You Don’t need to Go looking for a Zen Master. He’s here, he is Now.

You don’t need to go looking for a Zen master. I have been thinking about this recently. The Zen master is here now, it is in all phenomena that looms up in your world, both within and without.The Zen master lives on that line between reaction and response. The Pause. I have been thinking about this recently because one, I’m given to weird flights of thought to begin with..and two, I was surfing thru  D’s amazing blog the other day and came across a post, which apologies, I cannot seem to find again, wherein he talks about his now passed on grandmother’s, (I believe it was his grandmother, again I stand to be humbly corrected) phrase that “the Dead don’t grieve that we know of.” Well, that kind of jumped out at me, and has been whirling around percolating ever since… Do the Dead grieve? Do they have moments of nostalgia? All nostalgia and futuritus..some of us are more orientated to one affliction the more so than the other, but basically it all seems to stem from one great cosmic loin you know, LONGING,desire..anything that prevents us from being right here, right now. Present and accounted for. How many of us could say that we are truly present and accounted for moment to moment? That we are not addicted to nostalgiks or consumed by futuritus? I want to learn to be in the now.OMG, I see so much craziness both within myself and others..from not being able to tolerate and have the peace of the now. To be unable to face what is in your face. I was thinking lately how I wanted a mentor, I’ve had various formal mentors of varying stripes over my lifetime..and it has hit me in the past two days that everybody and everything and every thought and feeling that comes my way is my mentor if I let it be. The good, the bad, and the ugly. that when I set anyone up to be my teacher above me, they are bound to fall eventually. That the teacher is everybody and everywhere, a thousand faces, whatever shows up on my dashboard . The teacher is my reaction to it. The teachable moment, when I put my weapons down, really and truly and let others be in my life as they are, and let myself be , moment to moment with THAT. How I am, how they are. Simple. We are never going to escape emotion, and who would want to, it’s part of the human experience, we are not going to escape attachment and longing this side of the veil, and who knows if we even escape it the other side of the veil, as Doc’s statement ends.. ” the Dead don’t grieve , THAT WE KNOW OF..” What if they do grieve, what if they watch us and grieve for our pain, our convoluted webs, and the rain is simply their big fat tears of grief for us, washing our faces clean? I don’t know. I don’t know if or where or how it stops.. I was thinking this morning about the most beautiful surroundings I found myself in a few years back when a couple living on the edges of the Old growth Cathedral forest in this renovated amazing trailer, renting it for a steal,invited me to spend some time there with them, and they were too strung always on drugs to really drink in the beauty around them, and I would get up in the mornings and wander onto the wrap around deck and listen to the songbirds and want so badly to have a place like that for myself, uncomprehending why they would medicate something, some old pain, whatever, we all carry it, so far out of them so as to not be in this awesome place. The awesome place is the Now. Of course I had an awesome teacher. I had a child who journeyed a full ten and a half years with me, both of us I believe with the full awareness that he could die at any moment, and you know that was the thing I feared the most, and then finally one day it happened. And I am still here. Oh my God, I loved that child like I have never loved before or since. All I had was the now, and the now was sometimes godawful and sometimes pure rhapsody. But mostly just gift. Maybe when I long and slip the bounds of the Now, in whatever situation, with whatever phenomena, or in whosever’s company..whenever I want something to be other than the way it is..not overall, but right here , right now, when I resist, maybe he does grieve for me. And says, oh mama, you haven’t learned the lesson yet.His heart breaking… I was thinking about how all was the now for him this morning, I was remembering him,he was almost blind, so everything was sound, and you could not creep up on that child on long shag carpet. His head would turn and breathing shift almost imperceptibly..he would be attending to the moment. I recalled the pain of leaving his hospital room late at night, when he was in, as he often was, and I would never creep out on him, I would always tell him I was going.. and then as I backed out of the room, my heart pounding I would watch his little face, listening, listening. The Now was all he and I had. He didn’t tell me he was going when he left for good..or maybe he just told me his whole life.. All I am trying to say this morning, is , stop trying so hard to live in nostalgia or the future, be right here now, now is the zen master, stop struggling so hard to conform everybody and everything to your will..let it all be..let them be, for god’s sake, let yourself be once in a while.. Everything and everybody is the Zen master, when you just let it be… Not to be confused with complacency or hopelessness..no not at all. I fought for my son’s life the entire time he was with me. Maybe he fights for mine now. of course this could all be brought to you by a case of food poisoning I have from gleefully consuming a sushi salmon roll yesterday. WTF knows. or that I have reacted into several things in my own world in the past 48 and been less than ohmed out about them. 🙂 kata karma, rock on love cat

