#gratitudeNow:Know Thyself

For a while now I’ve been contemplating my relationships to other people.  It’s both a deep and wide sort of thing to explore. Who do I connect with? How does that connection occur, and evolve? Why do I make a connection? What does such a connection mean? 

I don’t have any ready pithy answers for you. My connections to others are varied in a myriad of ways.

They do all have one thing in common: me. 

There’s a Lao-tzu quote I’m rather fond of which is front and center in this particular contemplation: 

“Mastering other’s is strength, mastering yourself is true power.”  (Pictures a man in a tug of war between brain and heart, being ripped in two)

It is damn hard to understand what you feel and why you feel it.   I’m often very tough on myself in any number of ways, including relationships.  

I often stumble into a binary of being in the right or wrong in my relationships. Am I being a good partner, husband, friend, employee, business owner?

But it’s not that simple. And part of that is that I have to consider myself.  

That can be challenging. Plus, ultimately, I have to do that considering by myself.  It comes from me, and it’s for me.

There’s this particular scene in The Matrix that speaks to this process and its value.

Today that scene is very much on my mind. The way the Oracle describes Neo’s knowing he’s the One is a kind of mindfulness. She says it’s like being in love.  

Bingo.  

I know my love for others from experience of it .  That means I know what it’s like to love vs to be in love. They’re very different things.  And it means that when it comes to relationships, there aren’t any hard and fast rules, no black and white hats.

That’s a very helpful thing to realize. 

Compassion for the self is challenging but worthwhile.  

#gratitudeNow:I'm not a solo act

So, I've been writing new erotica for a few months now, over at my patreon, https://www.patreon.com/makoallen.  It's exciting stuff.  I have a lot of control and freedom there, to experiment and to innovate.

I write stories, and record audio of them too.

But, I have help.  Part of those innovations I'm talking about is working with a female narrator, my friend Suzie Jenkins.

And another is working with a brilliant illustrator, Jenn Solo.  She's amazing.  The way she illustrates my stories is  a sort of smutty, erudite New Yorker Cartoon style.

Take a look.

She's so great.  I'm thrilled to have her as a creative partner.

#gratitudeNow: Together Breakfast

I’ve been friends with Andrea for over a decade.  If you listen to the podcast, you’ve heard her. (She’s on a number of them including my all time favorite episode, number nine.)​

Andrea and I have this wonderful thing we do for one another.  We are sort of philosophical sounding boards for each other.​

She lives far away, in Michigan, and we don’t see one another very often. But here’s how this process goes down. We won’t talk for months, sometimes even years, and then out of the blue, reach for one another again. Sometimes I initiate that, sometimes she does.​

Then, when we talk, all the time and distance just fall away. And, weirdly, we each find that whatever it is that’s front and center in our life or mind, whatever thing it is that we are working on, the other person has something wise to say about it, or has just been going through it themselves.​

Which is also why we are ​tremendously ​good at calling each other on our own negative habits. We will say to each other, “so, how’s that working for you?”  This is ​always​ followed by the person asked laughing (a little bitterly) and feeling grateful. ​

My breakfast is on the left.  

Yesterday was one of those times. Even though I was here in Virginia, and she was in Michigan, we had breakfast together. 

We laughed together, ate eggs together, and caught up.  I’m so grateful for my friendship with Andrea. I love her very much.  

#gratitudeNow: On Cats and Submissives

This is my boycat, Yang.  I've had him and his sister, Yin almost 13 years now.  They've been with me their whole lives.

There's this routine they do with me, every single morning.  Part of that routine has to do with when I get out of the shower, and I'm getting dressed.  I lay my clothes out on the bed, sit down and begin to dress.  

Yin sits nearby and begins to meow at me, urgently, so I don't forget that this time is also, crucially, mere moments before the high pinnacle of the day, the moment at which I give them wet cat food for breakfast.

Yang plays a part in this ritual too.  He sits next to me, and butts his head against me, rubbing it into my arm, my back, my side, my leg, any part of me he can get at, in an earnest effort to let me know, just in case I didn't know, how very much he loves me, how great he thinks I am, how he wishes me joy and sucess and good fortune all day, and... to not forget to give him and his sister their breakfast.

I turned to him this morning, and petted him, and reassured him, "Oh buddy," I said, "I know, I already know."

Yang looked at me earnestly and kept on head butting me.

This is when I was struck with a powerful epiphany.  There is a giant venn overlap between my cats, and my own submissive tendencies.

My cats are beautiful, graceful, powerful creatures.  They can run fast, leap high, (granted, not as fast nor as high as they used to), are alert, clever, wholly magnificent creatures. At the same time, they are neurotic, insecure, peculiar, and very funny.  No matter how many times (thousands) we have repeated this morning ritual, they are never blasé about it.  Each morning they're this heady mixture of anxious, nervous, fearful and excited for their breakfast.  They go from graceful to goofball.

I am just like this about the things that Missy and Alissa do with and to me.  

Every time Missy is going to spank me, or I think I might need a spanking, I become this hesitant, excited version of myself.  

Every time I want Alissa to change my diaper, I rub against her like one of my cats, get all clingy and up in her business.

At the prospect of physical intimacy it's like this switch flips in my head, and all the other things I am recede, fade.  My lifelong obsession with writing? Off.  My daily practice of mindful contemplation?  Nowhere.  

I broadcast to my partners, loudly, about these pending and very necessary things.  The familiar dance we are potentially about to do again becomes EVERYTHING.  In that moment, what I am with them, to them, it's all that I am.

Powerful.

It gives me maybe just a little more patience with the cats, and with myself.

#gratitudeNow: I shall project a world

A loooong time ago, I read this amazing book, The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon.  It's this crazy story, about a woman, Oedipa Maas, who maybe gets involved in a giant conspiracy.

I read the book over 20 years ago, and it's left an indelible mark on my soul.  It's at times funny, frightening, and sort of crazy making.  

One of my favorite quotes from the book is something Oedipa says when she first begins to unearth this conspiracy.  "Shall I project a world?"

That is, will she take these several disparate "facts" she's stumbled across, and knit them together into a cohesive narrative, use them to extrapolate and form something concrete, go from vague notion to some degree of certainty?

Spoiler alert, she does.

One of the reasons this quote has stuck with me for so long, and so strongly, is that it's a pretty spot on description of part of my writing process.  When I begin to write about characters, I imagine them, gradually seeing more and more details of how they are, who they are, how they live.  Often that means I learn things about their past, their family and friends, their living conditions.  There's a huge amount that goes on "off screen" for my characters, that informs how they act, and the choices they make.

This house, right here.

This morning I was working on a new Cam & Eileen story, "Kiss The Cook", for my patreon site.  One of the things I realized was that I needed to know more about where they lived.  I had this vague idea of about Eileen's place, overlooking Kerry Park, in Seattle.  But today, I actually got online, and found the house itself.

I also found the small, affordable place Cam was living in too.  Knowing the two homes helps me to know both the characters better, too.  

I heard this thing once, someone said about being bipedal.  Part of the definition of being a biped is having two feet, and using them to walk upon the ground.  The ground a biped walks upon is as much a part of how they are defined, as the feet with which they walk upon it.

I just love this process, this discovery.  It's a gourmet sort of pretending.  These people, their lives, where and how they live are very, very real to me.  I'm grateful for the experience of working with them.