Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A Serious Whack at the Subject

This is going to be a difficult week for me to look smarter than I really am. I feel as if I’m at a party of glamorous women from the stocks and bonds trade, as it were, trying to start up a conversation.

“Do you prefer bonds?” she asks.

“Blondes?”

“No . . . Bonds.”

“I haven’t seen many of them, but I prefer the Daniel Craig Bond, which I find is much more faithful to the character in the original novels.”

From her, a disgusted stare. From me, a sheepish grin. I have been exposed as a poser. I pick up a diet coke, retire to the corner and pretend to check out the CD selection. Tonight will not be my lucky night.

Here’s the problem – I’m damaged goods.

The idea of another person having power over me who is not also giving me a paycheck is simply beyond repugnant. I can’t relate to it. Since my leaving my religious life, my nature has been fiercely suspicious of authority. I’m always on alert for the guilt trip or the hypocritical justification. I suffer from an ailment peculiar to spiritual combat veterans, “post dogmatic stress disorder”. Any charismatic figure who tells me what to do, or what to believe, immediately brings out my rage. Once bound to the rack, the Dom had better never release me alive or turn his back because when I come after him I won’t be playing games. There is no surrender left in me.


When I was young, looking back, I think I was afraid of freedom. I think there was that in me which wanted someone to explain the world and make sense of it, to tell me what to do to be a good person and how to measure and evaluate my virtue. I wanted to find God’s will for me and submit myself completely. Believe me, the leather and handcuff crowd has nothing on me. I think this is where the spiritual seeker typically begins. The common man wants formulas, not freedom. The difference between following a religion and searching for God, is the difference between shopping for packaged meat in a supermarket, and killing a beloved pet with your bare hands and eating it.


When one has lost faith in masters and gurus, when one feels betrayed and sees that you can make such mistakes and God will not stop you, it gets back to the mystery of God, and whether that God has any relevance to human life. Its not whether God exists, but what difference does it make? How can one be intimate with God, in the way Lisabet describes being intimate with her master, when all trust has been destroyed by indifference? By the absence of passion?


Recently I struggled with writer’s block. What I began to realize is that the place inside me where the stories come from is also that place where God and the longing for God comes from. To stamp out one is to stamp out the other. To refuse to nourish one is to wither the other.


This is an exquisitely elegant trap. Who set this cruel trap – God? If I wish to go on being an angry agnostic I may be forced to give up writing. I can’t bear the thought of that, so I find myself back on the rack again with the old questions. I'm simply not being allowed to walk away.
Forget the leather whips. When it comes to cruelty, one has to admire the cleverness of the dilemma. Maybe God has not given up on me. Or maybe God really is one mean sonuvabitch.


C. Sanchez-Garcia

11 comments:

  1. Hi Garce,

    Really interesting post.

    I'm at the other end of the spectrum, in that I am and have for some time been happily agnostic.

    As far as the link between submitting to a dominant and to God's will. In my mind there is one fundimental difference. The dominant is not an all powerful god. (Although there is a condition sometimes refered to as Top's Disease - where the dominant starts to think he's god!)

    The dominant is human too - he'll have bad days, he'll get things wrong, he'll screw up just as much as the submissive does - there's no reason to expect him to be perfect in the first place.

    And with a human dominant the submissive has the right and the responsibility to make their mark on the relationship - to set their limits and define how they want to express their love for their dominant. I'm not sure you can do that with an all powerful god.

    Okay, here goes, I'm going to say something that's probably putting my foot right in it, but since that's never stopped me before...

    The way you speak out your religious experiences sounds a little like some submissives speak about a relationship they've had with a dominant that didn't work out.

    Maybe the dominant wasn't a good dominant in general, or maybe he simply wasn't the right dominant for them, or maybe they just didn't find the right way to make their relationship work first time around.

    Losing faith in anything, be it a god, a person or a way of life is earthshattering.

    But I don't believe that the good things in people ever really die. Wounds heal and new ways (to submit or to believe) are found.

    The part of you that wants to write, wants to believe, or wants something that it doesn't even have a name for - if it's god or soul or something else entirely, it will eventually find a way out that's right for you. All the best of luck in finding it.

    I don't believe in god as such, but I do believe in that.

    (Apologies if this doesn't make any sense or comes across the wrong way - there is honestly no offence intented.)

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  2. Hey Garce,

    Another wonderful post. Your opening cracked me up, though I hope you were kidding about the Daniel Craig Bond - shiver- I'd rather see George Clooney in the roll but since they didn't ask me I prefer Sean Connery. *G*

    Anyway, this subject is not for everybody and you wrote a wonderful post about your own struggles. I think we all have those, whether we believe in God or not, and in my opinion believing is harder than not believing.

    The song "Our God is an Awesome God" is going through my mind here and rather than sing it for you, I'll leave you with one last thought. I'd like to think that instead of Him being a mean sonuvabitch, he's clever, and doesn't want you to walk away. I've tried that, too, and found it didn't work for me either. As in all things, I guess its just a matter of finding the balance.

    Take care!

    Jamie

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  3. Although I'm far past agnostic - I'm actually very much an atheist - I understand quite sincerely that existential yearning that Chris is describing. I think we just call it different things. The place that my writing comes from is very much the same - I simply identify it as a yearning to know the unknowable.

    Perhaps dominance and submission is a desire to find that in this world, with someone else. Personally, I don't know that it is possible. But you can have a lot of fun along the way.

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  4. Hi Garce,

    You had me laughing with your opening here. I'm a Sean Connery as James Bond girl myself. LOL

    You know, I got the impression, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the submission you speak of here sounds more like a forced thing, unwillingly given. A quote here: Once bound to the rack, the Dom had better never release me alive or turn his back because when I come after him I won’t be playing games. There is no surrender left in me.