Creativity, Hyperfocus, Dissociation and D/s.

As I  journey along in both my understanding of self and my understanding of both my needs in D/s and my gifts to offer..with growth comes greater clarity, on Who I am, What I am, How I am..what I can offer, and what I cannot.

I have an artistic mindset, I am a writer and a poet at heart, if I offer service to a Dominant/Master..it will never be adequate domestic service..I am domestically and organizationally challenged, daily struggling with Ahdd like challenges..

What I do offer is my creativity, my intense intuitive abilities, my capacity for the practice of empathy..I AM an empath and this means I can intuit things that often many miss..

For me, a good fit is with someone who allows and encourages these strengths, and directs me thru the challenges, is encouraged and sustained themselves by what I offer, and patient, and resourceful around what I cannot.

I am very responsive erotically and intellectually, with a Dominant partner who welcomes this, the relationship is fruitful.

The clarifying aspects of being directed intelligently, being sustained thru the organizing impact of trance space scening on my mind, not micro managed, but given a leash as it were, to be me..without falling into the chaos that threatens without direction.

My service will never be one of domestic adequacy, however I offer an affinity for beauty, a questioning intellect, a capacity for joy, and a drive to express that are service in themselves.

When directed, and appreciated for what they are.

Outside of this, I would make a very frustrating and poor fit for many, I need structure, a lead , and focusing, but not micromanaging and caging.

We are our own sub group of submissives, those of us who have this sort of brain wiring, a gift to some, a nightmare to others..

Morning musings as I  get ready to resume my theta posts, cat

Switching Voice.

I speak from many divergent voices. There is the inner philosopher who loves to wax conceptually, the poet who speaks in tongues, and the pyromaniac who pushes the edge of experience, and needs curtailing at times.

I shift in and out of these “spaces’ or voices depending on what I am attempting to accomplish, and altho reclusive at times, I am not shy and embrace the stage.

The poet and the pyromaniac emerged younger than the philosopher however, the philosopher was an adaptation, a learned way of expressing my ideas to those around me in a language that bridged all worlds.

It’s become easy for me to teach and instruct, I enjoy it, however, it is as I have noted a handmaiden a mediary to my dominant ways of experiencing..it is more of a response that I use to my advantage rather than a homecoming..

Home will always be a wedding of the poet’s sensibility and a love for the edge.

Home, is where my heart lies. It’s my sanctuary behind face, behind closed doors, and I share it without defense when I share it in intimacy..there I have no defense…there I am raw, exposed and perpetually a student and child …a small angel without guile , stigmata notwithstanding.

cat

just a musing, cat

Hi, my name is cat and I am addicted to endorphins, help me.

