Darkoshi

A while back, I heard this song somewhere and liked it; I added it to my "music to maybe get" list.

Today I finished reading the book "Amari and the Night Brothers", which I bought as a Christmas gift for my niece. (So I had to finish the book by tomorrow!) While reading, I listened to some of Cilmi's other music on YouTube.

When the video for "Sweet About Me" came on, after a while something in the video caught my eye and made me rewind it a bit. Then I had to rewatch it again from the very beginning. Not only do I like the song, but the video amuses me too!

So then I looked up the song lyrics and read more about the song.
I was surprised to find out:
- The song is way back from 2008; the video was posted in 2009.
- The singer was born in 1991 so was only about 17 years old at the time; she started working on the album when she was only 13 years old!
- The song was the most played song in the UK during 2009 and was a big hit in Europe.

That last point made me think this must be another one of those cases where I find something that seems neat and consider posting it, but then find out it was a massive hit some years ago, that everyone else probably already knows about.

But per the Wikipedia page, in the U.S. it only reached #99 on the Billboard's US Pop 100 chart. So many Americans may not have heard the song yet, at least.



Video title: Gabriella Cilmi - Sweet About Me (Official Video)
Posted by: Gabriella Cilmi
Date posted: Jun 26, 2009

I realized I had awoken. And I thought, "That was a dream? ... That was an Awesome Dream!!!"

I tried to remember it. The following was only the last bit of it. There was much more before, but that was too far gone already, to remember.

I was falling.
For an interminable time, as if I must surely smash into the ground and die.
(From a giant Tree? There had been another tree nearby, and someone Else who had suchly fallen and had felt great fear while falling, but they *had* hit the ground and died.)

Yet my falling kept being halted, and switching to weightlessness. Then falling again.

I was being played with, I realized. By a god. The god.
(I had the distinct feeling in the dream that the god was female gendered, and me male, but there was nothing otherwise gendered or sexual about the dream.)

So, knowing that this was a game and that She did not want me to die, only to be afraid, lightened my fears.

Eventually the Falling stopped.
Then the God beckoned, and I came - or maybe They pulled me - across galaxies and empty Space. I could see a set of ~7 galaxies, passing by. Then we stopped, having reached the destination (one of the galaxies?)

We were suddenly in a room, like an office (but I knew it was a jail cell).
The God was cutting a piece of pinkish ribbon (like for wrapping presents) in order to bind my wrists with it. A short piece. She was going to tape it closed.

I held my wrists out with my hands in loose fists, palms up. She indicated to turn them the other way, so I did. She must have tied them/taped them with the ribbon, as then she was writing in some Notebook of hers.

I watched/read as she wrote. It was some notes about me, and she was writing a Number at the top of the page. I realized it was a number to identify me, the prisoner, the specimen. It was a large number; like 16 thousand and something. I was one of that many prisoners of hers.

I became intensely sad, realizing that even if she came to visit me in this cell, that they would be short visits, with eternity in between.

But then I made my sadness be still and go away, for right now, she was here. I should appreciate/enjoy her Presence while I still could.

Around the time that I woke up, I was thinking about how easily I could break the ribbon binding my wrists, if it weren't that doing so would bring Her wrath. Who would dare to invoke her wrath? Or maybe the light binding was so I could free myself if other Danger came. Or maybe the ribbon would shortly transform into thick steel.

I was outside with someone else, apparently having trimmed / cut back overgrowth. The other person mentioned that this one plant that had been trimmed was an oracle.

There was a question/mystery we needed answered. So I addressed the plant, "Oh, Oracle Plant, ..."

Immediately, a vine on the plant grew outwards, and wrapped itself around my wrists. It may have also wrapped one around my neck. But it wasn't menacing; it was recognizing me as a supplicant.

Here is a little BDSM story I wrote, titled "The Question".

(It's not at all long, truly! But it might be slightly NSFW.)

[video no longer available at original location]

Music: "Your Master" by Infekktion

Another version of the video (more color, less contrast) here.

Unless I change my mind again, I've decided to vote for Edwards in the primary. Posting this here is as much to remind me of my decision as anything else.

.

Forestfen apparently still has the notion that BDSMers are "devil-worshippers". I asked her, "If I don't believe in God, what makes you think I believe in the Devil?" She seemed surprised when I said of the people in my group, "They're all darn Christians too."

.