    This isn't D/s, this is forced and unwilling, and not what this is about at all. There are no bonds needed, ever. And about being damaged goods, I've got my own ghosts and have come to realize that whatever has happened to me in my life has made me the woman I am today. Today, I'm a pretty okay person. I honestly don't know if there's a God, but I can't believe he'd be concerned with my little problems. The world has much bigger issues to address.

    I'm sticking in a tiny flasher I wrote years ago, no idea if it'll mean anything to you. But, there's no leather, no forced anything. A simple request and it's up to the submissive to decide.


    Licorice (wc 100)
    ©2005 Jude Mason

    "Hold still. Don't break it." Sarah tied the licorice strip into a bow.

    Toes to thumbs, not uncomfortable, awkward though, thought Ken. Lying on his back, he moved one foot a little closer to his buttock, carefully. His knees splayed.

    "Nice," she whispered and bent to his crotch. An instant later, while his gaze remained fixed on the top of her head, she engulfed his cock in wetness—her mouth, her tongue, the nibbling of her teeth.

    Honey-smooth heat tantalized him. He strained to come, fought to remain still. Agony—groaning, arching his back, his essence filled her mouth—ecstasy.


    © 2005 Jude Mason

    Hugs

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  5. Hi Kim!


    The dominant is not an all powerful god. (Although there is a condition sometimes refered to as Top's Disease - where the dominant starts to think he's god!)

    * * * *

    Top's disease, that's an interesting expression. I think is a disease that affectes religious leaders as well, especially gurus and messiahs. You start to think its all about you. That's when it starts togo wrong for everybody. You always hear about evangelists screwing around with the ladies or mis using money and you wonder where it comes from.


    * * * *
    But I don't believe that the good things in people ever really die. Wounds heal and new ways (to submit or to believe) are found.


    I hope you're right on this. But I don't think you are. I think there are situations where the good things can die in a person and be gone for good. My story "The Color of the Moon" is exactly about that.



    C. Sanchez-Garcia

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  6. Hi Jamie!

    Thanks! No, I really do like Daniel Craig's character, though the first movie was better than the second. It would be interesting to do a blog sometime about how movie portrayals stray from the original characters (the Burrough's Tarzan in the novels fought with teeth and claws like a wild ape) and how some actors personify certain characters.

    I'm not sure which is harder, believeing or not believing. That might be a blog subject too, because it takes as much faith to be an atheist as to be a true believer. Both views extend past the data.

    Hope you're right about balance. I'm sure I'm not done yet.

    Garce

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  7. Hi RG!

    I don't think I will be able to be an atheist, no matter what else happens. It just extends too far past the data. It's like saying "Intelligent life cannot exist anywhere else in the Universe." Its true there's no evidence, but how do you know? You only have to be wrong once.

    I don't think I'll ever be able to find that dominance and submission thing with a person, I think I only got one shot at that. I have that problem with Tibetan Buddhism, which I believe is probably the closest belief system to what may actually be going on in this world, but there's a point where you're expected to practice guru worship and I can't. I suppose if I were single and the guru was a beautiful exotic woman I could find a way to give it a chance, but a man - no.

    In my case, I'm not exactly an agnostic either. I'm a mystic. A mystic doesn't want to submit to God. A mystic wants to get in bed with God and be God's woman. Conjure on it.

    Garce

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  8. Hey Jude!

    "You know, I got the impression, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the submission you speak of here sounds more like a forced thing, unwillingly given...."

    Not unwillingly given. Betrayed. Its different. In a way I'm not angry at God anymore, and I can tell you I know people who are angry at God the way Ahab was angry at God. I think that a person who has never been angry at God has never taken God seriously.

    I'm more like a wounded lover who wants that person to call on the phone and talk about it.

    Licorice (wc 100)
    ©2005 Jude Mason

    That's nice, like poetry.


    Well, this submissive is still waiting for a kind word from God. But it has to be God. No more middlemen.

    Garce

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  9. Garce,

    I don't think that it's at all inappropriate to discuss BDSM and God in the same post. I agree that the trust you give to a master and that you offer to the Master come from the same source. As you know, I've written a few stories exploring this connection.

    What has happened in your case is that this trust has been abused. However, what you have to remember is that it was a person who tarnished your devotion (your former religious leader). A fallible human being. Of course, a Dom is human too, and can easily disappoint or even do damage. That's a scary truth that writers of BDSM erotica rarely explore. (Such a story would be too painful to sell, I suspect.)

    You can't really draw any conclusions about God from the behavior of a human guru. Even Jesus had his moments of pique (the withering of the fig tree being a prime example).

    Your negative reaction to BDSM comes from a much different place than the "ick" or fear response some people offer. I think that in fact you do understand something of the appeal of submission - from your personal experiences. You just wouldn't want to go through that hell again.

    Thank you for opening your heart and mind to us.

    Warmly,
    Lisabet

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  10. Thanks for reading my stuff Lisabet.

    I think that might be a really interesting story for someone to write, a relationship like that gone wrong.

    Garce

    Nixie says I'm abusive to her amd I just tell her its all for her own good in the end . . .

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  11. Hey Garce, it's me again. Can't leave well enough alone, can I?

    Lisabet said something that I tried to say last night and wound up deleting because it just didn't come out right when I typed it. I realize you and I don't know each other, but through this blog we're getting glimpses into what each other is like. When Lisabet said, it wasn't God you were hurt by but a man, that's exactly how I felt. I think that's an enormous reason why I have never attended church. A man is too fallible and how can any man know what God is all about? I can't argue theology, it's just how I feel.

    Hugs

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