Oh,God what a rush dawn was.Took my morning coffee on to my deck overlooking such panoramic splendor that I was literally catatonic with pleasure. God’s finger gently stroked the denimed atlantic, the cliffs ascended all shale and hearty from the wooly waters and the dew point twelve miles out inclined me towards you, babe. Houses popped jumbled jellybeans,sleepy eyed windows opening lazily to the sun… Effervescence. Jesus. I’m mute with the beauty. ***************************************************** Read a thread on Fet the other day where some chick writes that her Dom told her it was possible for her to become addicted to the endorphin rush released by pain. Hey, I’m in. I have a theory.Many things give me sublime pause,I Am an endorphin junkie…personally I believe I was born with several hundred excess endorphin receptors in my brain…upswing for me is not a rarity, it is a series of peaks in my daily life. I get off on such a range of stimuli..pondering obscure philosophical nonsense such as those fuked nineteenth century german writers can make me swoon, reading theological discourse in grad school had me cumming..NOT the prof’s intent,my frontal lobes knock together almost obscenely when fingering a thesaurus. I DRINK in the world around me, and yeah,I swallow not spit. It’s why I wear sunglasses when I go out as I have mentioned elsewhere. Pleasure’s such a private thing..and I find pleasure in so much. I seem to give off some sort of pheromonal trail..this chicks a live wire..it’s in my eyes..and so..I am careful who gets to see the way I experience the world around me on my face. ALWAYS been the first one in my crowd to jump into the lake, off the cliff, reach the mountain top. Of course this has its liabilities, this greater than average capacity for joy pushes one towards the edge of a form of social autism. However..for one who does want to sit in the cockpit with me, it’s going to be a hell of a ride. Hi.My name is Cat.I am addicted to endorphins.Help me. Laughing. Cat.

When being a couple explodes into Art, D/s and the Delicious Edges of Everything

I have a fantasy.It’s not a fantasy that will remain a fantasy..its more erotically driven art collab between myself and Lucifer. Ive been doing some research on us creatively driven souls who manage to find and fall for one another..the art that comes out of such mergers ranges from the inane,the insane and the timelessly inspired and fired…. When what’s copulating is Not just Body parts but Mind and Spirit..the generativity can drive off the map. Such relationships have a long and rocky history..down thru time.. The longing for one another, the angst and sturm,the rolls and the punches of two solitudes crashing,and the intimacies giving birth to lit, poetry,photography,paintings and performance art that moves us all. One rather infamous couple some of you may be familar with are the performance artists,Marina Abramovic and Uwe Laysiepen.They met in 1976 in Amsterdam. They dressed and behaved like twins, and developed a relationship of complete trust…. No, I’m not shaving my head…yet ..laughing.If I do I will take inspiration from S. and broadcast it. Now those two are tru performance artists.. Anyway..they spoke of themselves as a two headed body and in this twinship phantom identity they wished to explore the problematics of what Marina called ” what to do with two artists ego’s in relationship.” They both knew that for success both egos had to diminish as the hermaphroditic state of being took over.They called this state the Death self and to illustrate it they went on stage joined mouths and breathed in nothing but one anothers exhaled breaths until they climatically passed out from lungs filled with carbon dioxide some 17 minutes later. This peice explored how two individuals can exchange and absorb one another’s lives, altering and potentially destroying them. Laughing here. Thats so fucking nutz it EXCITES me. Lucifer’s Nixed a restaging….. Sigh. Anyway…onto my fantasy. When Lucifer was doing his portrait of me,I watched him in process. It was in the beginnings of our relationship..and I was staggered by watching him work, yeah,that’s one word for what I was feeling.. Moving so quick and light on the balls of his feet, constant motion…his muscles rippling under his tank,the extension of those arms..biceps, brushes and implements flying, the intensity of his dark face. I was falling, falling, falling.. For many of us who work in some medium, letting others see our ‘process” is very intimate…it took me a while before I was comfortable letting Lucifer watch me write..because he could so clearly read the flashes of insight, delight,and blackness moving like storm clouds cross my face. A window onto my soul… Everybody has a Tell, Lucifer says..and yours, Cat..is your face. Part of what I saw that day in his studio, was the way he weilded the spray can as he stroked and stoked my likeness with bright red streaming, screaming color… I had an inspiration for a photo shoot..I am as into photography as I am writing…that came out of that experience..that is what happens to us.. We collaborate on one idea and the process itself births another. I want to have a series of shots of myself naked and arching up against an old concrete grafited wall here…various obscenities are upmarked..in a rainbow of colors..legs spread, arms crossed high..and being sprayed violently in red spray paint… I realize now..that as this took form from watching Lucifer spray my likeness…its meant to be taken by a third party as he actually does it for real..yum. Yeah.Stay tuned. We’ll figure it out. Together,Babi… Rolling with the Muse..we are Her Children. Cat. Ps. collage pic is of me listening to music while Lucifer Talks..smiling..

