50 Shades of Grey

So I never did read the books, but I finally got to watch the movie. Normally, I'm a book girl all the way, but I have realized that my life's reading is going to consist of state codes and SOP's (for me, that admission was tantamount to accepting that the sun won't rise tomorrow).

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was disappointed. Maybe I was looking for it to rekindle something in me, and it certainly did lead to some realizations, just not in the manner I had thought that it would.

Since I like to file my complaints before anything else...

Could they have picked any two characters with less chemistry? I mean seriously, the spark between them was tantamount to my attraction to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink--c'mon baby lets get it on, you know you want to do me!
With a playroom that cool, how come they're hardly ever in it?
On what planet does a dom spend that much time going down on a sub and she never ever ever reciprocates??
Who was really supposed to be in charge? From where I'm standing, it sure looked a hell of a lot like her.
Where exactly was the D/s? Hottest moment in the whole thing was when he made her eat. Seriously.
Her character made me want to beat her myself, and normally that's just not my bent--she was a raging brat.
According to Alpha, "Mr. Grey is a pussy with consistency issues and a serious lack of self control"...His commentary would have been quite annoying if I hadn't agreed with him.
What exactly is with the implication that Grey is the way he is because there's something deeply wrong with him, due to past abusive experiences? I found her mission to fix him painfully annoying. For me, that is one of the attractions of a dominant--you don't "fix" them, you don't change them, you don't make them what they're not. They are who they are, they want what they want, and they do what they do. As a sub, you accept that and allow yourself to be molded to fit whatever shape they take, somehow fitting the acceptance of that molding into the knowledge that nobody else will accept you for who you are in quite the same way.

For me, a big part of D/s is that acceptance of who someone is beyond all the trappings of what people think that we should be.

I wonder at the mass appeal the story seems to have. I was a bit shocked by how tame it was.

Enter realizations...

Tame. 50 Shades of Grey was painfully tame, and dare I say, not far beyond the borders of vanilla. I get that maybe it was a whole, "introduce her gently" thing, and it seems to have been somewhat of an awakening phenomenon for a lot of women, but still...I don't really get it.

Maybe I was disappointed in what I perceived as a distinct lack of actual D/s in the story and maybe I was hoping for it to spark something in me that has lain quiet through these last months of insanity. It didn't do that. But it did show me that maybe I'm not as far gone as I feel because there's still more D/s in a moment of my life than in an hour of that story. So for that, despite my disappointment, I do have an appreciation for 50 Shades of Grey.

The Great Online Cookie Exchange Extravaganza!

I have not become so detached from the things that really matter in life that I have missed Jz's recent announcement. 

Please do join up and play with us! I am sadly down on the whole cooking front and could seriously use some new recipes!

Directly from Jz~

"Dust off your baking pans, because on Wednesday, December 9th 2015

The Great Online Cookie Exchange Extravaganza returns!

Won't YOU please join us?

It's easy to play along. 

Just post a recipe that day for a holiday goodie -- any goodie. 

It doesn't have to be for cookies… or even be sweet.

We do not discriminate against any goodie.

(We are equal opportunity consumers around here.)

That's pretty much all there is to it.

The single catch is that there's only one way to get your name in the official list of participants: You have to contact me (Jz) by Monday, Dec. 7th with both your name and the address of your blog."

Tired

I was sad to log on and see that I had completely missed love our lurkers day. In all fairness, I've missed a bunch of other stuff too--a birthday, spelling homework, cub scout events, the death of my mom's cat, a bunch of sunsets (though I do tend to see sunrise on my way to work), all the overtime pay I'm not making, breakfasts, lunches, dinners (my kids had ramen for dinner the other night. Ramen. I shall say no more).

I'm so tired. Bone tired.

We have one of these at work:

Unfortunately, this person is a manager. And he's a fucking idiot.

My actual job is flying up on me. Quickly. Like two weeks early quickly. It's complex and complicated, there's  lot going on. It requires come forethought, and I have no time for this thought. That freaks me out--I have to plan ahead, or things don't work right or me. I was supposed to have months to figure this all out, not a few days. But we have this manager...He's a fucking idiot. I tried to drop all my cleaning up of his messes about a week ago. You know, so I could concentrate on not being the next disaster zone. Alpha wouldn't let me. It's a safe assumption that we haven't been getting along swimmingly these days....

I spent half of my day discovering and trying to track down mistakes. Just like I spent my whole day before that and the week before that, and the rest of the month doing. So I'm still behind on all of those other things I was supposed to do yesterday that I've been doing for months which don't relate to my actual job but are very important.

I am so friggin tired. And did I mention a bit freaked out? I really do not love my job. Most days, I don't even like it. This is not a life that I ever wanted to live. It's not necessarily a bad life, just not one I ever dreamed of or would have chosen. And it takes everything.

I have felt something lately though...Something deep and compelling, almost forgotten, something pushed deep down and hidden...I feel it in that moment when he pulls me close as if I am merely an extension of himself, in that moment when a dominant personality wanders by and I push down that funny little flutter, in that moment when I am reminded that being his is not what most people believe it to be.

