A woman of contradictions

Once upon a time I wrote...
I did warn you that the sea reminds me of my own turbulent spirit. Inviting you to dive in one minute and slamming you against the rocks the next. Are you tough enough to weather the gales? Those violent storms?

Shakespeare wrote in 'As You Like It'
"They are in the very wrath of love, and they will together;
clubs cannot part them"

I'm a woman of contradictions. I wonder if you have the strength to bring me to my knees. Many have tried. Few have succeeded. Like water I slip from their cupped hands.

And now I am restless.
Unsatiated.

I sat tonight, candles glowing on the mantle, the moon, a shadowy orb, illuminating the night outside, and thought of this. What would it take to break through this shroud that has covered my mind with darkness? I miss the shipping forecast. I miss the dreams I had of traveling across dark waters to find my peace. I'm unable to find the words to make that connection again. I feel far from myself, the self I used to be. I want to lash out, to get in my car and drive until I'm in a place that holds none of the familiar bonds that are forcing me to be grounded.

And yet I long to be stopped. To be forced by your hands into unwilling submission. I want you prove to me that you'll never let go. To fight for me. I want to feel the leathery bond as you slip it around me, pronouncing your dominion over me.

I want you to make me feel alive again.


Transient

The shipping forecast for tonight...
There are warnings of gales in Viking North Utsire trafalgar Shannon Rockall Malin Hebrides Bailey Fair Isle Faeroes and Southeast Iceland.

Listen to the BBC Shipping Forecast with me.


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Observations From a Mall

Rotten kids. Horrible Parents. Shopping has become a nightmare.
Even Versace can't save us now.



I've been noticing it more and more lately. Perhaps it's due to the economy, the heated political environment or maybe just a cultural shift towards impatience with anything that doesn't bring immediate gratification.

This is an observation I made last week as I was setting up displays for the latest changes during Fashion Week.

The Setting: An upscale fashion store.

A mother is waiting for a fitting room. There are 6 fitting rooms and each one is occupied. She has her 3 children with her. A daughter about 12 years old. A son about 10. A little girl about 4. Mom is around 30, she has a fantastic tanning bed tan and she is in incredible shape. No doubt she keeps her personal trainer very busy. She's wearing enough diamonds and gold to give Queen Elizabeth an inferiority complex. She's carrying Dolce and Gabbana (the big blue bag, not the little one). And she's driving a gas-guzzling SUV. Her clothes are high end. The kid's clothes are high end as well. She is extremely rude to the sales staff and other patrons. She is gaudy and ostentatious; one of the patrons hand-coughs bourgeois as she walks by and others titter at the joke. However she seems blissfully oblivious to this fact. And also to the fact that she strongly resembles a ridiculous caricature of a late night TV drama character.

Mom has dragged the kids into the store so she can shop for herself. She has loaded up her arms with clothes that she wants to try on and now, a good hour or so into shopping, she is starting to get angry and impatient that she can't get into a fitting room right away. She starts to yell at the sales associate, demanding to know why there aren't more fitting rooms.

In the meantime baby is running around grabbing clothes off of racks and screaming 'I want this!', stamping her little feet and glaring at mom with an 'I dare you to say no' look on her face. Mom turns to her and says 'No. You can't have that'. Baby angrily throws the garment on the floor and goes back to the rack to grab another garment and return with it--she repeats this scenario over and over. Mom turns to big sis and yells at her 'I told you to keep an eye on her! Go get her now!' I'm thinking... It's your kid lady, you go get her.

Big sis looks overwhelmed trying to wrestle garments from baby and drags her, literally kicking and screaming, back to the fitting rooms where she promptly breaks loose and runs back out onto the sales floor.

Brother has been completely ignored during this time and he's obviously been trained that negative attention is better than no attention at all. He's been knocking over displays and taking swipes at big sis while she wrestles with baby. Mom yells at him to 'cut it out or else'.

Mom demands to see a manager. When the manager arrives mom starts yelling at her that she needs a fitting room now! Right now. She starts to curse. She wants to know what's wrong with 'you people'.

As her agitation mounts the kids become more agitated as well. They're all angry, stressed out. Lashing out both physically and verbally. Big sis looks like she's going to cry, and she is becoming increasingly rough in her handling of baby who is now slapping, kicking and pulling sis' hair to try to escape her restraint. Brother has School Bully written all over him. He's actually enjoying the negative attention he's getting for his acts of violence. He reaches over and thunks baby on the back of the head with his thumb and middle finger, making her scream like someone has poked her eye out. Big sis says 'you're a jerk!' He mimics back at her 'You're a jerk.' in a nasally voice that makes me want to pop him one. Then smack! He slaps big sis in the face while she tries to hang onto the squirming, kicking baby. Mom shouts 'I mean it! You're both going to get it!'

