Black As My Soul

What Is, Is Good.

I have been thinking a great deal about how little things become formative ideas.

To the young romantic I was, the old mansions I toured and the movies I watched became the ideals against which I spent a lot of time judging myself.

And now that I have recognized this, I can release it. For whatever I may have thought I wanted, I could never have dreamed of what I have.

There is in me a growing feeling that that experiences I have had have produced a man that I can say that I am proud to be.

The darkness and wandering in the past has indeed lead me to where I am now, and that helps to make the path ahead all the more clearly defined.

I am no longer shiny and new. But I have battle scars from wisdom hard won, tales to tell over drinks, and laughter to be had in the remembrance.

A Sort of Homecoming

We web writers can be a fickle and nomadic bunch.

I have come back to TypePad after doing self-hosting for several years, and I have my blackasmysoul.com email pointed back to my old Gmail account.

I spent a long time archiving old email messages today and noticed that as I have been able to maintain contact with people online, email addresses and URLs change with great frequency. And I fit right in.

It feels good to let go of some control. While I do desire to continue to learn and grow with technology, I no longer really have career aspirations to be a network engineer. So I have put my faith in the cloud and in the oddest way have ended up in a very familiar and comfortable place.

As always, gentle reader, I'm grateful you're here, too.

Long Car Trips...

Go by quickly when I'm with Flower.

Among the Reasons I'm Not Traditionally Religious

The more I learn about more religions and mystery traditions, the more I find that I am philosophically at odds with most of them.

Why is it always that the secret to enlightenment comes through denial of base urges? Why do I need to fast, cleanse, purge, abstain or suffer?

Where is the joy?

Wasn't I created perfect for the experiences I would face?

Doesn't wisdom come from experience? How can wisdom come from not experiencing?

I may not know much, but I think that's part of the journey: to learn for myself.

This thought is incomplete but I felt it deserved more than 140 characters.

Post Secret and Sexual "Secrets"

One of the secrets this week was allegedly submitted by a woman who said she was grateful that her husband hates porn.

My first issue is that this is not a secret. This is a judgement. She is saying "My husband is more moral (better) than yours. Therefore my relationship is more secure. Therefore I am better than you."

My second issue is that I strongly suspect the husband is a lying lier who lies. Three scenarios occur to me:

First, he is simply telling her what he believes she wants to hear (a lie).

Second, he may not use porn, but he masturbates to pantyhose ads in her ladies magazines (technical lie, he still masturbates, just not to things defined as pornography).

Third, he may define porn as double-penetration, ass-to-mouth, and bukkake, but regular fucking is normal and therefore OK (not really porn) (He's lying to himself so he can tell the "truth" to her.)

So, my conclusion is that he is lying to her, and she is lying to herself. I can read a lot into very few words.

The woman who, in another post secret today, admitted masturbating to photos of male prison inmates, was brutally honest. While that behavior doesn't do anything for me, that's the type of candor I look for in secrets.

Aw, C'mon!

OK, so today Miss Angel Wings has braided her hair.

Two braids. In front of her shoulders.

Guess where the braids end.

Almost There, But Not Quite

I find myself wishing that Twitter had gone live about 5 years ago. Based on the simple browsers available on phones today, it is the perfect mobile format. What's more, you can have Tweets from folks you follow sent via SMS to your mobile. It is a perfect way to be public yet private and intimate simultaneously.

If I could have done then what I can do now, BAMS would likely have never been a blog. A majority of my early Blogger posts would have worked really well in that format, as would some of my serial short story experiments.

The Twitter paradigm (or something like it) really needs to be exploited for erotic ends, though I would suggest that while nothing in the Twitter Terms of Service says that you can't do it, there is nothing that says they won't delete accounts or content at will, either.

At any rate, while I have thought often about Tweeting as Sinner, it's premature. I would like guarantees that I just don't see.

Can you hear me knocking?

What I Should Have Said

A young woman at work was walking around with a jewelry ad torn from a magazine. Specifically, it was a large picture of a very specific ring design. I don't remember the make and I thought it looked hideous so I've been trying to block it out.

But she was asking people, "If I put this on my boyfriend's car seat, do you think he will know what it means?"

Internally I shuddered. But I kept my poker face. I simply nodded "Yes."

I wish I would have said "It means you are a princess."

Being Quiet

I've been wrestling with dark moods again.

On Friday I started to consider therapy and medications again.

Briefly.

Then I remembered the pain and hassle of monthly or bi-weekly or weekly appointments. First, and regularly, with the psychiatrist for simple med checks, and then even more with the prescribed therapy. Trying to convince the therapist you are for real. Figuring out the therapist has no clue, either. The endless trips to the pharmacy. The insurance bureaucracy. The pill-minders. The relentless schedule. The loss of erections.

And that's a layer of crap I just don't want or need in my life right now.

I'll change a lot on my own to avoid all of that, thank you very much.

Sometimes the help you can get is not the kind of help you need.

Moving on.

Snow, Yet Still

As far into spring as we are, there are still vestigial snow drifts in the yard that have not melted away.

I've found myself at times imagining a cross between Narnia and Middle Earth. A Winter Witch has sent the continuous weather this way and her voice, the spell, is audible in the wind.

But even as the snow is still falling, there are flowers in the garden who insist they must reach for the sun and their green shoots have already come forth. And the snow melts where it lands.

I tell myself I wouldn't mind so much if it was rain, being the April showers that bring May flowers. The fact of the matter is that I want my yard to dry out and firm up. And I miss being in the sun.

Are Mid-Westerners Naturally Mashochistic?

Every Winter, come mid-February, after we've weathered a few wicked cold snaps, we begin to wonder why on God's green Earth would anyone choose to live here?

The beautiful, crystalline, sunlit days and brilliant, moonlit nights are also always the coldest.

The cloudy and gray days are some of the most comfortable, especially for Winter play.

Tonight, as I write this, after the full Snow Moon has been eclipsed and emerged brilliant and victorious, it is 6 degrees below zero. And falling.

Gorgeous night.