our one hour sessions together I will pay attention not only to your story, but also to how your story is being told. I will observe your body's messages, not just your mind's version that your words convey, because your body is where your true feelings are carried and, in some cases, buried. I will then introduce creative interventions as a way of exploring and completing your "unfinished business". That's what is needed for you to make a sustained shift in your life.

Beauty, eh?

Makes a lot of sense when you think about it? Well, it has made enough difference in my life several years back to be world-changing. And shockingly enough, it appears to have made a difference again, just this evening.

I've been "off" for about a week now. My darling Beast and I had had a disagreement. It was a fairly substantial one, but one that in the end, I understood his position on. We talked about productive solutions and mutual understanding and moved forward. Only I was in this wierd place. I was uncomfortable and defensive and scared and my chest has been sore. I tried to talk to him several times about either elements of the disagreement or about my own wierd headspace and each time he was very gracious in his responses and we would again move forward. Only I wasn't really moving forward.

I was stuck. I didn't see it like that, really, I just knew something was wrong. Wrong with how I was feeling, wrong with my responses to him, which were full of paranoya and extremely defensive. I got enraged about certain things and couldn't even tell if I was being unreasonable or not. Ugh. Anyway, it all came to something of a head tonight over house hunting when I was a right bitch, and still couldn't even tell if I was justified or not.

In hopeless frustration I was looking up therapists, which I've been meaning to get to for a while. My old therapist used to say "therapy is wasted on the sick," something I really beleive is true.... Anyway, I came across that passage...hmm.

I ended up asking to talk to the Beast one more time, and it was a hard and wierd conversation during which I still couldn't figure out what the hell was going on with me. And then suddenly it struck me. I was angry. But I wasn't angry at what had happenned today, or even at any of the things I'd been bitching about for the past several days. I was still angry about the old arguement we'd had almost a week ago! But because at the time I didnt' think it was productive to show that anger, and because I had honestly seen his side of it too, I buried my anger-- and it had been eating me alive ever since.

In any event...I am really, really tired now.

I told the Beast about what I'd learned. I told him all of it. About being angry and not showing it, about how I had honestly seen his side too and had chosen to bury the feeling, about reading up on Gestalt's focus on the present moment and how that had suddenly jolted me into an awareness of what was really going on with me. I told him too, that understanding those feelings did NOT excuse my bad behavior the past few days and that I was sorry about that. And in both a. feeling all those things and b. explaining them...I felt better almost immediately than I have in days...

And wow, my poor Beast, as tortured as it all was to sort out and talk through, he took it all in stride (and thank you for that Darling)....

And as I said...I'm soooo tired now.

Amazing, what convoluted things feelings can be, isn't it? I mean, we think we're feeling one way and half the time we are really reacting to something else... I think that happens a lot more frequently than anyone might surmise.

And I wasn't going to write about any of this...because it's so personal...but then I thought, you know what? This website we're starting, it's designed to help other people like me...so if I have found something useful, or made a breakthrough in some way, I better share it... so...that's what I did. Tada.

Now presenting, after years of therapy...

2006-09-01T14:36:00.000-04:00

Mom and Dad just left. They drove up Wednesday night and were here all day yesterday and only left now to head back home. It was so amazing to see them. I miss them terribly when we don't see each other, even though they sometimes drive me crazy. They are both such loving people, and even when they aren't always able to approach me in in productive ways I know that they love me and really do want the best for me.

That understanding, in itself is a good feeling and came as something of a surprise after a lot of therapy for both of them and for me. *lol* I'll tell you, I thank God each of them had counseling and marriage counselling eventually. It's made a big difference for all of us (the two of them and my brother and me) in how we're able to address our lives and understand ourselves better. Have wished in the past that they'd have done it sooner-- before my brother and I were both grown-- but even so, to change beliefs and understanding and behavior with new information as an adult of any age is something of a rarity, So I am grateful.

The relationship we have now is one I often take comfort and strength from. For example, however much of a pill she can be at times-- I think my mother actually understands now that sometimes all I need from her is to feel that she understands how I feel about something and has faith that I'll do the right thing. Given her need when I was a child to constantly tell me exactly what to do and list multiple ways I might be wrong in any situation, that is no mean feat. And of course it may only happen after I've expressly stopped her beginning the litany of critisisms, but still... *lol*

Anyway, they have gone. Probably it'll take them 3 hours just to make the hour long trip to the border in Friday afternoon traffic. But Dad says it's better just to get on the road. Two days from now they leave for Ocean City, New Jersey. I have such happy memories of the place. We so rarely ever fought in Ocean City. It was an Eden and an oasis in my childhood. They're going with my brother and his wife and two children. Our family can't go because we're looking for houses and the kids are already back in school. Still, I have the lingering memory of playing with Mother in the Atlantic's waves, building sandcastles with Dad, paddleball with my brother, the scent, the look, the morning bike rides on the boardwalk....all of it. Most of all I remember what I felt when I was there. Special.

Oh me oh my oh

2006-08-28T22:02:00.000-04:00

There's nothing friendship. Friendship is simply one of the greatest blessings there is.

I have been most fortunate in my lifetime to have some extraordinary friendships. I have friendships that are nearly life long, which at 37 I feel pretty good about. But I also, at 30, met my husband who's now my best friend in the world. And on top of that, now at 37 I find myself with fairly new friends that I feel close to and as excited about as I do about my old friends. That simply amazes me.

I honestly didn't really know that was possible, until it happenned.

I am such a lucky girl.

Thanks again, God.

A Good Day

2006-08-21T16:38:00.000-04:00

This was a truly rockin day.

I was mucho productivo.

I did a lot around the house and I worked hard on the new site. I am so excited. Spent most of the day with my wee ferret, discussing what areas, discussion and roleplaying we wanted, and defining our mission statement and our rules and expectations, and I have to say....I am completely pumped. I truly believe this has the potential to be something unique and useful in the world. And I am sooo proud of my ferret. She's come such a long way, and she's getting stronger every day, even when she can't see it.

Also, L should be home soon!! Hoorayyyyy! I have missed her and our blossoming friendship immeasurably. Picturing her on the plains of Africa does help though. I cannot wait to curl up with my hands on my knees under my chin and just listen to her tell about it.

Last but not least, my Beast is feeling better too. When he smiles or laughs or takes me in his arms, the world is a bright and joyful place.

Wonder how Minikin is...makes me smile to think of her.

What a lovely day.

Thanks, God.

Birth

2006-08-10T12:39:00.000-04:00

Making monumental changes to one's life-- habits, beliefs, behaviours-- is as laborious a process as birth, it seems to me.

Not that I have given birth in the literal sense. So far that blissful agony is beyond the realm of my experience. But the process of undertaking life changes bears a striking resemblance to what I have heard that birth is like... This has been true of every time of momentous change in my life thus far. Currently it is true of the process the Beast and I are undertaking-- making our slow changes, as individuals and as a couple. And we have proceeded as we can, in the face of long and grave illness, and in the face of two lifetimes' alternate programming and experience.

The moments where you can see what is in front of you-- the new life you're creating-- are beyond blissful. But the deep pain and anguish of the labor, the pangs at each contraction, that occur between those glimpses, can almost make one ready to give up-- to admit defeat, to die just to escape the pain.

From what I have ever read of those people able to make such radical life changes, it is always thus. Remarkable and agonizing.

I cling to the vision that lies before me in the darkest hours. Though the labor is long and grueling, I believe in this creation more than I have believed in anything in my life, save the reality of God.

Been a while....

2006-08-03T12:28:00.000-04:00

Aloha Blogiola!

It's been a while since I've posted. Much has transpired in my absense fo sho too.

The litany begins thusly:

My dear little grey cat, Doc, one of my best friends in all the world for the 15 1/2 years of his too short life, had to be put to sleep, due to a huge tumor in his tummy that was causing him to waste away to nothing. So much could be said here and nothing would be adequate. I think that has been a big part of not writing here for so long.

It was a beautiful clear summer's day. Not even humid. The doctors came and did it at the house. He was in his little sleeper in my lap and it was shockingly peaceful.

Daddy was there with me the whole day, strong and quiet and gentle and loving. The two of us buried him together far back in the back yard in a beautiful little grave in a flowerbed amidst the trees on a wee cliff overlooking the creek. We dug the hole together, though Daddy did most of it because I wasn't strong enough to cut through the roots and stuff. I had written a little memorial service for him and Daddy and I had it together back there for him, and then I put on the first dirt and Daddy finished it.

The grave is marked with a wooden cross made from a hand-made plain wooden toy sword, and Daddy found a cement paving stone to lie on top of the grave. It is the prettiest little grave you ever saw.

We also have a little clay impression of his two wee front paws that I have in a frame with his picture now.

He was a piece of my heart. He will always be my baby. I figure he is up in heaven now with Grandma and Grandpa and he's healthy again Daddy says he is so healthy he doesn't even have his bent ear from his hematoma. I figure God must have really wanted a cat.

What else? We went to the Family reunion. Always an adventure.

Ohhhh yes. And I finally met my wee ferret. It was lovely to finally put a wee face with the wee girl I've loved for so long and we had a wonderful, if all too brief time together. Annnnd we talked more about our website. Annnnnnnd she's been doing extremely well lately in a number of personal ways (hooray for you lil ferret!*huggles*)-- and has thus inspired something new we're going to figure out for the site, which is a rewards program for IKs taking good care of themselves!! Lots more to say on that at some point soon! Anyway, sadly the meeting got rather swallowed up by my kitty's demise, which happenned a few days later. But it was still very special and we're planning another longer visit very soon. Which brings me to my next subject in the litany of "schtuff"...

The house hunt has begun in earnest. This has been the most exciting and trying experience we've had in some time, and the level of change that it and other events are promising in our lives have caused an enormous build up of pressure, particularly over the past week and a half. I am pretty sure that a lot of it for both me and Daddy is tied up in the laws of inertia. I think that even though a lot of the oncoming changes are posititve, there's part of my system that wants to sustain the status quo. And that unconscious resistance to the changes manifests itself in many ways, all of which are disconcerting at best and really upsetting and even dangerous at worst.