When a fitting room finally comes available mom turns to the fitting room attendant and says 'Watch them while I try these on'. Not a request. An order.

My jaw almost hits the floor.

She chooses to bring the children. She chooses to overload her arms with clothes to try on, at least a good hours worth of clothes changing, and now the fitting room attendant is expected to be her babysitter.

The fitting room attendant declines politely, explaining that she can't be responsible for the kids.

Mom begins another cursing fit, throws the clothes on the floor next to baby's rejected wish list, and starts yelling for the kids, with another severe outburst at big sis for not keeping baby under control. She storms out of the store screaming about what a horrible place this is and that she'll never shop here again. She's going to call corporate and complain. She stalks out to her SUV, her face distorted into a mask of insanity as she screams and yells unheard instructions at poor big sis who is trying to wrangle baby into a car seat.


The Aftermath:

When she was safely out of the parking lot and on her way back to her happy life, I walked over to the fitting room attendant, she looked up at me sheepishly, with tears in her eyes from the verbal beating she had just taken, I felt bad for her. I let loose a few choice names for 'crazy mom', telling her not to worry about it. If anything we should feel sorry for those kids. She's creating monsters that she's going to have to deal with later on. Her life must be horrid. Can you imagine being that stressed out all of the time? And teaching her kids to get that stressed out whenever they don't immediately get their way?

The ladies waiting patiently in line for their fitting rooms chimed in with their own support...
'I don't take my kids shopping with me. It's not fair to them...'
'She can afford that purse, but she can't afford a babysitter?'
'I've got news for you. That purse is a knock off.'
'It's not your fault honey, that woman is nuts...'
And then a woman who was old enough to have finished raising her kids said the most profound thing.
'I wonder why people like that even have kids? Some sort of self gratification I guess.'

Oh yeah.
Definitely.

I can't think of anything that will guarantee that your kids will grow up to be frustrated, miserable people more than teaching them that they, for whatever reason, should have an expectation of immediate gratification. That their wants and desires should become someone else's priority, simply because that's what they want. Now. And they absolutely should not be made to wait.

I see similar behaviors every day in different forms. From the grocery store to vacation spots, I see kids stressed out because they cannot get what they want immediately, and I see their parents and how they behave, how their stress and frustration is passed on to their children. It won't be long before those chickens come home to roost.

If all kids grow up to think that others should acquiesce to them, they are bound to live lives of frustration and anger. Because no one is going to give them what they want all of the time. Particularly not others who have been raised to think that what they want, they should get as well.

It is a vicious circle.



Disclaimer: This story is based on actual events, however the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent. If you see yourself or any of your family members in these characters, I can promise you that I probably was not writing this about you. And you should seek family therapy as soon as possible.

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."
Winston Churchill

This was originally published on Blogcritics. Heading there to answer comments.

I hate and I love

These chains that bind me are not of metal nor silk.
They have been forged by my own hand. My own heart.
I know I should go and yet I cannot move.

Why is it that the more cruel he behaves the more I fold myself into him? Why is it that one sharp word from his lips can send me into the darkest of places? And yet every word from my own lips is of love.

There is most certainly betrayal here. But is it his betrayal or mine? And who is being betrayed? Does he betray me or do I betray myself?

Thank you Catullus for seeing the truth in contradictions.



I HATE and I love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask.
I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.
~~Gaius Valerius Catullus

I knew a ferryman before.
But he was not so old as you.
He spoke from unembittered lips,
With careless eyes on the bright sea
One day, such bitter words to me
As age and wisdom never knew.
Sappho Crosses the Dark River into Hades
~~Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Rain

Tonight I sat with the french doors open and listened to the sound of the rain.
I lit candles around the room and turned on the stereo.

Fade Into You by Mazzy Star was playing softly.
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath thats true

I poured a glass of wine and settled down into the couch to listen, pulling my throw blanket up close. The turbulance of the last week has left me feeling drained. And although I can still feel the brush of your lips on my mouth I feel lonely. Disconnected.