*I think I wrote this a few weeks ago. Dunno really because I'm pretty sure I missed a bunch of those too--I just don't know where they went. And that feeling? Yea...

For This Life

Sometimes life whispers in my ear...A voice so familiar, and I wonder if she spoke to me before my time as I now know it began...

For this life you will need

you will bleed

you will give it everything you are, were, and ever could be.

To live, to truly be alive, always knowing that one day everything you love must die

for this you will throw your soul into the fire

drown in the seas of misery

taste the tears of of your fears

feel the passion of pain

occasionally wondering if you have gone insane

anything to avoid the sands of mediocrity.

For this life

it is glorious, beautiful, obscene, sacred, degraded,

and everything in between
and for the privilege of pain
you will brave the salty seas
be torn apart in the storm
hoping that your tears will sate the parched earth.

To live
in agony
in ecstasy
desperately trying to avoid the spaces between
wherein dwells the mediocrity for which you will hold the deepest distaste
you will suffer the stars in your bones whispering
always calling you home.

For this life
you will bear witness to death
and her inevitable call
all that you love
and all that you know
will eventually travel home

Thought for the Day

Realizations

I realized something today as I was listening to this song...



All this time I thought that I was missing
a place
people
trees
things that we used to do
mountains
something we used to be
a way that things used to feel
the life that we once lived
a piece of me and what I used to be
some kind of specific set of life events or way of living...

But what I miss, why I feel like part of me is gone, like an angel found without wings, or someone missing a very large piece of their whole, is not any of those one thing, or even necessarily a combination of them all.

I miss magic. Something I never really knew I had because it was a part of me, all around me, so much of me, for my entire life.

It's not the wind, it's the whispers of magic in the air.
It's not the stars and the moon, it's the way magic dances in their beams.
It is not the people, but the general acceptance that magic is real.
It is not the dominance and submission, but the feeling of having known each other for a thousand years, having been in love a hundred times before, the knowing flowing through my bones of battles won and lost across the sands of time.

What has me all eaten up, all turned around and inside out, is the feeling of magic being pulled from my bones like wings that I never even knew I had.

Selfish Submission

I have always felt that motivation matters. Not in the sense of being a motivated person (though that matters too), but in the sense that what motivates someone to do something often matters as much as the action itself.

I have long felt that submission shouldn't occur simply for what the sub gets out of it, but I'm going to take a side trip before I land on that thought.

Recently, I have been thinking about what makes us do good things as human beings, and how that makes us good people. Or not. I came to the conclusion that I do good things because of the way it makes me feel, therefore, my drive to do good things is not necessarily based upon how people I may do good for those I have helped, but more selfishly upon the way giving that help makes Me feel.
Being an avid over-thinker (I have no time, but apparently this shit happens in your sleep if your a thought addict), I had to muse on it some more.
Humans are prone to wanting to get something out of their efforts, their interactions, the things they do. Maybe if what we're trying to "get" is a feeling, that isn't quite as selfish as it sounds. What kind of person doesn't feel good when they have done good by somebody else? What would motivate a person to do good if there was no personal sense of inner reward, the fact that sometimes it looks good to the outside world?
Maybe that is one of the things that makes a good person--the fact that providing something for another being who needs it offers a reward in the form of sensation, a feeling, a happiness with their own being.

I have long felt that my submission is selfish, and perhaps it shouldn't be, yet it is. Maybe in the ideal world, from a submissive point of view, submission is truly only all about what the dominant gets.
I have always felt that my submission is selfish because it often comes with the drive to experience how it make me feel, and is not always (by any stretch) about how it makes Him feel.
Yes, there have been many times I didn't want to. Many times that I submitted to events and experiences that I had no desire for, merely because it is what he wanted. Because submission is not about doing what you want to do when you want to do it, or about the things that come easy--it is about bending to another person's will regardless of one's inner desire for an experience. If submission was always about only doing what you wanted, it wouldn't really be submission. And it would be easy.

Ultimately, as a way of life, a mode of being, an arrangement of 24/7 existence, submitting is largely about what I get out of it. Submission is about how it makes me feel inside, under the surface, below the initial urge to rebel. Sometimes it's about how making him feel makes me feel.

Our D/s has been neglected lately. We had a fight the other day. One of those, "both late to work have to go because the facility will, unfortunately enough, come to a crashing halt without us" mornings. It sucked.
He craves sex and affection. I crave...Something else. He feels that his needs are not being met and he defines them clearly in sex and affection, often in the form of my submission. I feel tat my needs are not being met, and I cannot define them clearly.

So I submit. But this form of submission, it is not selfish for the way it make me feel. It is a bandage on a wound, a way of keeping the peace, of fending off his potential "fuck buddies", of not fighting and making it to work on time, of holding us together with a myriad of strings and old cloth-work patches.

I have come to the conclusion that, for me, real true honest from the core submission is selfish. That is when I'm truly there, always all in, handing over all that I am and bending to his surrounding will.
If my submission is not selfish, I'm not all in, not all there, have not given all that I am and all that I have.
Selfish submission makes me feel this:

That is the submission I ache for, yearn for, dream of in the dark. And I get there through my often selfish desire for that particular sensation of being.