It has felt lately like I'm trying to balance everything on the head of a pin and keep my shit together and keep moving forward. I know that may sound vague, but it's still accurate... Somehow in the midst of all that I am ashamed to say it is all too easy to forget that one is loved.

In any event, though today my chest aches-- some of the pressure has been released. I was a tea kettle going at full tilt, and only last night's screaming whistle releaved any of that pressure.

One might expect...one might... that if the release of that high pressure were BDSM related it would have involved tight binding and whipping, or at the very least some deep searing pain to force the release. In startling point of fact the very opposite is true. Last night my Daddy came and took care of me... and the release came after a succession of the most tender touches, physical and emotional...

I was openned and humbled, and shaved *blush*, and minutely explored and studied and pleasured *blush*, and cuddled and kissed and held...and I sobbed in his arms...And at the last I slept, tucked safe beneath Daddy's arm with my Winnie the Pooh soother from ferret...

How shocking it is to again realize how very hard it is to let oneself be loved.

What Does Dolphin Dream?

2006-07-10T09:09:00.001-04:00

Today, Dolphin dreams of the ocean. The smell and taste of it. Lingering salt on the lips. The look of it under different skies. Iron grey, green, blue and even orange. So many moods has the sea.

Today Dolphin dreams of the ocean, the feel of the water against skin. The freedom of water-flight, bouyed and bobbing, slicing through it smoothly, handstands. Cold and warm, inviting and daunting, and oh! -water in the nose. Foam crash-cascading across the body, or whispering-tingling across fingertips.

Today, Dolphin dreams of the ocean, the boom of surf on the shore. The only cadence of crashes that soothes. The warm scent of baking skin and Coppertone coconut and the feeling of sunburn shivers at a soft breeze. Sunshine on closed eyelids and the patterns of light created by openning them just a sliver.

Today Dolphin dreams of the ocean, the sand sinking and sliding between fingertips, between toes, cushioning feet, spraying up against your shins when you walk. Sand in the suit. Sand everywhere.

Today Dolphin dreams of making towering castles in the sand; intricately carved citadels, fortresses of might and magesty, and watching the tide come lapping slowly to carry their magic back into the sea.

***

I miss Doc.

Kittygirl said...

2006-06-26T14:04:00.000-04:00

I have had a similar situation as yours. I would love to hear more of what you think about ageplay and IK's. I have also been in a ton of therapy and just recently told my therapist alittle about my desires for ageplay and spankings.(not sure what she thought of it) Have you told your therapist about this? Be easy on yourself. I know it is a huge struggle for me not to react out of my past. My codependence has caused so much difficulty in my relationships.

Thanks again for your comment and questions. It has taken a while to write again at length for a number of reasons, but I am glad to at last have both time and energy to address them.

The question I wanted to address here first really is the question of talking to a therapist about ageplay, etc. Prior to answering though, I really feel the need to at least cursorily address the issue of therapy itself.

I believe therapy in general is a worthy pursuit of more than just the sick. In my experience and estimation working with an excellent therapist can be a truly profound and life enhancing experience for anyone, even the most fully functional and "normal" around us. However, I also believe that good therapists are sometimes quite difficult to find and should be sought (if internal resources allow) with the same attention and dilligence one might look for in finding a new family doctor, house, car or anything else vital. Also, after examining many styles of therapy both in independent study and by experiencing them, I am personally a propenent of Gestault therapy. I found the immediacy of it's focus and the awareness that I gained through that work absolutely invaluable.

Given that Gestault is focused on the immediate (the present moment) I have found that form of therapy extremely useful in conjunction with the methodology and understanding gained from a particular book that focuses a bit more on the past: Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self.

In her book, Alice Miller writes,

"When I used the word "gifted" in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb... Without this "gift" offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

The focus of the book is about identifying the "programming" that we recieved in childhood as victims of abusive or narcisistic parents. The emotional reactions and behavior patterns we developed in those years were not only useful they were crucial to our survival as children. However, the reflexive nature of those reactions now in our adulthood is not only no longer necessary, it is often extremely unhealthy. It is only through identifying the links between our past and our present behaviors and reactions that we are able to change those patterns and better our own lives and certainly as well, bettering the lives of any children we might wish to have.

A few quick quotes from the book that I will give you a good idea of its premise...

"Our contempt for "egoists" begins very early in life. Children who fulfill their parents' conscious or unconscious wishes are "good," but if they ever refuse to do so or express wishes of their own that go against those of their parents they are called egoistic and inconsiderate. It usually does not occur to the parents that they might need and use the child to fulfill their own egoistic wishes. They often are convinced that they must teach their child how to behave because it is their duty to help him along on the road to socialization. If a child bought up this way does not wish to lose his parents' love (And what child can risk that?), he must learn very early to share, to give, to make sacrifices, and to be willing to "do without" and forgo gratification-long before he is capable of true sharing or of the real willingness to "do without."(pxiv)

A little reflection soon shows how inconceivable it is really to love others (not merely to need them), if one cannot love oneself as one really is. And how could a person do that if, from the very beginning, he has had no chance to experience his true feelings and to learn to know himself? For the majority of sensitive people, the true self remains deeply and thoroughly hidden. But how can you love something you do not know, something that has never been loved? So it is that many a gifted person lives without any notion of his or her true self. Such people are enamored of an idealized, conforming, false self. They will shun their hidden and lost true self, unless depression makes them aware of its loss or psychosis confronts them harshly with that true self, whom they now have to face and to whom they are delivered up, helplessly, as to a threatening stranger. In the following pages I am trying to come closer to the origins of this loss of the self. While doing so , I shall not use the term "narcissism." However, in my clinical descriptions, I shall speak occasionally of a healthy narcissism and depict the ideal case of a person who is genuinely alive, with free access to the true self and his authentic feelings. I shall contrast this with narcissistic disorders, with the true self's "solitary confinement" within the prison of the false self. This I see less as an illness than as tragedy, and it is my aim in this book to break away from judgmental, isolating, and therefore discriminating terminology. (pxvi)

One serious consequence of this early adaptation is the impossibility of consciously experiencing certain feelings of his own (such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, impotence, anxiety) either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic since we are here concerned with lively people who are especially capable of differentiated feelings. This is noticeable at those times in their analyses when they describe childhood experiences that were free of conflict. Usually these concern experiences with nature, which they could enjoy without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, without reducing her power or endangering her equilibrium. But it is remarkable how these attentive, lively, and sensitive children who can, for example, remember exactly how they discovered the sunlight in bright grass at the age of four, yet at eight might be unable to "notice anything" or to show any curiosity about the pregnant mother or, similarly, were "not at all" jealous at the birth of a sibling. Again, at the age of two, one of them could be left alone while soldiers had "been good," suffering this quietly and without crying. They have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can only experience his feeling when there is somebody there who accepts him fully, understands and supports him. If that is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love, or that of her substitute, then he cannot experience these feelings secretly "just for himself"but fails to experience them at all. But nevertheless....something remains. (p10)

"Recollection, Repetition, and Working Through." Take, for example, the feeling of being abandoned-not that the adult, who feels lonely and therefore takes tablets or drugs, goes to the movies, visits friends, or telephones "unnecessarily," in order to bridge the gap somehow. No, I mean the original feeling in the small infant, who had none of these chances of distraction and whose communication, verbal or proverbial, did not reach the mother. This was not the case because his mother was bad, but because she herself was narcissistically deprived, dependent on a specific echo from the child that was so essential to her, or she herself was a child in search of an object that could be available to her.

However paradoxical this may seem, a child is at the mother's disposal A child cannot run away from her as her own mother once did. A child can be so brought up that it becomes what she want it to be. A child can be made to show respect, she can impose her own feelings on him, see herself mirrored in his love and admiration, and feel strong in his presence, but when he becomes too much she can abandon that child to a stranger. The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child's eye's follow her everywhere. When a woman had to suppress and repress all these needs in relation to her own mother, they rise from the depth of her unconscious and seek gratification through her own child, however well-educated and well-intentioned she may be, and however much she is aware of what a child needs. The child feels this clearly and very soon forgoes the expression of his own distress.

Later, when there feeling of being deserted begin to emerge in analysis of the adult, they are accompanied by such intensity of pain and despair that it is quite clear that these people could not have survived so much pain. That would only have been possible in an empathic, attentive environment, and this they lacked. The same holds true for emotions connected with the Oedipal drama and the entire drive development of the child. All this had to be warded off. But to say that it was absent would be a denial of the empirical evidence we have gained in analysis. (p 11 & 12)

Very long "cursory" description to be sure, but I think it was the right choice in the end...

So did I discuss my ageplay inclinations with my therapist? Well, as I'm sure you can surmise I am aware that my ageplay and spanking desires stem entirely from my experience as a child and are, in fact intimately bound up with the needs that weren't met during my actual childhood. I did in fact discuss all this with my therapist and I admire the fact that you have approached that discussion as well.

The only suggestions I have to anyone discussing ageplay and spanking inclinations with a therapist are the following:

As I said before, finding a good therapist is a difficult task. And even the best therapist is not infallible, much as we (in our need) might at times wish to think them. All the discussion in the world of the roots of my desires have never altered those impulses within me, though they have helped me to better understand and appreciate and care for myself-- and THAT, I believe, is the first and foremost goal of the work. Learning to better understand and appreciate yourself.

The second goal then becomes (and I call it second only in the sense that I believe the first goal must precede it if the second is to work) the ability to 'self-regulate.' In other words once you understand those impluses and feelings in yourself and respect them and love yourself anyway, you will be able to work towards acting or not acting upon them as is best and most healthy for you as an individual.

