I did it!

Damn . . . one entire calendar year (plus) without posting!

I never thought of neglecting a blog as a way of measuring time, but looking and seeing that My last post was November of 2010 really kind of put 2011 into a totally different light.

Cliched as it might be, 2011 really did fly by . . . and I thought about the blog many times. There is a Lenora X story out there in need of an ending. There is Journey Down, which I intended to be a long, frequently-added-to story. Funny/stupid things still happen to Me . . . I want to share those things. And of course there are a lot of thoughts about D/s, music, politics, and life in general that constantly occur to Me and which deserve to live in print.

Why haven't I posted, then?

I honestly don't know. I'll go with the old standby that having a life is incompatible with blogging regularly.

No one can prove I don't have a life!

Belonging And Not Belonging

"I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
Gonna free fall out into nothin’
Gonna leave this world for a while"

From "Free Fallin'" Tom Petty

Sometimes a thing just . . . hits you a certain way. You're not expecting it, and an insight, or a lesson, or just a new way of appreciating something just falls into your lap.

I've heard "Free Fallin" plenty of times. Tonight, driving home form work I heard it again and it was . . . different, somehow. I listened to that last verse, quoted, above, and I felt, much more deeply than ever before, Petty's alienation. And my own.

I've long had the thought . . . that the world is very broadly made up of just two groups of people: Those who belong and those who don't. By that I mean: those who are able to just go along and get along, adn those who don't. The former group never seem particularly unhappy, or stressed; the latter group never seem to be fully happy, totally relaxed, 100% at ease.

When I heard those lyrics tonight, it really crystallized it for Me. It was one of those rare and wonderful times when a song in a moment transports one to some other place, a place of immediately heightened understanding. An understanding that can only be described as bodily.

And from "Free Fallin" I went right to "You Don't Know How It Feels":

"But let me get to the point, let's roll another joint

And turn the radio loud, I'm too alone to be proud
You don't know how it feels
You don't know how it feels to be me"

One powerful thing about the belong/don't belong division is how obviously and strongly it cuts across all of the other divisions in life. Sex, race, religion, economic standing, gay or straight, kinky or vanilla . . . no accident of birth or life circumstance insulates us from belonging or not belonging.

Another powerful thing about this divide is how easy it is to recognize in people. We can meet someone for the first time, and within minutes, if we are looking for it -- and sometimes when we're not -- we know which side of the divide they fall on.

And, as far as I can tell, it's more or less impossible to "switch sides" in this divide.

That this divide is so universal, so easily recognized, and very hard to cross leads Me to logically conclude (or at least expect) that it must have some utility.

But . . . what utility, exactly? And what does any of this have to do with any aspect of D/s?

Well, for Me at least, knowing about it, thinking about it, swimming in it . . . revelatory musical discoveries about it -- don't help. To "not belong" feels just as bad when it feels bad . . . and retains its sour goodness when it feels good.

I wonder if D/s couples from opposite sides of the divide are a good match? For that matter, perhaps people from opposite sides of the divide make good (or no good) vanilla couples?

The way it feels to Me -- I couldn't imagine being intimately involved with someone who was happy-go-lucky, totally at ease with life. What would we talk about? But for others, that difference, extreme as it is, could be just the thing . . . I can see two people complementing each other like that.

For right now I don't have any overwhelming insight. For today, to have been reminded so powerfully, so totally, of who I am and where I stand on the side of this massive existential divide, was enough.

Let's Talk About Smoking

It's Day 8 of the plan to quit smoking, and the second day without any cigarettes at all, having stepped down sharply over the first 6 days.

Perversely enough, I've found that talking about smoking seems to help rather than make it more difficult.

So, some random observations:

1. What is it with these women (it's always women) who are able to only smoke during Happy Hour? Everyone's been at Happy Hour with one of these girls -- they smoke 17 cigarettes (all bummed of course) over four hours of drinking, then go back to their normal non-smoking lives and don't smoke again until two months later at Happy Hour again. WTF? Someone explain that one to Me. If I wasn't smoking, then smoked that many cigarettes in one night, I'd wake up addicted and pick right up the next day. Sigh.

2. There is one gigantic drawback to quitting smoking. And that is this: People Stink. When you smoke habitually, it dulls your sense of smell to some degree. Only when you stop smoking do you realize that not being able to smell everything all the time is actually a blessing. It's a nasty stinky smelly world out there -- a smoking habit provides a nice little buffer, one that you don't appreciate until it's gone.