Ain’t no Angel Gonna Greet me, It’s just you and I, my friend.

Drinking my morning coffee. Listening to Bruce  Springstein’s  Streets of Philadelphia.

One of my favorite movies, ever, one of my favorite tunes.

“Ain’t no angel gonna greet me, it’s just you and I

my friend, and my clothes’s don’t fit no more

walk a thousand miles , just to slip this skin..”

So much on my mind..and it’s poignant. Poignancy does me in. I am not a sentimentalist, but the oddest things shape and carve themselves into a sort of uber nostalgia that dogs me and bites my ass.

Have you ever heard of someone dying from a poignancy attack? Well, maybe not, but it can disarm and disable you.

Poet brain..the opal mind.opacity in all things, the sheer unredeemed beauty that we drown in..everywhere. was talking with a friend recently and I said you know, I think this is why I am a recluse of sorts, it’s like I  have no skin between myself and the world of phenomena, I am constantly copulating the fuk out of beauty..or Beauty is constantly copulating the fuk out of me..

Sitting on my back doorstep having a coffee five am, and I look at the dark stain of a fence paling against the bleeding artery of dawn, and I’m struck speechless. Uberscrewed by the sublime.

It’s a gift, and it is a curse. I rape the moment for art, and the moment rapes me…

So many things cause a pain in my hands, a hunger, an appetite, for what??

And so , I dim it down. Am very aware of the people I let into my life..

For me, this is survival..to deal with the pragmatics of life with such wiring, I  have learned to withdraw and come out in measured doses.

The sweet eros of the world chokes and undoes me..there is an entire matrix in the moment, and I have no weapon save this…

solitude in overflowing spoonfuls..

for those few people who do meet me somewhere on my wavelength , this morning  I am grateful…

smiling, cat

On erotic art as Political expression

I express myself artistically thru a number of mediums..my writing,photography,clay sculpture,textural collage, and movement. I have never explored a direct merging of these forms, however of late I find myself drawn more and more to the use of multiple vehicles for the expression of self…(spurred in part by the piece Lucifer and I have been working on…) In particular I have been musing on the opportunities afforded by multimedia performance pieces..the use of film,sound, the body and the body political to explore my own thoughts and emotions on sadism and masochism. Of course it has been done before , but it has not been done by me. I am particularly taken with the notion of an exploration of the strength and vulnerabilities of the body/self in relation to longing,loss,lust,liminal identities..( that is fluidity within the experience of self) and the borderlands of social correctness. I am not so much interested in documenting the beautiful as the REAL. Where we actually in fact , live. I have been taking notes for a peice that would involve a plaster cast of my torso, that I would then deface with all manner of found object, wire,nail, ect. Slogans, epiphanies, scraps of poems, words I have been called in both situations of lust and rage…slut whore bitch & thru the working on the peice , process..mine, would wed herstory and the present. I am 45.You could not pay me to time travel back to 20. this body has seen me thru the birthing of babies, near death encounters, loss, love , lust, pleasure and deep grief. It is not the body of a teen. But it has been where I have lived and sojourned for almost five decades, and it is strong, beautiful( to me), capable, erotically responsive, and ALIVE. I’m not barbie. Those that love me..as family , friends and lovers..have embraced the form I come in. I embrace it as well. It is my home. It is going to be fun to work on this piece.. it symbolizes when done, the shedding of a skin & moving on. Lost in thought..who else that comes here works in other artistic mediums as part of personal and political process? I’d love to look at the body erotic directly within the politics of pain and pleasure…and if you do not think this is political…your rights to name your own experience, and even to have it..(yes, even here…in ALL social collectives & anywhere there is more than one human being…) then you are living in an extremely cloistered world. Thoughts? Cat.