The decisions about what is or is not healthy for you, however, is not in the end, one that I feel should be left to a therapist. With the proper time and work and attention, I believe each individual can and should make the decisions for themselves. There is tremendous work and responsability in this...however the end result can be tremendously empowering.

God willing, when the work is well underway (note I did NOT say finished, for are we ever truly finished on a journey as profound as self-awareness) we will find ourselves with the ability to forge relationships that can gratify the best in us all. Some will encorporate elements that fulfil those lingering desires and needs, and some will perhaps even move past those old desires into other extraordinary and uncharted territories... to each his own, in the spirit of health and wholeness.

The self awareness and personal responsability we are discussing is something that can benefit anyone and everyone. However our discusion is focussed on submissives specifically ageplay submissives and it is absolutely true that there are particular considerations when discussing them (us). I have put stars around the next paragraph because it is the crux of my beliefs on the subject.

*** For submissives and submissive ageplayers particularly, I believe that self awarenes and the acceptance of personal responsability is a MUST. If we do not as adults accept the reality of personal responsability for our emotional and physical well-being we are inevitably inviting the same abuses of our childhood (and sometimes worse) to be visitted upon us. However paradoxical it may seem, I believe that in order to engage in ageplay or submission healthily, vigillant self awareness and personal responsability is an abolute necessity. ***

All this is excruciatingly complex and I hope I have made some sense in my meager efforts to tackle the subject...And to be honest I also find myself periodically wondering if anyone can see me as submissive or 'little' when I am engaging in this level of discourse. I mention it because it's a perfect example of the vigillance we must assume. That feeling of being invisible if I am too strong or too smart is all part of the old programmming. I know my Daddy, my husband, can see me.

For me personally it has been a long and varied journey that continues and will continue long past this day and these words. The best and worst of the patterns I developed in childhood are still sometimes in evidence and I believe they will always require vigillance to be kept in check. My success in managing those learned and often reflexive impulses is sometimes good and sometimes I still struggle mightily.

My success within relationship(s) has grown exponentially from the work I have done, although it is also true that I often still struggle mightily with the old programming. The sensual and intimate desires that were also in many senses products of that childhood have never dimmed. My fantasy life has broadened but the desires have never changed, nor would I want them to at this point. For I still hold out the hope and belief that with self awareness and with love they can be encorporated into a healthy and profound relationship. In my case, that would be with my best friend and husband and Daddy, and we have been working toward that goal and will continue to.

On that note, it gives me great pleasure to say that I have been writing all of this, this afternoon sitting on a very sore bottom that was last night 'addressed' by my loving Beast specifically to remind me of all the wonder that lies before us two...

And that I am His...

And that I am loved.

some fun from my ferret

2006-06-25T23:36:00.000-04:00

Where was your soul born?[pics + detailed answers]

Your soul was born in the Light of the Sun.You're a very nice and open-minded person. Maybe even a little naive. You want to believe the best about everyone and you're willing to give anyone a second chance. You're optimistic and your element is Light of course. You're loyal to your friends and you feel terrible when someone close to you is depressed. You try to give everyone in your surrounding attention which can lead to that you forget your own needs. Sit down and relax. Think about what you need for a second. You forget your own feelings and that's never good. You can't save everyone. Let the people that love you take care of you for a second. Your friends love you and they'll do anything for you. You don't have to take care of them all the time.
Take this quiz!

*Note...have had little time of late to address kittygirl's comment, but want to soon and have NOT forgotten!*

Anonymous said...

2006-06-12T15:10:00.000-04:00

What did you do?

You know...that's a difficult question to answer directly, anon, which is, perhaps why it took me so long to write any answer... It's hard to answer partly because there's no specific rule that I broke, and partly because one of the issues I contend with that comes up when you ask--is that when I get involved with someone to a certain extent I lose my objectivity as to what is and is not my fault, my problems, or theirs.

One of the biggest issues I face as a human being, much less as a submissive or InnerGirl (ageplaying submissive), is a codependence that is harmful both to myself and my partner. It's an issue that to do any justice to, would take substantial time to write about...and one that I find excruciatingly embarassing, so bear with me as I wrestle with talking about it. :)

Both of those things, my own codependence and my resultant loss of perspective are things I've contended with since childhood when my mother unwittingly imprinted upon me the instinct and belief that my well being rested upon being within her complete control as well as my ability to fix whatever made her sad, angry, etcetera, despite her irrational, inconsistent, alternatively loving and cruel treatment of me.

Of course, fixing anything proved impossible then, though the instinct to remain under her complete control and to try to fix everything proved life-saving at the time. That instinct left me with virtually no sense of self beyond what was pleasing to others, once I was out in the world, and it took a lot of 'retraining' for me to surmount that... I've talked about this a bit in past posts.

Anyway, despite my 'retraining' (via a buttload of therapy, excuse the language) I still contend with not only the more attractive desire to please a partner, but the far less healthy drive to put the responsibility for my entire well being and existence off onto my partner. This is no longer a life-saving instinct. It is something that I think would be at issue even if I was married to someone impossibly perfect rather than anyone human.

Hell, it is a certainty that some of these life-long issues contribute mightily to my inclination toward D/s in general and ageplay specifically, and I'm pretty sure that's true of many if not most of us out there. These held over issues are, in any case part the reality of almost every female submissive InnerGirl I've encountered.

All this "caca" is actually one of the reasons I think within a certain framework ageplay is and could be even more extremely helpful to me psychologically. But it is also true and was more at issue in the post we're 'commenting' on, that those old instincts are dangerously detrimental to my well being and to my relationships. I believe that unless they're dealt with directly (and sadly constantly, because for such now-reflexive impulses there appears to be no lasting "cure") either within an ageplay framework or outside of it, they will continue to do me harm.

That's one of the reasons I feel that personal responsibility on the part of ageplay submissives is an absolute necessity. I've been thinking of starting a website that focuses on that. A site by and for IKs that takes as it's focus support of one another and a focus on personal responsibility. Understanding that ultimately, the person most responsible for their well-being and happiness is themselves, and learning to work towards achieving that well-being and happiness on their own as well as within their relationships. I sense that it's something that submissive IKs struggle with from time to time, whether in relationship or not.

All this is not at all to say that those perfect symbiotic D/s or ageplay relationships aren't possible either for me and my Daddy or anyone else!! For an online example, just check out The Stick and the Carrot and Her Daddy from my links. I love reading them... So I still believe in those relationships.

In fact, I believe in my heart that at least for me, relationships that are more explicitly power-exchanging have the potential to be more honest, straight-forward, gratifying and healthy than vanilla relationships where the power-exchange is present but less explicit, operating within a framework of what I call 'emotional punishment.'

So what did I do?

I was needy, insecure and demanding to the point of detriment to my partner. Also I let myself be so taken with "the hunger that feeds itself" that I lost all perspective and began emotionally and even physically punishing myself in ways that were unhealthy for me, and also caused my partner great distress. Lastly, I neglected my personal responsability and accountability for my contributions to the household, health, family, my own well-being and happiness.

Long and convoluted answer? Or not long enough? Would have been easier if I'd merely forgotten to change the kitty litter, wouldn't it? :)

crime and punishment

2006-06-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

There are times when the ability to punish oneself would be a mercy. The physical pain a balm on a wound, like taking a drink or smoking a cigarette or eating a pizza. There are times when the balm of the pain is the only friend one has.

I am not a good girl tonight. Sometimes I doubt I have ever been good.

I have always wanted to be a good girl. But perhaps it's all a lie.
Perhaps all I really want is what I want. The whole notion of 'being good' just a delusion like so much else. Nabakov said, and I paraphrase, that "reality" is the only word in the english language that should always have quotes surrounding it.

Ray Bradbury, on the other hand suggested that "you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." Another interesting one.

Bring on the whip.

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the hunter tell;
'Tis but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is still.

The smitten rock that gushes,
The trampled steel that springs:
A cheek is always redder
Just where the hectic stings!

Mirth is mail of anguish,
In which its cautious arm
Lest anybody spy the blood
And, "you're hurt" exclaim.

-Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

If I were to get another pet...(and news from around the world)

2006-06-06T01:11:00.000-04:00

"Alpaca punch when I get in a rugby scrum"

from RICHARD SHEARS, Daily Mail 07:51am 2nd June 2006

As a rugby-mad youngster, Rory Matthews likes to train every day. Unfortunately, he lives on a farm and does not have anyone his own age to play with.

But he's not worried - because he's got Chicky the alpaca. Chicky, a fellow resident at the Children's Animal Farm near Melbourne, has proved a formidable sparring partner for eight-year-old Rory.

"I don't have any brothers and sisters to play rugby with, so Chicky helps me out," said Rory after another tough session with the brown and grey South American animal.

"He's picked up the basic idea - I run with the ball and he charges at me and tries to knock me off my feet. Sometimes I manage to knock him over but that makes him even madder. He's helped me far more than a human could. I can't tackle dad when he's around because he's too fast.

Anyway, I don't think dad likes to knock me over, whereas Chicky thinks it's good fun."

So...yeah. I think an alpaca would rock. *huge grin* Specially one as cute as Chicky.

I have always missed the dark...

2006-06-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

...smokey summer parties in back of the tenements. The clackity-clack of the night train going by as constant as a rolling stream; and rich, warm, brown laughter is the splashes of water on the rocks. There is the sound of the rocks themselves too; in sweating glasses they tinkle and melt, and when you raise them to your face, which is sheened with sweat you can feel the spray of seltzer on your lip and in your nose. It's cool and tickles. It feels good in the thick damp air which smells of smoke and sweat.

The walls hold the breeze back and the smoke in, so that it hovers over everything, and the paper chinese lanterns hanging from the clothesline are limp in the humidity and still. But they're the only still thing because there's cool jazz now from someone's radio and some couples are dancing, while others sit chatting and laughing in beach chairs they bought for here because they're cheap, not for the vacations they will never afford. And some others playing cards at the rickety card table, sitting on overturned garbage cans.