3. A little research tells Me that in the early 1960s, a pack of cigarettes and a gallon of gas cost just about the same: 28 cents. There is something quietly romantic about that little factoid.

4. To be honest, I will miss smoking a lot. I understand all the reasons there are to quit, and I know that quitting is absolutely the right thing to do. But I was never a social smoker. I wasn't someone who smoked to have something in My hand. I love it. Certain cigarettes . . . that first one in the morning, the one after a good meal, the one after great sex . . . they're soooooo good. There's no describing them. They can make smoking the moral equivalent of shooting heroin, they can tax it half out of existence, they can restrict it and restrict it and restrict it, they can marginalize smokers all they want, but a lot of people smoke and keep smoking not solely because they're addicted.

5. I do worry about what happens when the pointy-heads do finally make smoking illegal. There are three big issues I see:
A. How will government make up the lost tax revenue? Be prepared to pay a lot more in gasoline and alcohol taxes.
B. Prohibition transformed organized crime groups from local crews that operated neighborhood by neighborhood into global powerhouses who were then able to increase their wealth geometrically again with narcotics. In more recent times the War on Drugs has enriched the cartels beyond anyone's wildest dreams. It's Rule #1: Supply appears in response to demand. Making cigarettes illegal doesn't lessen the demand, and there are plenty of people willing to supply them without having to worry about legal restrictions, quality control, etc. And then the government gets no tax revenues and still has the health-care costs.
C. The tobacco industry employs a lot of Americans. I don't know if the international market will be enough to keep the US tobacco industry going. It's important to remember that even industries we don't like contribute greatly to the economy.

6. OK, very quick very corny very necessary pep talk. If you think you can't quit -- you absolutely can. I know I can, and I am. You can too. Really. I don't have any magic answers but anyone who wants to know how I'm going about it can e-mail and I'll gladly share.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I needed that.

(My tanks to tasha for helping Me develop some of the ideas in this post.) KAHTATUS.

Brief (Errr . . . ) Update

1. Big News! For Me, anyway . . . I am into My fifth day of quitting smoking. From close to a pack a day down to three cigarettes yesterday, and today might very well be the "zero" day.

I'm not too cranky, considering. The biggest problems have been the wanting to eat everything in sight and having My sleep/wake cycle completely thrown off. But, it's all temporary and all for the best.


2. The current Lenora X story rolls on . . . with luck (and better alertness) another episode will get posted this weekend. Once again, My thanks to tasha for doing such s great job on the fiction web page. Oh, and yes, will get the older Lenora X stories posted there too . . . soon.


3. I haven't been posting a lot aside from detective story chapters lately, and that's mainly because nothing much inspires Me of late in the D/s theory and philosophy arena. It's odd, but it happens from time to time . . . last night, I surfed blogs for over an hour, starting with My link list and going far afield, reading a lot of posts and comments . . . and finding nothing vaguely inspiring. I don't think it's any sudden decrease in the insightfulness or creativity of My fellow bloggers; it's just that . . . "stuff happens." In the meantime, thankfully, there are the Lenora X stories.


4. I, along with many others, note with sadness the passing of Freya's House of Dreams. I wasn't terribly surprised, I have to admit. Freya's wonderful blog was showing the signs of impending cessation -- her entries had become intermittent, and had a perfunctory feeling about them. I wish her all the best in her endeavors, and will miss her writing there tremendously.


5. OK, I've come to the realization that link-whoring in and of itself it not enough. In looking around at other blogs, and seeing how popular some are, I've come to the conclusion that in addition to consistent and faithful link-whoring, there is an aspect of unselfishness required, and that unselfishness is reflected in having a B.A.L.L. (Big-Assed Link List). Yes, you heard Me right -- maintaining a huge list of links regardless of whether they link back to you or not.

Karmically, it's the right thing to do. Plus, some people just will never link back, either because they don't read their e-mail, they can't be bothered to mess with their template, they don't know how to change their template or are afraid to, since it was done for the person by his or her geek friend.

And it looks mega-cool. And, a lot of links are gong to get reciprocated (and this is difficult for Me to say) without one's link-whoring to get them.

So My goal now is to have a B.A.L.L. That, applied with consistent link-whoring and a few other techniques (to be discussed/revealed in future entries) should have Me well on My way to blog stardom in no time!


6. More soon. As always, My girls please and thrill Me no end . . . I am lucky and blessed to have them. I love you, so much. Here's to the (smoke-free) future.