While making a purchase at the auto parts store, the way one of the employees behaved in relation to another person that walked into the store seemed remarkably ...shady... to me. Gave me the uncomfortable feeling that the employees were involved in something illegal.

.

I'm looking into whether to get a tankless water heater. It may end up depending on the installation costs relative to a "standard" tank heater. One of the Bosch gas tankless models uses "hydrogenerated ignition". The idea of using water to create a flame seems amazing to me:
"Hydro-generated ignition works much like the giant turbines in a hydroelectric dam using the flow of water to generate electricity. When a hot water tap is opened, cold water flows through the 1600's hydro generator. The flowing water spins a tiny turbine, which, in turn, instantly produces electricity. This electricity creates the spark required to light the burners and the water is then heated as it passes through a copper heat exchanger."

.

Time for bed. Past time.

I responded to a thread on masochism in one of my groups, and about whether one can really experience pleasure and suffering at the same time, by citing some examples of where one can feel conflicting things at the same time. Such as....

One's head may be burning with a fever, yet one can feel chilled
at the same time. Or one can eat hot chili, and wince from
the spiciness, yet enjoy the flavor and/or the knowledge
that one is "tough" enough to handle the heat. Or one can be
outside in the winter, and shivering from extreme cold,
while enjoying the scenery.

Sometimes, whether one interprets something as mainly pleasurable or a form of suffering may depend on what one's mind is more focused on. Or on which stimuli seems more prominent.

So maybe that's all there is to it. That to me, the unpleasantness of overt D/s has outweighed the pleasantness of it, at least with the people I've interacted with so far. And in one case, the unpleasantness of a different aspect of the relationship outweighed the pleasantness of the D/s aspect.

I've decided that the label "submissive" really doesn't fit me well. Rather, I'm a bottom with some submissive tendencies who enjoys psychological D/s play. Not as easy to say, but... better descriptive.

I don't want D/s to be the basis or crux of a relationship. I want friendship, partnership, companionship, and affection to be the basis. But I like D/s as play, as something fun, something which affects me strongly and makes me feel good. I believe I even need it, to enjoy a relationship. When I say "play", I don't mean it can't be serious, and significant, and even painful at times. But I don't see myself as being constantly submissive. As part of the play, I might even want to act rebellious sometimes. But sometimes, I might not want to play at all.

I don't want someone who will treat me like a sub all the time, but I do want someone who might treat me like a sub at any time.

.

I want to be loved for who I am.

When I close my eyes at night, I want to feel sheltered by someone's concern and affection for me.

When I wake, I want to feel that the care & concern & affection is real and tangible, not just something I pretended/invented in order to fall comfortably asleep.

I want to love someone for who they are, not just for the affection they show me.

I want someone who can inspire that wonderfully euphoric feeling in me that has something to do with D/s.

I want someone with whom I can feel comforted by their physical touch and presence at least as often as I resort to comforting myself by thinking about it when I am alone.

In other words, I want to spend more time with my partner, than I spend yearning to be with them. But I guess there would need to be some times of yearning, in order for me to recognize how much they mean to me.

.

I was trying to think of the word to describe a particular relationship, like between my master/soulmate and me in one of my fantasies. The kind of relationship where the one has power over the other... in the fantasy, it was absolute power - life & death; power to read my thoughts and emotions; etc. In real life, I guess it could be a lesser power... But where, like in the fantasy, the other person can look at me (straight through me) in a way that makes my insides drop... makes me lose balance, feeling that power of theirs over me. A wonderful feeling of belonging, of fear, of excitement, of acknowledging their power over me.

I can't think of the word for describing that particular kind of relationship.
Disciple, no. Minion, no. Dominant/submissive, not necessarily. Master/slave, no.
Master/something... maybe. Master/pupil, not necessarily.

When I was young, I used to envision master/apprentice relationships as that kind of relationship. I had read books about apprentices where the master even had the power to have the apprentice put to death, if they were displeased enough with them. And then there was Star Wars, where Darth Vader was the Emperor's apprentice... oh, that was so cool.
But nowadays, the term apprentice just means to me someone who is being taught things. It doesn't so much imply the master having power over the student.

And for the relationship I'm trying to think of the word for, the "master" wouldn't necessarily even have to be teaching the other person anything. It wouldn't even need to be a consensual power-exchange relationship, just one where the one person has some kind of significant power over the other. Such as a captor and captive. It seems like there should be some word for that. Maybe it will come to me.