Daddy's there in the only wooden chair, smoking a cigar and taking everyone's money. And here comes Daddy's laugh, deep baritone, and it's followed always by a rising crest of other laughter from the crowd who's money he's taking.

I lean in the doorway in a loose yellow summer shift, the thin cotton stuck between my breasts, sipping and watching everyone. The flicker of candle light and the shadows of friends and family on brick and cement is soothing. Lifting the cool, damp glass to my forehead I roll it across. Daddy's blue eyes sparkle at me across the smokey back lot and he calls me to him.

I move to stand beside him. His hand goes behind me and rests on the small of my back. Dark faces and lighter faces look, some with interest and smiles, some only barely registering my presence. Daddy's hand slips down and goes up under my dress, sliding up and cupping bottom, then moving again to rest again in the small of my back, bare now. His hand is large and hot on my damp skin.

I lean my hip into his shoulder, still sipping my drink, watching the game, my face blank...because I can see people's cards...

I love you Daddy.

"Paper has more patience than people."

2006-05-23T20:58:00.000-04:00

-Anne Frank

The most remarkable thing...

2006-05-22T10:31:00.000-04:00

In our attic, there is a family of raccoons. This family of bandits has moved from attic to attic in our neighborhood for all the years that we've been here and probably before that too. Every so often, especially this time of year, you'd see one of them, or the mother with several babies, crossing the street at night, or coming up out of the drainage ditch, or crossing someone else's roof and going inside.

Our house is a rental home that's beginning to crumble a bit at the edges. The landlords, who own most of the block, are actually tearing the whole place-- the whole street-- down within the next few years to build townhomes or some such. Too bad too, because there's the remnants of a green space and a stream that runs behind us, and though the fish have long since given it up, it's still home to ducks, some glorious and enormous hawks, squirrels, innumerable types of birds, the occassional fox, and of course, the raccoons. I've periodically thought of chaining myself to the magnificent tall old oak or one of the fine birches out there in protest when they begin their overhaul... But I digress.

Given all that, and the fact that we're moving this summer, Daddy had graciously and with my happy approval of his decision, decided to let the raccoons in the attic take up residence and stay. That is until we went into the garage and saw what they had done to the garbage... After several hours of hauling stuff into new bags and taking it to the dumpster, Daddy is determined to have them evicted.

But they are here for now. Judging by the noise up there, they are quite a family, and enjoy parties and dancing. In fact, some nights I swear I hear rap music. I thought at first that they were only active at night, but it has seemed of late that they're active all the time. And now I know why. Mama has had her litter.

The family attain the attic by climbing a tree that grows up beside our house along a drain pipe outside our office window. And every so often I have heard them chittering to one another as they climb it when I'm sitting here typing. Well this morning I heard them and turned around and peeked out the window...

There on the windowsill was a baby racoon. He was chittering away to Mama and his brothers who were already nearly up the tree. I saw Mama's heavy tush go over the side of the gutter and her feet marching along the side of it towards the hole in the roof where they go in and out. She was followed by two little ones, but the baby that was in front of my window still stayed there, crying. I tapped the window and spoke to him and he looked at me and didn't seem in the least disturbed it.

He went back to the tree and peeked up, putting a paw on the bark and chittering away for Mama to return. Mama did not return. About this time our neighbors preceded to drive in the driveway right next to where the wee one was still stuck, afraid to climb the tree alone. The began doing work right there beside the house! The little one came back to me at the window, put both paws up on the screen and cried!

I knew if I went out to him that Mama wouldn't like it very much and maybe would have nothing to do with him after, but it was all I could do not to go fetch him!!

Instead I watched from the livingroom window. It was a better view as the house is L shaped and I could see the whole side of the house baby was on and keep an eye on him. As the men worked the little one huddled on the sill, shivering and crying. The men were going in and out of their house and I kept hoping when they went in that Mama would return for the wee chap, but she didn't. Whatta ho.

At first when they would go inside, the baby would try peeking in my office window again, but I had gone to the livingroom. Why he wasn't scared of me I've no idea... But now, as the men went in, he would run the length of the house and back on the low stone sill, crying and looking up to where his family had disappeared. When the men would return he would huddle behind the tree, shiverring.

Eventually he tired of this routine however, and now when the men went inside he would try to climb the tree. Four times in a row when the men went inside, the little bloke would try to climb the tree and slip back, only to climb off when the men returned. And then the fifth time came, as I held my breath.

Up, up, up he went, with the determination of Terry Fox, until with much scrambling and waving of feet, he got his wee self into the gutter!!! He stepped out of it and up onto the roof and scooted his way down the length of the house and into the hole, which was practically above my head. Judging by the noise upon his return, the family was thrilled to see him.

And so was I.

The Gift of Introspectre

2006-05-22T10:09:00.000-04:00

Found this on her blog, God love her. Had to put it here cause I wanna make sure I know where it is whenever I need a laugh.

More fun with books

2006-05-10T12:20:00.000-04:00

Well, I went out there with the intention of getting Our Endangered Values for Mother for her day, because I think it's an important book and I think she would dig it. And I did get it. BUT....

I also got Living the I Ching by Ming-Dao Deng, 2006 Witches' Datebook by LLewellyn, and Exploring the Pagan Path: Wisdom from the Elders (by alotta people). I am so excited to begin them... but right now I hafta start writing. I'm sposed to work on my story for an hour today straight with no interruptions. I've done all my other chores, and I've only got an hour and a half left before I hafta go get Daddy, so now's the time. So I guess I'm off. Just had to stop here and tell you the awesome news! :-D

Book Order

2006-05-08T20:37:00.000-04:00

The last bit of my book order arrived today!!! :-D

My Lil Surfer writing set. It is completely awesome. It comes in a little box with the lil surfer's picture on it (it's a puppy that's riding a wave on a surfboard. The box opens not like a regular box, but with a flap over the top. inside the top section were two pretty new pencils with hawaiian flowers printed on them, one in pale lavendar and the other in pale blue. There is also an eraser shaped like a surfboard which is white and green and blue and pink, and two sheets of stickers with pictures of the lil surfer, and surfboards, and flowers and butterflies and palm trees. AND there is pretty stationary, cream colored with a pale blue border of pineapple and flowers, and wee envelopes too. The stationary and envelopes are very sweet and small and I wrote one note to Daddy and one note to my Mom and Dad too (that part was kind of interesting because they never let me pick my own bookorder...).

And that's only the top section! The bottom section of the box has a wee notebook inside. It's a spiral notebook with pretty pictures on the cover (lil surfer and some flowers and tropical stuff) and inside it has blank white paper in a good grade too! I could use it as a journal or as a sketchbook or both! The whole thing reminds me of California, because it is so sunny and beachy and fun. It is wonderful and getting it was better than I even imagined.

The other part of my book order arrived last week, but I was sick and sad and not really in the mood to post about it. It is very special too though. It was a Chinese watercolor set, a Chinese caligraphy set, and a mini bonsai kit. It all came together. The caligraphy and painting sets came with a lovely set of tube watercolors and three Chinese brushes in different sizes. But most special-- it came with a real inkstone to grind my inksticks myself, and a tiny gold spoon to stir the ink once it is made, and the most lovely, delicate ink sticks in black with beautiful gold dragons painted on the side... In China grinding ones own ink sticks is supposed to be a holy and meditative rite, preparing the artist/caligrapher for his work....

And the last thing, but it came with the Chinese set, is my bonsai set. It came with a tiny planter and a peat pellet and tiny jack pine seeds and tiny clippers, and a book on bonsai. Before you even plant the seeds there's a whole ritual you go through to make them cool and ready to grow that takes a whole week! I would tell you what that is, but I have to reread it.

But oh, it's so marvellous to have a book order! And all the things I have yet to do with all that stuff-- this is just the first day of the experience.

I think book orders are the most wonderful things in the world!

And Now For Something Completely Different...

2006-05-07T15:09:00.000-04:00

We are actually going to have a contract. A real contract. He wrote it. We went over it and he amended a couple things. And he's printing it. And we're going to sign it. Tonight.

*gulp*

Nope

2006-04-28T18:04:00.000-04:00

The order did not, in fact come.
And.
I need to be big.
Being little is a mistake.
L. is entirely right about "the hunger that feeds itself."

The Order Should Be Here By Friday ! ! :-)

2006-04-26T18:23:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago my daughter came home with her book order forms. She always gets a few things, some that are educational and usually one or two that are more just for fun. I used to love to look at the book order forms when I was wee, but my parents never let me get anything. Occassionally I remember Mother picking out a few chapter books she thought were worthy... Newberry Award Winners and the like, but I never was allowed to choose anything, and certainly nothing that was just fun for a little girl to have.

So this time when she showed me her form and the things she was going to get, I also let myself pick out two things I wanted myself.

I am getting a Zen Art Kit with a chinese brush and ink stone and a book on how to do it, etc. And I am also getting the Lil Surfer Writing Set just cause it was cute and I liked it. It comes with a surfboard eraser too. I wish I knew how to surf.

Fastest Update in the North East

2006-04-25T16:41:00.000-04:00

Bloggedy Blog,

It has been quite a whirlwind this weekend as I knew it would be, butit has gone better than I'd dared hope. The show has been a smashing success, and between my last post and this, Daddy has been offerred two more shows with different companies! Also, my parents were both up here this weekend to see the show, and their visit turned out to be fabulous. I haven't seen them since August, which is far too long.

It was our nicest visit in recent memory. Mom and Dad didn't fight with each other, and me and Daddy didn't fight either, and they all seemed to get along well together and enjoy one another. Amazing.

Now it is left to Daddy and me to charge into whatever comes next after the show is done this weekend. House hunting and maybe some acting lessons and computer work head the agenda to my knowledge. We shall see.