I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth

There's something comforting in the sound of rain. It takes me to a place of peace. A place where I feel more myself. I've always found comfort in water, the sound of it. Whether it's the crash of angry waves against a rocky shore or the bubbling rush of a hidden spring, I feel it inside me. A soothing re-connection with my metaphysical soul, as if I am merely a simulacrum of a woman, lost without my pelagic spirit.

Fade into you
I think its strange you never knew

I drank my wine and listened to the rain drops beat their own particular rhythm on the flagstones of the patio outside.

Tomorrow I think. Tomorrow we'll be better. We'll let the rain wash away the past and begin again.

Vampire

A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.
Claire Booth Luce

Isn't that what we all strive for?
To be seen by our lover as a better person than we see ourselves?
We hope that they can look beyond all of those idiosyncrasies, those things we cannot abide in ourselves, and see instead the person we wish to be. That they may help us become more like that which we desire to be.

So why does it always seem that women get the short end of this stick? That we are supposed to tolerate constant comparisons to embryonic twits that leave us only more ambiguous, more fearful to gaze at ourselves? Smaller, diminished in some way, in order to keep him happy? While he grows and blossoms under our loving touch.

De Beauvoir --I think?-- says that it's women only that possess the amazing power of reflecting a man's image back to him doubled in size...
and only half of her own.

That's how I am feeling today.
Half of myself.
The least important half of a happy couple.
My first instinct is to beat myself up for feeling this way. Some form of my vicious hatred of self pity. If you know me at all you know that I don't tolerate antagonism well. Yes, not one of my better qualities. I do not suffer fools either. And if you want to go rounds with me you'd better do it wearing armor because I like to fight. I didn't come by my former name accidently. I earned it.

And so my first instinct is to lash out when I'm feeling any form of self-loathing. Lash at myself, lash at anyone within scratching distance. Never unjustly though - it does take a lot to piss me off.

But protecting loved ones is one point where I never hesitate - and my wrath is awesome. But with every drop of blood drawn I become less. And he grows. I swear love is leeching. It sucks the blood from my very veins sometimes. I give my strength and once given it can never be restored. That part gone.

And would he prefer that? To see his lover diminished? No. That's what he finds attractive. So when she has drained her very spirit for him he looks upon her as weak. And he must look for someone new and vibrant. Someone to feed the appetite of a strong man like himself.

I find it sickening.
And gross.

And I will staunch that flow and restore myself.
No one may take from me and I have no need.

Early Hours

Night has given birth to a new morning. The faintest light has begun to creep against my window shades.

This is the hour when I miss you most. My body is still tingling from my dreams of you. I can still feel your hands on me. Those same hands that touched, first tentatively, then with growing urgency. I wonder if I would feel this longing for you if you were here. Would I pull away from you? Afraid to lose myself in your touch. Would I fear to let myself go and lose myself completely?

Sometimes the thought of it makes me shudder. I don't know that I can get myself back if I dare to venture into the depths that you have promised.

Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll just stop breathing.

Lost.
Only you would be able to bring me back.

But I think that you would not.


Helpless as a burning city,
how can I ignore that the extremes
of pleasure are fire storms
that leave a vacuum into which
dangerous feelings (tenderness,
affection, l o v e) may rush
like gale force winds
You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop
~~ Marge Piercy



Technorati Tags: intimacy, lovers, passion, relationships, romance, woodnotwood

Broken House - A Parable

The facade, once faded green, has now been painted a blissful, institutional yellow.

I drive by on my way to my new home. This new home doesn't quite fit me. I feel like a man who has been forced to walk barefooted and considers himself lucky to have found someone else's discarded shoes. I know I should feel grateful to be shod at all, and yet, these shoes do not fit me, they were not made for me and no matter how hard I try I cannot force myself into feeling that these are now my shoes. They are good shoes. Well, good enough shoes anyway... they are not my shoes. However long I may wear them, they will never bring me comfort, only a blister on my heel to remind me that I should be grateful. I force myself to feel grateful.

I see the pink babydoll buggy laying abandoned in the front yard. The garage door is half open revealing a sterile orderliness. Tools hung in their right places on a peg board. Boxes stacked neatly against one wall. God does like a neat tidy package, perhaps that's where we went wrong? Too frenetic in our desires, too much in love with life, too chaotic in our security, we filled it with our loud voices and the things we had acquired in our travels, our music and all of the miscellany that comes with years. From elementary school finger paintings to high school year books, we crammed it all in--knowing that this was our home. Or would someday be. Perhaps that is why? Because we had the audacity to assume our future.