So far, my list of BDSM limits has included no shaving of my armpits or legs.

From one perspective, having to shave my legs shouldn't really be such a big deal. I've never done it before, but I suppose I could learn, and it shouldn't really make much difference even though I'd no longer have my cute and precious never-before-shorn little leghairs. And even though I'd probably feel less good-looking with shaved stubble and bald legs.

The same thing could be said about shaving my armpits, although I do have another concern there. My armpit skin is sensitive, and I sometimes get a rash. When that happens, use of deodorant causes burning, itching, and further redness. It is inconvenient not being able to apply deodorant until the rash goes away. My concern is that shaving would cause me to get such rashes more often. But still, having no hairs in my armpits shouldn't be a big deal in general.

From a different perspective however, not shaving is an aspect of my gender identity. It is significant to me. I've never shaved those parts of my body. I am proud of having been able to express my gender identity by not following the female "norm" for this. Women usually shave those parts of their bodies; men usually don't. It never made sense to me as to why females should have to shave those parts, while men didn't. I am glad not to have been brainwashed into thinking that there's something bad about having these cute little hairs on my body.

Since I have a regular female body, when I am naked, this is one of the few things that distinguishes me from most other adult females. (Having unpierced ears is another). If I were to shave my legs and armpits like other women do, I'd look just like them. It would bother me. I'd feel that I had succumbed to the fallacious notion that females need to shave in order to be pretty. Or that I'd been forced into the negative role of playing the part of one of those women, just to please someone else.

Having a Dom want me to shave those parts of my body would also bother me, because it would tend to make me feel that he really did not understand my gender identity, and that he really viewed me as just another woman. I would feel that he were trying to transform me into the stereotypical sexual ideal of how a woman should look, even though I am not a woman but rather an androgyne. I would feel that he did not understand me, or truly respect me, or like me as I am and for who I am.

I do not have the same issues with shaving my pubic hair. That is not currently a limit. I've never done it before, but it is not something that I feel is connected to my gender identity. Shaving that part of my body, while not something I desire to do, would not bother me in the same way. Likewise, having my head shaved would not bother me either.

Another limit of mine is that a Dom will not have control over my hairstyle or hairlength. My hairstyle is also partially an aspect of my gender identity. It is not as significant to me as the shaving of legs and armpits, but having a very short hairstyle is another way of visibly distinguishing myself from most other females. In my first relationship with a Dom, I was not allowed to cut my hair. This ended up being a sore point for me, when the relationship was no longer satisfying me. I was annoyed at not being allowed to cut my hair, when I didn't even seem to be getting anything good out of the relationship. I was also upset by the thought that he preferred me to look like (and by inference, to be like) a typical woman. It wasn't just a temporary annoyance; in hot weather I often feel like cutting my hair short, so it was an ongoing thing, until I eventually rebelled.

In order to avoid another such scenario, I decided to make that a future limit. I didn't want not being allowed to cut my hair to become a sore point between another Dom and me. I am not sure whether this limit is truly reasonable or not. It seems that most Doms want their subs to have long hair. And I certainly do like having long enough hair on my head for a Dom to grab. But I also like having very short hair. Not just because of gender, but because it is comfortable and easy to care for. The past year or two, I've compromised with myself - having long hair in one part for a ponytail, but cutting it short elsewhere.

Clothing is another aspect of my gender identity. When the first Dom I was involved with told me that I'd be required to wear a skirt and/or dress for him, it initially upset me very much. I eventually decided that I would submit to a Dom (or that Dom, anyway) telling me what to wear when I was in his presence, but not otherwise. I likened it to wearing a costume... wearing a costume for someone shouldn't be a problem, if that's what they wanted. However, in general, having a Dom wanting me to dress in a feminine fashion would still bother me, for similar reasons as with them wanting me to shave. With clothing, it is not just an issue of how the Dom views me or how I view myself, but also of how other people view me. If I were out in public wearing feminine clothing, it would bother me that other people would see me as a regular woman, as opposed to my normal androgyne self / my real self.

Nylon whips! I haven't encountered any non-leather whips before now, so hadn't given much thought to the possibility of anyone engaging in whip-play with me. But now, ooh, the possibilities! I wish I could play with one... I wanna make loud cracking noises. ::pout::