I'm busy and flighty as a bee right now (ugh. I hate bees. And I know what they do for the flowers and such, but I don't care. They sting) and I hafta go make dinner now, but wanted to stop in and say

HI !

Also, maybe there's other stuff me and Daddy can start now... too...

Poo

2006-04-19T10:43:00.000-04:00

These days we are so very busy...

The show opens this weekend and we have all been rushing about like mad things. Tech weeks are always a bitch and this one is no exception. On the one hand it's been harder because of the rather blithering incompetence of some of the staff (I know how that probably sounds, but it's no understatement), and on the other hand one can look at it in the positive light of having a chance to have a hand in far more of the details of the production than one normally would in this situation. I have myself worked not only on acting and choreography, but on props, costumes, set dressing, and helped paint the backdrop. That's an opportunity that doth not come about very often. Believe me it dothen't. ;)

Anyway, all this business...

It is easier when you're busy to put away who you are or can be or would be. It is easier when you are busy to 'use your talents' and 'find fulfillment' and not let yourself feel that 'hunger that feeds itself' a friend described so accurately.

But sometimes, even when you are busy, it's not so easy.

I wish the part of my IK that would show up then would be just the playful, giddy, hopeful, imaginative part and not the brooding, hurt, pouty, needy part.

But it isn't.

And. There. It. Is.

~ a Post Script ~
justa little while later...

Daddy was leaving and going off to work. I was feeling horrid...um...as you probably could tell. He asked me what was wrong and I said nothing. And suddenly he stopped being so busy...and looked at me that way he does. He got up from putting on his shoes and came up to me and pushed me back a bit with his body till I was against the door and put his hand behind my head in my hair, so tender and strong, and smiling down at me and said to tell him.

So.

I started to cry.

I couldn't help it. And I whispered to him how I've been feeling.

little.
And submissive.
And little.

And Daddy smiled and held my head on his chest and chuckled and said not to feel bad about feeling that way. That those are good things. And he told me I'd really be feeling little if I didn't do the cat litter today. *blush* And then he kissed my nose. And then he went.

And I feel better.

Oh my...

2006-04-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

Oh my, such a dream. *blush* I have been 'feeling it' all day.

I was dressed for the evening in a wee short pale pink wispy dress. Daddy took me to dinner. A dinner party where a bunch of people were, all nicely dressed, rather a banquet of sorts, but very elegant. It was the home of a Japanese family. Through the course of the evening, I made some sort of faux pas and the Japanese man was very offended and angry. Heand Daddy spoke in Japanese and they took me into another room, cream colored and softly lit with cream furniture.

Daddy sat across from the man and told me to do as I was bid. The Japanese man took me across his knees and scolded me in English and Japanese and spanked me, first over my dress. Then he and Daddy talked some more in Japanese and he raised my dress over my bottom. Daddy poured a drink for both of them and they drank a bit. Then the man scolded me some more and spanked me over my panties. Finally he stopped and he pulled my panties down to mid thigh. I was humiliated and crying, but also had that "thing" happen where I feel my whole demeanor change and I become soft and yeilding and even aroused.

Now, as I lay there bare bottommed over his knees, the man and Daddy had another drink and spoke more in Japanese. He would rest his hand with the drink on my back and his other hand on my bum which every once in a while he would squeeze, as though for emphasis as he spoke to Daddy. At last he and Daddy stopped chatting and the man scolded me a last time, very firmly in Japanese and spanked and spanked my bare bottom quite hard. By the time he let me up I was red from shame and tears, and also unbelievably aroused.

What I remember next is Daddy taking me home through all the elegant people back to our home which was kind of like a warehouse. Daddy didn't spank me but he was very rough-- holding me hard, my breasts, my bum, making love to me hard...*blush*

The next thing I remember is back at the Japanese man's house for another party. And I was dressed the same and had been told to be good this time, etc. Somehow I made another mistake. Daddy had gone out for ice and the Japanese man took me into that room again and put me across his knees. This time he again took his time and scolded me and spanked over my dress. One of his children openned the door and peeked in and he yelled at them to go away and they did, shutting the door. Then he raised my dress and spanked me some more and scolded some more, but in Japanese so I couldn't understand. Then he took down my panties.

Then his wife came in with some things for him to sign! I was mortified, but already very very humble by now and just lay there. Very matter-of-factly the man left me there across his knees as he signed the papers, and the wife gave me a "shame on you" look and shook her head, but otherwise ignored me. Then his wife said in Japanese something to him and he agreed. As she left, the man spoke to me again, still just leaving me there, bare-bottommed across his lap and spanked me a few times hard, and then stopped as some other men came into the room, ushered in by the wife. He chatted with them nonchalantly, about other business things, as though I wasn't even there. I could feel his arms and hands as he guestured, and then a hand would rest on my back or my bum, and be lifted again as he talked. If I whimpered or squirmed he would pause a moment and slap my bottom, but then resume his conversation. This went on for at least a half an hour during which I was utterly humiliated but at the same time completely aroused beyond my ability to control it.

Then Daddy came in. He and the man said a few words in Japanese and the man gave me the real bare bottomed spanking he'd postponed as he chatted the past half hour or so. He spanked me very hard and then he put my panties up and helped me up.

Daddy took me home again and this time he was MAD. Mad at me for being naughty, but there was more, too. I said I thought I was supposed to do what this man said and he said yes I was, but also said something about my liking it too much. I know that in a way he was right and it embarassed me more because I was completely aroused even though I was embarassed.

It was something about the time it took, and the matter of fact-ness of it that I liked I think. The long time that really made me feel it and "go there" in my head. And the matter of fact-ness alsomade it feel reliable and safe, and like it would always happen if I were naughty-- it was just the way it was going to be-- even as it was humiliating to me.

So yes, Daddy took me home and when we got there he sent the children away with their grandma. Then he stripped me, ripping my clothes from me as I stood there and tied me up with my arms spread to a beam above my head. He got out his big heavy strap...

And he whipped me hard on my bum and thighs and some on my breasts and I cried and cried and

woke up.

More Fun...From my Daughter

2006-04-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

You're a Water Fairy.You're calm and collected. You rarely ever get angry, but when you do, you often hurt people on accident, and then regret it later, but you move on and forgive yourself.
Take this quiz!

you are the angel of light! you are wise, discreet in almost everything you do, you definatley know right from wrong, people flock to you for advice, you understand things in ways no one else can, you have a great insight and are full of inconsievable knowledge, you are intelligent and you love to think hard on things, solving problems and thinking about the worlds greatest wonders, you are truly unique.
Take this quiz!

A humorous, if snotty, note on the angel quiz... being full of inconceivable knowledge should also mean being able to spell it correctly. I guess the quiz maker wasn't a water fairy. See, they were pro'lly talking about the intangibles....nevertheless...:-D

My Inner Child Today...and Other Fun

2006-04-10T00:25:00.000-04:00

My inner child is six years old!

Look what I can do! I can walk, I can run, I can read! I like to do stuff, and there's a whole big world out there to do it in. Just so long as I can take my blankie and my Daddy and my three best friends with me, of course.
Take this quiz!

Priestess
Take this quiz!

Jolly Good Stuff

2006-04-04T13:20:00.000-04:00

My Last Duchess
(Ferrara)
By Robert Browning

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace -- all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked
Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark" -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

***

How deliciously creepy, isn't it?? It's always been one of my favorites, though vastly different than most of them. Makes an outstanding monologue too.

Evolution of an Innergirl Part Deux

2006-03-31T09:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, so there was more to tell in Part One. A lot more.

I say this because I was moving chronologically. And while I discussed my early interest in spanking, I did not (and rather deliberately did not, I might add) much discuss my upbringing. In fact, I recall mentioning that other than it's being comprised of both Nature and Nurture , that I thought it was irrelevant! *lol* Well, as most of the InnerGirls i know understand, a lot of it, whether we really look it in the face or not, is about our upbringing. So I guess if I'm really going to head into this whole topic of my Innergirl and how she evolved, I'd best address it, or at least begin to.

This step backwards and effort to go into the more "root" causes of my inclination towards ageplay is a result of a recent determination that there is more than ample reason to really start to try to navigate the psychological evolution of Innergirls (at least of my own) and to try to start talking about ageplay in a more comprehensive way...and a way that other Innergirls, particularly those still trying to make their way to Grandma's house alone in the wide world (ie sans Daddies), might appreciate too. This determination has been forged after several years of encountering innumerable other InnerGirls out there searching for Daddies or Aunts or Teachers or Guardans of any kind, often ending up in disastrous predicaments that can only be attributed to a terribly sad lack of self awareness. And I think it has been coming for some time...

But more on that another time.... back to square one for me, now.

Hard to know where to begin when it comes to my upbringing... but to begin with, it can be summarized as strangely paradoxical, which perhaps explains my affection for Bhuddism. *lol* Paradoxical in that it was simultaneously very loving in many ways and very abusive in other ways. And no, I'm not rationalizing the abuse. It was abuse and Lord knows it has taken it's toll on my psyche. But there was love too and good times and it is my firm belief that if I only choose to focus on one I am missing a large part of my reality. And as for this discussion of the evolving of my InnerGirl-- well, it was most certainly the combination of both of those elements that contributed to what she is today.

The loving part was often in evidence. Just to give you a taste of what I'm talking about, let me take you back for a bit. I was read to as an infant and reading myself by 24 months old. Mother read us countless books aloud as wee children. Heidi, The Hobbit, The Secret Garden, just to name a few. I was played classical music to develop my ear, and fawned over and played games with and taught to play chess before I was five. I had music and art lessons by the time I was 6 or seven. I was always well fed and nicely clothed and warm enough, etc. My mother was wonderful to have around when you were sick. She would sit and stroke your hair and bring you soup and drinks in special pretty glasses with a straw and let you watch TV. At night, before bed, my mother and father would come to tuck us in. We would say our prayers. The Lord's Prayer and another prayer we had made up together. My father and I would go back and forth, saying,

"Sweet dreams,"

"goodnight,"

"and I"

"love"

At this point one was supposed to say "you," but my father would say,

"Banana Splits!" to make me giggle.