I have seen them of course. I know them. They know me. But not in a way that's personal, not intimately, like old friends who share their darkest secrets. Yet they do know my darkest secret, they've glimpsed a part of my shame. Without this we might have been friends. Might have walked our children to school together or stood by our mailboxes and chatted about growing tomatoes or trimming the hedges. As it is now I feel the sting of red in my cheeks whenever they approach, I move away quickly lest they recognize my stain.

Still, they are good people. They took the time to ask other neighbors where we might have gone. They gathered the mail that came in our name in little rubber-banded bundles and saved it for us. When they found us they gave us the mail, and some of the items that haste had made us leave behind. Important things, a baby picture here, a book that showed our fervent adoration in its well-worn cover and broken binding. Other things that they felt might have significance to a family with children, they would know these items, recognize them immediately, they are a family as well. I know they are good people. I hope for them that they find the shelter and security that we could not hold onto. I hope this house, this bright, friendly, yellow house, does not become an ami de cour as it did for us.

I drive up the street to my new house and feel the blister of my unfitting shoes.
I force myself to feel grateful.


For my house and thy house no help shall we find
Save thy house and my house -- kin cleaving to kind;
If my house be taken, thine tumbleth anon.
If thy house be forfeit, mine followeth soon
The Houses ~~Rudyard Kipling



Technorati Tags: home, mourning, literature, woodnotwood

Vamp!

The bath has been run, towels warmed and set aside. I lay immersed, my body glowing with electric heat as I hear his movements in the bedroom, the anticipation growing. I climb from the tub and dry myself. Walking into the bedroom I find them there waiting for me. Laid out with hands that know anticipation as great as my own. I drop my towel where I stand and move to the bed. I see then, his need for me.

Black. Lace. Garters.



Hands moving over me. I feel his need.
He is insatiable. His desire for me knows no contentment.
The need is a vacuous space begging to be filled. A void that screams angrily at its privation. Hunger that grows with each taste, each delicious nibble, until it becomes more insatiable with every tantalizing bite. Then it is. Ravenous. That something unfulfilled in the darkness of our long night.

Tonight is his choice.
Whatever he desires.
He will be fulfilled.

Every woman should look upon herself as a work of art, unfinished, unmolded.

At the start of every day, at the beginning of the evening, she is recreated. Women are creatures of diversity. We crave romance and creativity in our love lives. The one thing I think we all have in common is some need to feel sexy, to feel desired, and desirable.

I went searching through the toy stores and on-line catalogues for negligees and other delicious wearables that I thought might bring a little excitement to the bedroom. My biggest disappointment was that most of these stores use waif-like models to peddle their wares and, honestly, I'm a busty girl with a full figure to match. I wanted to see what naughty things look like on 'normal' women. I always check here first because they use models with different body types.




Personally I have found that the best way to get what I want is to take him with me. There is something incredibly erotic about wandering the aisles of a store, fingers touching lace and feathers, asking him what he likes. Sharing those things that turn him on is as important as finding the things that I like. And in truth I always get more when he goes with me. Once he has helped me pick out the outfits he likes, especially if I've had a chance to model them for him, I have found that cost is no obstacle when his libido is kicked into high gear.

Then I let him choose what I'll wear for him.
After all, this was shopping with purpose. Just whisper in his ear 'I'm going to go take a hot shower. You come pick out what you like and leave it on the bed for me. Tonight I'm all yours.'

Here's a great site to fill your head with fun ideas for fetish and fantasy.
trashy.com


Technorati Tags: Love, Intimacy, Relationships, Couples, Romance, Lingerie, Sex Shop, Lovers, Fetish, Beautiful

Meaning

Let me tell you this once
(I will not be able to say it again):
I have lost the meaning of words.
Heavy, they ripped
away from the sounds,
fell into cracked ground.
Naming~~ Nancy Mair




Lately it seems as if words have lost their meaning. Where once there was a wealth, seemingly endless, now there is a dearth. I feel emptied and exhausted.

I do wonder about the words we choose to use in our relationships. Words that have been uttered so many times that their meanings have lost any specific truth in our world. These words designed to hurt, we use again and again. Because they achieve a desired result. Their concrete meaning is no longer considered, they connect only to some Pavlovian reaction that has been learned over time.

And the words of love that used to penetrate? I long to feel their power again.
A wrenching power that could effect me in so many ways. Have I gone numb?
Have words lost their power over me. Have they lost their meaning?

Or am I lost?

