So it begins...

now i am wounded.

too many of the bloggers i have grown to love have pulled away - not that i would ever question their right to do so! but for reasons that wound me.

i lurk. i don't comment on blogs often, unless i have something to say that i think no one else will say. not to disparage RG's article (essay? post?) about comments, but my tendency has always been to the wordy and dramatic, and this is your blog, folks, not mine.

but i will say the things no one else says - maybe we all think them, but they get swallowed up in our worries and concerns. so here's to saying the unpopular things.

(Real content begins now.)

ladies and gentlemen (and non-ladies and non-gentle-men) of the blogging community, i place before you this simple truth:

we have no right telling you what to do.

i'll say it again, and i'll use small words, so we'll (the readers) be certain to understand: WE DO NOT GET TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO.

you open your hearts to us. you open your thoughts, your sketchbooks, your journals and diaries, your very dreams - and even those are both light and dark - to our prying eyes. we are intruders. to borrow an image from OG, we slip into your rooms at night... open your journals, sketchbooks, computers... read everything we can, some of poring over every word time and again; some of us browsing until we find whatever phrase, image, or thought spikes that thing inside us; some of us brushing lightly along the surface and some of us nearly stalkers... and then we go our ways. some of us scribble encouraging little post-it notes; some make corrections in red ink on the margin and in the text; some of us say nothing at all, retreating into our own little worlds with whatever we have gleaned, drawing it out to huddle over it in the darkness, like Smeagol and his Precious; and some of us... well, some of us feel it appropriate to make requests, or even demands.

and that is why i am writing. i am pulling back the curtains on my mind and heart now, expressly to offer a little support to those whom i have loved, albeit silently.

we the readers are guests here. we are visitors, we are... spectators, that's it, on the happenings of your life and the imaginings of your heart and mind. it is not our place to tell you what to do. we have no right to do so. it is one thing entirely to laud an exceptional work (i've done it myself, tonight even!) and ask for more of the same in a courteous fashion. it's another altogether to demand reading material, as though we were trapped in the bathroom at a relative's house, shouting down the hall for a replacement roll of tissue.

we are not your leaders. we are not even your drivers. we are followers, nothing more, and for many rather less. we are observers, and as such we do not have any right of command. we may offer opinions, we may hold out encouragement, but we do not get to drive the bloody bus.

sometimes your musings hypnotise us. sometimes your sketches arouse us. your journals may bore us (well, it's true) occasionally... and sometimes your dreams frighten us. but they are not our thoughts or dreams, and therefore we do not get to command them.

(i know, i'm harping. i do that. i'm amazed i've managed to stay on one subject for any length of time, honestly.)

i'll say this loudly. IT IS YOUR LIFE. you are graciously (or exhibitionistically, if that's a word) letting us in around the edges, to know what you do and think and write and dream. but it is your life. for the love of all that is holy, live it! don't let our approval or lack thereof hold you back. trust me, we don't want the daily grind. we all live it. we don't come to you for it. we come to you to be shaken out of ourselves for a moment, whether that be through arousal or fear, joy or sorrow, or any other number of things. we come to you. we come for your arousal, your tears, your anger, your sexuality, your dreams, your intellect...

don't be anything other than what you are for us.

And to be slightly more specific, don't let us stop you from living. you want to go and jump off a cliff? i will encourage you to either have water at the bottom or to be wearing a parachute or bungee cord, but - jump! you want to engage in illegal activity? i won't break your laws for you, but if that's what you need to do, then do it. (although the whole safe/sane/consensual thing is in play, and abuse is abuse. but that's only because it affects other people.) want to participate in risky sexual behavior? far be it from me to stop you. be aware of your consequences, because they're not my responsibility either, but make your choices and then go and do it.

we are all bound to something, by something. i am bound to my Sir by chains of my own making, and bound to my life by my attachment and lack of enlightenment, and bound to my situation by my fear... you get the idea. but i strive to break those chains, or most of them anyway, so that i can fly free. i have a life, and i am determined to live it. and so should you be. if there is any one thing that i feel free to tell you - inasmuch as i give orders - it would be that. live your life. for the sake of all that is right and good and beautiful, and even for the sake of that which is dark and sometimes not good and a bit frightening - fly!

(i wrote this for those listed below. here - this is a little of what i have thought for you, and of you...)

Daemon - fantastic writer. fabulous. but a man, and a very dominant man at that. i will not follow him. i cannot follow him. i cannot go where he goes. (for a lot of reasons, but a big one is - wow. can we say addictive?) but i will stay over here and observe. i will marvel at the glimpse he occasionally provides into a mind that fascinates and thrills me. and i will long, in my quiet way, for more of the same - but if he cannot do that any longer, then i will be quiet, and appreciate the gifts i've already received.

RG - you are my mystery. you're female, you live in ... where is it again? Thailand, i think? i remember, faintly, as though it were a dream, reading something you wrote about being a sort of family black sheep, as it were. it whispers behind my ear, so that i want to turn to hear it better... but there is nothing there. i don't remember. but you are the first erotic writer i ever found out here on the web, and i love you well. you are my Mata Hari - my exotic dream - my window into a world that is simultaneously as rich as any fairy tale and as freeze-dried as any monday-thru-friday-nine-to-five-corporate-job. (which is all one word because it's all one blurred-together feeling.) i keep reading other people's fiction, but... well, cue up a little Sinead, and know that "nothing compares to you"...

Discerning Dom - another wonderful writer who's touched my - well, no, 'touched my heart' is not at all appropriate here. that's not my heart at all. ;-> but he's certainly pushed my buttons on occasion, and done it in an intelligent and witty fashion. and, good lord, the things that man gets up to... it's enough to make a girl tremble. and be hideously, hideously jealous...

OG - how i envy you sometimes! when i am older than i am now, i want to be like you. in the strong ways, of course. ;-> you are so strong. you inspire me. i write this (of course for all of us, but) mostly for you. literary, lush, seductive, womanly, submissive... i can only dream of some of that.

(i've just noticed how i'm speaking directly to the women but speaking of the men. interesting...)

I have grown to love you all, and i wish you the best in whatever comes.