Then he would sit outside our rooms (my little brother and I) on the top stairs and sing songs for us that he played on his ukelele as we drifted to sleep.

There's much more I could go into, and a lot of it comes with it's own sweet beauty and nostalgia for me, however, you get the idea. :-)

On to the abusive parts. Sigh. The first belt-spanking I recall was when I was 6 and in first grade, though it had to have happenned on some level before then, as I remeber spanking a boy in kindergarten, something I surely wouldn't have attempted without any frame of reference for it. There was a certain ritual to a belt spanking from my mother in the earlier stages. It was up over the back of the couch with a bare bottom. You were allowed sometimes to hold a stuffed animal. Later it evolved or rather disintigrated into chases around the room or sometimes the house, and the use of numerous other impliments. Boards, blocks, a shod foot, a grapefruit, etc. I remember, among other incidents, having hidden in the bar in the basement once and being caught in that tiny cubboard with the belt swinging down from every direction. Ugh.

When I was in sixth or seventh grade I was dressing for gym and a schoolchum saw a big mark on my leg and asked me what it was. Not really thinking, and being a horrible liar (I always felt I got caught even when I did nothing wrong, so honesty was always considered the best option) I just blurted out the truth, that it was where my mother had kicked me. She had had on high heeled shoes with a pointy toe, so there was a cut and a big black and blue mark.

Suddenly I was surrounded by girls who were shaking their heads and cooing and telling me this was wrong. I was pretty freaked out, because I'd never considered our family anything other than normal at that point, and I pleaded for them not to say anything. The girls didnt', so far as I knew, but then a few days later a girlfriend and I were accused of having cheated on a test. I hadn't cheated, but I knew my mother would never believe me and I was distraught. That night when we left the building there was a note on my mother's car. I still don't know the details, but it was from my friend. She had admitted to cheating on the test and was begging her not to hit me. I found that out later from my father. That started a horrible chain of events though.

Some of the girls had told their parents about the mark on my leg and the parents had called the school. Mother was being investigated. Mother wouldn't speak to me so I had no idea what was happenning until my father came and told me. He said that I was to go in and meet with the school counsellor. And he told me exactly what I was to say. The kicking was a one time event. Other than that we were spanked with the hand only and only when we had done something really wrong. I did exactly as I was told.

When it was all over, nothing happened. Nothing except my mother telling me that she would never lay a finger on me again. And she didn't kiss, hug, or touch me at all for about 6 months. And I went back to school and isolated myself completely.

Then there was the controlling elements of my life. Among other things, I dressed precisely as I was told in outfits she picked out with my hair done exactly as she wished. I was a girl in the seventies when girls and boys were in jeans and t-shirts, but I was always in small dresses with brown tie shoes and kneesocks, my hair done in two long braids like Laura Ingalls, with ribbons at the end that matched whatever dress I wore, and two matching barettes sharply pulling any unruly whisps from my face. It mattered nothing that the outfits made me a misfit among my peers. As I grew up that continued right through highschool, because Mother worked at the same school I attended, which she therefore dubbed "her turf." That meant that I was to dress and behave exactly the way that she found appropriate. It also meant that if I breathed incorrectly at the school she would know about it. Books and movies that she didn't like or that she felt I liked too much were hidden by her and then she would forget where she'd hidden them. Or in some cases she ripped the books in half.

When I was in fourth grade I started writing stories and keeping a journal and I have ever since to this day. From the earliest days much of what I wrote was tied up with spankings and redemptions and escape from my mother. She would find them and read them. Sometimes they were on my desk with big red X's through whole sections, sometimes they were thrown away. Even though she was rarely in the spanking stories I wrote, she would accuse me of wanting to write Mommy Dearest, a book and movie I had no idea about then, but understand her relating to them completely now.

She would have a few glasses of wine in the early evening and then get in a drunken argument with one of us, Dad, my brother or me. After the screaming and shouting was done she would take a bottle of wine from the fridge and get in the car and drive away. I used to pray she wouldn't commit suicide. Once or twice I stood in front of the car and wouldn't let her leave. And once I got in the car with her and drove up on the curbs with her until she agreed to go home.

That gives you a taste of that side of things...and I really need to stop now.

In Mother's defence, (and yes I've been through therapy and gotten mad at her for all this) she was one of the original superwomen. She had wanted to be a writer and a journalist, but had never had the self confidence (though I believe she had the talent, and so did her teachers). Instead, she was trying to be the perfect wife and mother and hold down a full time job as the perfect elementary school teacher with virtually no help at home from my father. He was top of his field in a very demanding postition and was gone from 6 in the morning to 6 at night on a good day. So she was working at her job, coming home and doing everything around the house, and taking care of two childrena and still grading papers and writing lesson plans into the night when all the rest was done. Dad, on the other hand, came home from his job and was "done." When asked where he was when alot of the beatings, etc., was going on, my answers were that he was not home, or on the toilet doing the crossword puzzle.

Another thing I'll say here at the end is that she also went into counselling about 12 years ago and has really done an unbelievable job at turning herself around and understanding all of what happenned. She has also come to me and apologised for the abuse and told me she knows that it was inappropriate. Something I never in a million years would have thought I'd hear her say. She denied it for soo long. My brother still denies it. He has Krohns Disease.

My little brother and I always reacted to our parenting in very different ways. As children, he was the defiant one, and I was the compliant one. I wanted more than anything to be a good girl. I wanted them to be proud of me. I especially wanted my mother to be happy. Not just to be proud of me, but to be happy...

Well, I'm sure you can see where this is going in some ways can't you? Whew. It takes it out of you writing all that stuff. Even the tip of such an iceberg can be exhausting. But I think some idea of the emotional backround I came from is really important in continuing this exploration of the phenomena of InnerGirls.

Given how tired it's made me, I sure hope it will prove to have been so.

More later.

Create

2006-03-30T15:11:00.000-05:00

Create is a good word.

Create is the word that you click on to bring up a blank page to post on.

Create, to me, exudes hope and possiblities, although create can have all sorts of miraculous or terrible words follow it.

But regardless of the connotations, by itself 'Create" is a mandate.

The Random House Dictionary (1980 version which I got when I was in...6th grade?) defines create thusly:

create v. 1. to cause to exist. 2. to produce or cause.

I love that first one. To cause to exist.

That's why blank pages are always so exciting. Blank paper, blank canvas. A new roll of film. A damp lump of clay. Fresh meat, produce, herbs and spices. All one and the same. All about Create. All delicious.

Relationships too are about Create, aren't they? And that no matter what the relationship. From the most casual creating of an aquaintance to the beautiful creation of lasting friendships and lasting love and up and up again to subdivide and come to the profundity of creating a new life from a relationship.

And the negatives of create can and do go on in relationships too, don't they? Because create, like pretend can have multiple connotations, both good and bad. Mmmmm but we shant dwell on those just now.

Because the create I want for today is shining, bright and true. It damages nothing. It blossoms, and elates and heals.

*

Oh and guess what? I believed right. I found my friend. My shy friend who's name alone is to me synonomous with Spring the most hopeful of seasons. I understand Shakespeare's sonnets better when I think of her.

Dover Beach

2006-03-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[1867]

Strange Miracles

2006-03-21T15:35:00.000-05:00

Strange miracles happen every day, don't they?

Like what happens when I look in Daddy's eyes and I see him... and I see how he looks at me...

And here in the ether too, there are miracles.

Without warning and when I least expected it, a beautiful friend I thought I'd lost long ago emerged from the ether's mist with flowers in her hair and gave me a dove. We talked and talked and it still less than a fraction of what I'd love to talk to her about. And not only that, but she heralded news of another long lost treasure....the most magical girl I ever met.

Someone who, like me and my Gabriel (or in her case Gabrielle) believes in everything. Oh, among many, many other things: ghosts and sprites, elves and gnomes... and little girls who are raised by mean witches-- that turn out in the end to be born of sweet faeries instead...

I called her today. I wanted to sing to her, and tell her what I believe in, but she wasn't home and no machine picked up to let me leave a message. But that's the very nice thing about believing in everything.... I believe I will find her again too.

My wee ferret is off on an adventure of her own today. I hope it is enlightening and glorious and full of strange miracles, and that she comes home safe and sound.

Progress

2006-03-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

Daddy says not all progress is linear. I believe him.

F-ed Up Sunday

2006-03-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

Don't you hate it when two people who obviously love one another-- occassionally cannot seem for the life of them to understand one another?

Sometimes wounded people can heal one another. But sometimes when two people with deep wounds try to come together, instead of healing the wounds it has the effect of putting salt on them.

And as ever with me, it seems like after a little while, once the little side starts to come out it invariably gets me trouble. Particularly if I don't muzzle her when she's upset. Nobody wants to put up with that bullshit. Even I don't so why should anyone else.

...

Still...the day is fairly young. Perhaps there are still things even a wren with one wing can accomplish.

Sick again...

2006-03-16T15:31:00.000-05:00

and again and again....

So much has happenned in such a short while.

We went to visit my family in Cleveland over the weekend, returning Tuesday afternoon. It was wonderful to see my brother, his wife, and my neice and nephew whom I'd not seen in six months. Leaving my wee nephew is always the hardest. I feel a real connection to him and I hate being one of those aunts he only sees a few times a year.

Tuesday night the two leads in Daddy's play came over and we talked about the style of the piece we're presenting and discussed our backrounds, why we're all in the arts at all, theater in general, genres, styles, etc. Even though I already was coming down with whatever this nastiness is, it was miraculous and exciting to have a household of people chatting about the arts for an evening.