HNT - Play Thing

I was a clockwork doll that night,
and I turned left and I turned right
and when I fell and broke to bits,
they recomposed my wax and wits.

A Clockwork Doll
~~Dalia Ravikovitch


Time continues on. Bridges have been burned and reforged out of cindered remains. Some have fallen away, whilst others have rebounded. And in deep waters that run beneath the ever-flowing current I see reflected my simulacrum. The waves move my unmoving expression.

But it is merely a trick; this illusion of life.

The Spoils of War

I follow in shadow, my eyes averted from the light.

No rope binds me now, my hands have been given willingly. I follow in silence, my wrists need no tether. No ropes to bind. Not of red, the color of the blood upon my knees, from crawling in pitiful sublimation. Nor of blue steel, the color of eyes that watch and stare without mercy at the carnage upon the field.

In battle the spoils go to the victor, and what would the conqueror ask of me? To kneel and acquiesce? To take my own blade and, with all of the dignity left that I can muster, to throw myself upon its silver shaft and thus end it all? Broken. Destroyed. No more than a mere ghost amongst the wreckage.

Do I take the blade from you, when you lack courage to thrust it in yourself? Do I smile at you and thrust it into my own breast, as Arria did when her husband's resolve faltered. Do I show you how it should be done? Do I plunge it inside my own heart, and hand it back to you with a smile, saying, "Paetus, it does not hurt. It is what you are about to do that hurts."

I do wonder what Cleopatra was feeling as she pulled into the harbor at Tarsus, her sails full of perfume; a glimpse of thigh that suggested something far from the war that was on her mind. Did she see the futility of battling? Did she see her own certain defeat at the hands of a man more powerful than she could ever have imagined? And, in seeing this, did she feel the need to conquer? In the ways that a woman needs to conquer?

What did she feel as Antony slid between her thighs? What desire in this bold new lover, the conqueror of her own empire? All the power of lover and foe? Did she feel the powers of Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Thebes, Syria, Assyria... Egypt... in the touch of his hand? Did she desire him thusly, as her conqueror? Or was this just some trick of the mind? That, although her defeat was imminent, she could still hold some power over this foe? Some ability to sway him, even if only by the pull of flesh, the passion of battle.

Did he realize that he was breaking the last Pharoah of Egypt? Destroying all that came before her?

What did she see when she gazed upon his face?
Is it the same face that every woman sees in her victor?
My lover, my enemy.
Ruthless, conniving and ever deceitful in his irresistable charm.

And did he sincerely believe that she would betray him? That she could betray him? The woman who took up arms to battle by his side?

Yes. He did. And brought them both down in his vengeance.

As we all do eventually.
Ruin perfection.
Ruin what could have been the perfect love affair.
We are doomed.



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Fade

Musical Monday

In every new touch there is the memory of another touch left behind. How can one's skin not remember the first time it was possessed entirely by a sang-froid finger brushing against it: precise, unintended, erotic, scarring? That first touch has burned and seared itself into the memory; a willful branding, begged for silently in a moment of passion.

Every new touch contains its own stigma: fear. The fear that it cannot be unfelt; it can never be undone. That on nights long and dark, the touch will rise once more and force back into memory that which can no longer be had. A certainty that no other touch will ever feel as good. And that the feeling cannot be sustained. In the end, this memory of touch will be all there is, and there is some part of the soul that knows it will be left emptier for ever having felt it.

And the mind begs the body to turn away, to save itself. But the body knows no sensibilty, only sensuality. It begs to be branded, just so. Possessed.

Shadow

I hear a voice on the wind. A mere whisper that ebbs and flows, the harder I listen for it the further it recedes into the darkness of night's chaos. And so I ask, did you need me? I feel you there, your hand pulling at mine. Urging me into some response.

But when I do you run.

Do you fear me? Do you think there is some 'thing' I would have of you that you simply cannot part with? I guess this is true. There is some part of you that I would have. I would have it and never give it back. And I can promise you this, once had, you would never be able to be un-had. That part of you I would own. Unsatisfied with another - she of that weak embrace and mewling whine, that pillar of false virtue and strength that crumbles without constant reassurance.

I need no reassurance.
I am sure.
You have shown me time and again that you need me to see you. Your tugging at me to get my attention, negative or positive, it matters not, as long as I have looked and you know I have. And then you melt away again, a shadow that steps back into the night, only to re-appear in another form, another shape.

I see you there. I do.
And I am waiting.
Waiting for you to step fully into the light and make your demands. Tell me what it is that you need of me.