And my wee ferret sent me some fantastic stuff that Daddy unwrapped and I am too excited to have. She is such a darling. She sent me some CDs of rappers we both dig, and DVD's of some movies too-- and three Winnie the Pooh sippy cups and a Winnie the Pooh soother and a pink cuddly baby lamb. *blush* Only my ferret would send me that stuff. And that particular combination too. That is just one of the things that makes her a wee diamond in my heart.

Also, Daddy said before the trip that he thinks soon it will be the time to test out our first contract with rules for me. Eep. Things have been going so beautifully with us... And that goes for both the big and wee parts of me. We have been working together better than we ever have before, and we're playing together better too. *giggle*

So even though I'm sick AGAIN (dammit), Life is really pretty good.

More about all these things later. I really feel like poopy. I hafta lie down.

Daddy Gotta Blog

2006-03-03T16:51:00.000-05:00

Daddy gotta blog and I am so excited.

I dunno what he will put in there or what it will be about or be like but I am so excited.

Stuff where Daddy 'speaks his mind' on any subject is always sooo welcome to me. I have fantasies too of our sharing our writtenlove together here in the ether someway... We met in the ether long ago, and it was a glorious, mind-blowing experience on so many levels... seems only appropriate for our love to continue to live here in the ether.

For now, however, this new Daddyblog is not gonna be affilliated with this blog either, ona counta Daddy's fairly private and even though both our blogs are public and he might write private kinda stuff in it it is more private if it isn't affilliated with my blog and also cause I am less private than him (must be the actress/exhibitionist in me) an so we think it's a good idea for now. But thassokay. Cause I can still read it.

Do I seem excited? I am excited. heehee.

*does handsprings around blog*

A Lurker's Tale

2006-02-28T00:18:00.000-05:00

[Note* - Part 2 of my Evolution will be following...but this was on my mind, so I'm posting about it first.]

Well, the website I used to go to that actually allowed me to vent the more childish side of my nature, the "ageplay" side has somehow "inadvertantly" deleted all my posts there from existance with no way to recover them. The site was a haven for me on and off for a few years... once I discovered that there was this bit of me that warranted exploration.

I had lurked there for ages before making my tentative entry into the site. Literally months. In fact, I would go to the site for a while devouring every post and every article I could get my hands on, but never saying a word. Reading all about Repartenting and Innergirls and both sexual and non sexual ageplay....starting to formulate opinions of my own on the subject.... Then I'd convince myself it wasn't for me and run away.

But I always came back.

And Daddy encouraged me to go there and explore too, though he himself didnt' want to participate much. My participation there flowered only after a considerable inner struggle. Even then it was hard to navigate a site like that on my own. Making a blog. Making a room. Making friends.

Finding an on line space where one can explore that tender and vulnerable part of one's self seemed a miracle. But navigating it without the guidance of a Daddy, Mommy, Aunt, Teacher, Guardian, was hard, even though off line Daddy talked to me about it some. Slowly, I made a few tentative and lovely friendships with other InnerGirls, and I was proud of myself for the work I did there. For letting myself go and play there and explore, even all alone. And too I was proud of the big part of me for taking good and responsible care of that wee part of me there....And oh, sometimes there was real magic there. Oh my, such lovely moments there were...

Now all that is gone.

...

In fairness I hadn't been there since August, when I discovered the joys of pneumonia for the first time in my life and had a mandatory 10 day vacation in the hospital. But it wasn't just the sickness that halted my visits to the site.

There was a lot going on in my life just before I got sick. Part of it was that I had developed an on line relationship with a woman on that site who, after much discussion with myself and my Daddy, had agreed to be my Ayah, or my governess.... She was going to be a Guardian of sorts to me on the website in question, and also going to help Daddy to monitor my behavior in rl as we moved together into a deeper exploration of the ageplay lifestyle than had heretofore been possible for us.... Oh my, it was all so promising, really.

But even before I got sick, my connection with this dear phantom changed. Ah the perils of the on line connection. Where before daily on line chats and posts had evolved into almost daily phone conversations as well, everything began a swift recession. Suddenly, just as we were beginning in earnest, she wasn't available any more. She was no longer visible any more on the messenger services she used. She never emailed me, IMed me or called to let me know what had happenned. When I would reach her once in a blue moon, she would behave as though nothing had happenned. And knowing, as I did, that when she had been chatting on line with me regularly she was always invisible to most everyone else, it didnt' take much to realize that the same was now happenning to me.

But the hardest part, was when I went into the hospital for ten days in August.... I never heard from her once. Even out of the hospital, weeks passed, and I was still sick and very weak. Never heard a word. About three or four weeks into my illness, I ran into her once, on Yahoo. I was still quite ill. She was loving and sweet, though seemed fairly unconcerned with my illness and my absense. No acknowledgement whatsoever of the lack of communication. We said we would speak in the next day or so...hook up by phone....

And from that day to this, nearly 6 months has passed...and she never contacted me again. Not a note on any of three email addresses she had of mine to see how I was. Not a message on Yahoo or MSN. Not a call. Not a word. By the time I was finally well enough to get back to a semblance of my former life, and really realized what had happenned, I was stunned at what had transpired. Goodbye Ayah. *poof*

And given that she was, at the time, in charge of the website in question, it certainly wasn't anywhere I could continue to allow the smaller part of myself to play or explore. I have, at least, that much respect for my Inner Girl. And it's that simple.

Of course, I had known that this lady was overtaxed with "little ones" from the start of her arrival at the website in question, which is why I never approached her, despite her sweetness to one and all. She tried to be kind and friendly to everyone there, especially all the little ones, a feat which none of the other "adults" (even the administrative ones) on the site even attempted, which made me like her immediately. But she also 'adopted' at least four inner children within a year of her arrival, which made me a bit skeptical too.

You see, it is my feeling that while one may "want" to be able to take care of everyone, it is simply not possible to be that responsible to many people. In point of fact, knowing what I know about what most Inner Kids I've met desire from their relationship, it is hard enough to meet those needs for one person in real life, let alone five on line. I myself, while having a very definite and profound 'little' side which I've done my best to nurture, also have the instincts and impulses of a "Guardian." But I also understand, based on my own needs and those of all the IK's I've ever encountered, just what the responsablity of reparenting SHOULD (if sadly so infrequently does) entail. And this has made me stay away from it.

The Inner Kids I know and adore are my friends (and my one wee sister ferret), and I try to help them in both Big and wee ways as our relationship progresses, but without ever succumbing to the urge (self gratifying as it might be) to cuddle them and tend them as a parent. Why? Because I know only too well that unless I can commit to a perpetual daily involvement with them-- to a predictable, consistant, reliable set of rules, boundaries, behaviour and interaction--that it would be irresponsible to do so.

And please don't get me wrong. I do understand that all dominants in any form of Ageplay or BDSM are human. And I understand that real life can intrude upon on line life and demand from us different things than we had in mind. Never the less, a phone call or email or message at one of a dozen ways to contact me might have been a nice touch. I suppose I sound bitter. Well...I guess I am. I mean good Lord, if you are choosing to take on the role of an adult in an ageplay relationship, particularly when you claim to be someone who truly understands the healing of childhood wounds that can be involved in such a relationship....don't you bear at least some small responsability to behave more like an adult in the relationship than the Inner Child you're supposedly responsible to?

And I'm not just bitter for me, honestly, though I know that's the crux of it. I'm bitter for the other small hearts that fall prey to this kind of fiasco. I know so many. And not all of them have the emotional or intellectual resources I do. And not all of them have a supportive and loving partner that I have who explores with me and tries to understand who and what I am and need and who will be there to love me even when this kind of thing falls apart. For those others I mourn.

And yes I'm frustrated because I have even begun to question how exactly I came to be deleted from the website in question, though so many of my most cherished and most wee thoughts and feelings were therein described, exprssed, shared... And all this could so easily have been understood or forgiven with one simple communication to explain it. The absense. The chaos that was left in her wake.

Anyway, she has left the website. She has taken many of my favorite people from the former website to a new website I saw for the first time today. And it seems that when she left I diaappeared with her, whether or not I wanted to. My posts are gone. My blog, my room, everywhere I ever played. It is as though I never existed there. I have not begun to rebuild. Too painful as yet. The new place she created, from what I read this morning, seems to have started hopefully and vigorously. A number of dear and special people followed her away from the former place to this new site, and yet her presense there has vanished there since December as well. From what I've read she appears to have had some real life issues that needed attending to. Never the less, there are many who appear to be floundering somewhat in her wake.

The Inner Girl that started it with her, a tender soul I know more from reading than from conversation, who's bravery appears to be persistant in the face of a number of personal trials I've watched her face in her explorations of this part of herself, appears to have now been left virtually in charge of the site. Not knowing enough of the history there to comment further, all I can do is wish her and the others well.

And as for me....well. I have become a lurker once again.

Evolution of an Innergirl - Part 1

2006-02-27T16:01:00.000-05:00

I'm going to spend the next few posts talking about how I got "here" emotionally and what "here" is. Talking about BDSM, spankings, and ageplay aren't always the easiest subjects for me, though they sure are dear ones to me. *grin-blush* But I think in order to really explore and discuss this stuff here, I'd like to establish the foundation first.

***

Spankings, particularly bare bottomed spankings, have been part of my fantasy life ever since I can remember. Certainly before puberty. And most certainly during and after, right up to today. Truthfully of coure, the emotional relationships that these fantasy spankings represent(ed) was and is as important or moreso than the simple act itself, but when I was 5-10 all I knew for sure was that it was about spankings.

Both Nature and Nurture had a hand in the long term evolution of this part of my personality I'm quite sure, but with the exception of better understanding of my Self I think it's fairly irrellevant how it all began. Which is to say it's not irrellevant at all, except in that it should be understood from the outset that it is as much a part of me as my brown eyes or my smile. *smile*

As anyone of an alternate sexual persuasion knows, and anyone else may imagine, growing up with an affinity for corporal punishment can be a scarey experience. I was always afraid of discovery and humiliation. And not in a titilating way either. It was awful feeling like a freak. Sure that if anyone knew what you thought and felt you would be ridiculed. In my bed at night I would touch myself to fantasies of me being punished (generally for someone else's transgressions, not my own). And in the morning I would rise mortified at myself and afraid of being ridiculed and labled a freak. I felt extraordinarily alone for a lonnnnnnng time.

Braver or perhaps more foolish than many of my ilk, I tried to explore that part of me with various boyfriends who were generally either titilated but frightenned or freaked out over it. Meanwhile, the relationships I found myself in were, in general, extremely unhealthy ones wherein I would emotionally prostate myself before people wholly incapable and/or disinterested in appreciating such an offering.

This emotional prostration reached such heights that by my mid twenties, rather than being the author or actress I'd hoped to be when I was young, I was living with an alcoholic drug dealer 19 years my senior, whom I was convinced that I could save from himself if I was just a "good enough girl." There was absolutely no BDSM in our relationship. But the sensability-- my submission-- was present in ways that seem obvious to me now.

Eventually the man I was with was arrested and went to jail. I lucked out. I didn't get arrested. I had never participated in his deals, I didn't even use drugs. But I know now that had I been "caught" with him, or had he been caught at the apartment I paid for and we shared, I could have gone to jail as well. It staggers my mind just to think of that now...

By the time he was arrested I had been in therapy for a few years. I was slowly learning what made me who and what I am; making connections between my past and current behaviour patterns, etc. Learning-- well-- learning a lot of what I needed to teach myself that I had not been taught as a girl. Namely, how to take care of myself-- both practically and emotionally.

When he was arrested though, I learned something else. I learned that I could not save him through my own prostration and penance. I learned that it was between him and *God* for him to be healed. And that if I am to offer anything to the world as I would like to, I have to be able to take care of myself first. That I am no use to anyone if my life just slides down the toilet with someone elses.

Good things to learn, huh?

Hard things too. And yet, it was a time of waking up to possibilities too. I got myself back into school. I took better care of myself. And then, in fact, armed with the new knowledge about myself, my past and my present, I found myself starting to think about that submissive side of myself very differently than I once had.

And I found myself wanting to explore that spanky side of myself again, but differently now....

Why Write About it?

2006-02-22T17:33:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I posted my dream. Verbatim pretty much. As I wrote it that day, upon waking .

Why post it? Well....

For one thing, I'm trying not to limit myself so much to the esoteric. For another I'd like to become more comfortable writing publicly (if still fairly anonymously) about that side of myself and about BDSM (for lack of a more attractive, comprehensive term) in general.

When it comes to on line personae, boy there's a lot one could say. I guess to some extent we're all making it up as we go along. There are the true pretenders, those who intentionally and sometimes even maliciously reinvent themselves for various reasons. Then there are those who are a "doctored" version of themselves on line. I guess in some ways that's all of us really-- because the very act of committing words to paper distances one from the "true self," right? But I mean more than that...

People I have met on line, and then met in person, have shown me two different approaches. Some people really are their "best selves" here in the ether... They are able to approach topics, ideas, ideals, dreams, feelings, etc with depth and wit and compassion...and then one meets them in real life. And they are simply not able to make the transition. The deep thinking self that came out to play in the ether vanishes, behind a mask of humor, for example. And just to overqualify, I've nothing against humor. As a matter of fact, a good sense of humor I find vital to existance. I'm just sayin. Often times people can't translate the self that chatted about various things on line, into an actual conversation. The words get lost, locked in the throat, the thoughts and feelings only able to live in the magic of the ether.

And then there is the second kind of person I've met on line...the person who just is who they are-- or even better-- is more than who they seemed. Those people amaze me. My husband is like that. On line in the political chatroom where we met, and in subsequent conversations, the Beast was the most amazing man I'd ever met. And when I met him in person he was even more extraordinary than he had seemed. And that's saying something.

In time, if one is fairly intuitive, one begins to see who is likely to be who in their on line life. Who is likely to be themselves, who is likely to be somewhat different, even which on line persona is likely so fabricated as to make communicating with them pointless. *lol*

Anyway, I tend to try to be myself. The me that walks and talks and breathes. Here in the ether too. But there are some things I've avoided discussing in any on line format. "Private" things. And most people are ok with private things remaining private. One's more "kinky" inclinations, for example. I guess I'm not everyone though, because I've longed to explore them more publicly. *lol* I guess my dream kinda lets that cat out of the bag doesn't it? *blush* But anyway, what I mean is, I think these ideas are worth exploring. And why not here? Why not? I think it's interesting stuff.

So we'll see. Like I said in my subheading: for now, let's just call this an experiment. :)

the dream...

2006-02-22T01:26:00.000-05:00

So we’re going on this spanking boat.

It's kind of a late evening cruise for those of our inclination... It’s a two level flat boat with wooden floors and little white lights around the railings and the ceiling of the upper level. We’re going on it with some girls I knew in highschool an my wee friend ferret.

And we get on and we’re walking around. On the left side there are some tables and lights and some people are getting spanked, and in the back it’s darker and some people are getting spanked over the rail, but it’s not like “performances” like at the thing we went to at that club, it’s more real and more sexy, more like I imagine Roissy was—and there’s a quietness and intimacy that’s really interesting.

And we’re walking around and I’m getting very aroused by it all, and we go up the steps and theres a small bar area under a flat roof, and there are tables up there and people just hanging out talking and maybe one or two people getting punished some way, and some submissisves on their knees with the man they’re with…

And we have drinks and head towards the back of the boat, down a few steps…the back is longer than the front a wide space with a hardwood floor leading to the back rail,. And we all go stand by the back rail (its night still and the little white lights). Anyway, this one friend that was there found someone who was going to spank her at one point and went off down the left side of the boat again, but we didn’t’ go with her.

So we’re standing at the back rail and it goes you, me, ferret, space, whoever, and I kind of lean over to you and I ask you are you going to spank me here—but I say it in a way I know isn’t a good way, cause I say “So you’re not going to spank me here or anything are you?” Which I know is unattractive but I can’t stop myself from saying it that way.

And you’re like,

“No. Why would you think that?”

And I’m just very honest, prolly cause it's a dream and I can speak without dying inside, so I say, well, I know you know I’ve always had kind of a fantasy to belong to you in public or maybe be punished in public, and since we’re here I guess it came up.”

And you kind of lift this mini megaphone to your mouth and say something about not spanking me that makes everyone turn around. My friends, and some of the people on the left side and top deck of the boat.

And then this guy comes walking down the steps carrying this folding chair, and he calls out,

“Alright, come here. I’ll spank you.”

And I’m like, oh my god, no way, he’s a dork and he’s not you, and blah blah, and I call out to him and I’m like, no, it’s alright, blah blah. And you go “No” and you turn me to you and you’re like,

“You always wanted to be spanked in public, well now you’re gonna be. And it’s alright. I’m here and I’m going to watch.”

And I’m like

“No, I did’t want it this way,” and I’m upset cause it’s not you and I don’t know this guy at all, and I don’t know what you’re thinking of me or of all this and I start to tear up, and you give me this very serious, ‘don’t fuck with me, you’re gonna do what I tell you’ look that you have when you want me to do something for you ‘like that’ that startles the hell out of me. You see that I’m shocked and I’ll do what you say so you smile and you kiss me and tell me to go do what he tells me.

So I go up to the guy with my head down and my hair is shielding me cause I’m totally freaked now. I don’t feel aroused any more I feel scared. I know that people really are watching me, and you too, and people from my past, and I don’t know this person. And he looks at me and tells me to lay over his knees, which I do. And somehow my skirt comes up and my underwear goes down, but I don’t remember that part I just remember being in the position and having him tell me to put my legs out straight which pushes my bottom up more, and the weight of his arm on my back and how hot my face was, burning even under my hair.

And the first smacks are sporadic but really hard and during the break I actually look back over my shoulder at him and then he uses that and yells at me and tells me to face front. And smacks me. And hold my head up so people can see and smacks me again. And straighten my legs again and push my bottom up where everyone can see it, and smacks me again. And then finally he starts slowly building up, hitting me faster and harder.

And then he starts telling me something I’ve done that sounds really real, but isn’t cause I’ve never even met this guy before— but my head is spinning cause it sounds really right—Cause it’s about how testy I’ve been lately, and how he has needs I wasn’t meeting because of that and he’s good to me and takes care of me and expects me to do my job too and take care of him and show him understanding when he has his own human weaknesses too and not let my own insecurity make me believe he doesn’t love me or that he’s the bad guy and suddenly I realize he’s talking about stuff that is real for me and you—not for him—but that it is real.

And that you must have known this was all going to happen and set this up. This is all spinning in my head as I’m hearing this and feeling this pain and on this boat and people are watching and and he’s so completely intense and he’s really spanking me HARD—and it hurts and I’m wiggling and kicking and even though everyone is around I start totally sobbing and I’m sobbing your name, and he’s still talking the whole time to me about this really real issue right out in front of everyone and I know that it’s you that did this, and my sobs are in this weird place of pain and little girl fear and lesson learning and adult woman pain too, but also adult relief and purging and even ecstacy-- I feel this overwhelming purging taking place and I want him to stop but I don’t too and he doesn’t stop even though I’m crying, he just keeps going and going and my arousal is back now completely but I can’t come cause it hurts terribly and the arousal is mixing with the purging and everything else that’s going on until I’ve almost cried it all out already—to the point where when he stop I’m totally spent, and just shivering and whimpering.

When he stops he cups my bottom in one hand and puts his other hand on my head and I can feel him panting.

And suddenly you’re there and lift me off of him and straight into your arms.

And I wake up.

*Any major dude will tell you....

---------------

2006-02-06T00:46:00.000-05:00

It doesn't matter. I'm deleted and forgotten. I don't miss the Island. I don't miss anyone. I don't need anything. I am a rock.