Mapping the body beautiful..essence .

kk, so I am not being intentionally MORBID here..or indulgently maudlin..but I have been musing.. For those of us who have seen death close up and terrifyingly intimate..not jus ol’ sweet aunt hettie in the coffin with the piped in musak of the stifling and packaged funeral parlors of our postmodern ironic world.. for those of us that have been witness to death itself, whether the gentle and awesome rebirthing it can be as when I watched my 98 year old grandmother take a day to die of congestive heart failure and leave her last breath as a butterfly.. as the room filled with her essence she had spent a lifetime in generously ,palpably gifting those in her little world with.. or the wretched nightmare of watching one who seemed too young to leave, and who fought the leavetaking violently..taking a part of my bloodied screaming heart over the veil.. It strikes me..or has struck me..that tho we cherish the particularities of the bodies of those we love.. it is their ESSENCE that emanates from this vessel that is truly unrepeatable.. are the essence and the body inextricably intertwined..or put another way.. could I be someone else in this body? could you be someone else in yours? I do not think so. Ultimately I believe that it is like the way an artist or photographer understands light and space..it is the space around us, and the vacuum we do not inhabit, that carves out who it is we are.. Bless the light, the spaces, the cracks and the fault lines that surround and pour thru you..dead, inert, the body still speaks, but as black star..no longer a play of light.. *********************** when you see another in this way.. as light, and space, and water ..the way an artist does.. you see past the body itself.. you kiss their core.. Kiss the core of someone you love today..a Benediction on their essence.. or receive such a kiss with grace.. pondering the imponderables, cat.

On solitude, and the need for..

it’s morning roger waters “wish you were here” floats from the speakers cradling my coffee i am self contained folded inwards on myself the underside of an envelope it feels good to feel my muscles when i stretch it feels good to smoothly petal down to this random moment when nothing is happening nothing at all…. ******************************** Tea for one Water drips off the pine needles a spider swings from the clapboard to the fence post with the grace of a cat burglar all in black damp and dank the morning rises still drowsy, still dreaming fragments & shards misted hinterland drowned beatle floats in my rain barrel haikumindnoface tea for one *********************************** your anger cause i write and can be swallowed alive for days at a time in my own wave this is who and how i am deal or realize it does not work for you simple cat

Are Artists high maintenance submissives?

I work with people. I carry a keychain that states bluntly…Do I look like a people person? but in measured doses I am social. I have a creative temperament..what does that look like you ask? Hmmm, I pause and look over my study. Items in random order.. a collection of hats from a previous lover..strewn.. half finished canvases propped against walls.. Bangles for my wrists, several pairs of reading glasses most broke.. A beloved patchwork quilt from my gran.. My torn favorite yellow rain coat..O it makes me happi/ from a thrift shop on saltspring island..size xtra large, but hey, I had to have YELLOW… My knapsack.. have knapsack will fly.. a hardcover on the history of aviation of all things, A few dogeared worn thin books that amazingly have survived my gypsy ways and stayed with me over the years.. A 3 and a half by 3 and a half solid birch mirror that I made with my own hands and everywhere, everywhere, the color ORANGE. I have never quite mastered the material world. I could not find a straight angle if my life depended on it. Those of you looking for a slave to provide domestic service, do not even slow down for the yellow light. I work with people in distress, but CRAVE to move more fully into the arts. At 45, I am asking myself..where truly is my joy to be found..in all areas of my life. It is an exciting time. I have asked myself..as a potential partner in D/s ..who am I? Am I hi maintenance? I do enjoy the spotlight. I’m drawn to the art of performance …in all things I will understand your need for solitude as I expect you to understand mine.. I need you to “see” me I want you to ground me. I do wish to be gifted with pretty things.. If there is travel involved, YOU will be paying for the first trip..I am not sexist.. however I have learned over the years that quite simply..this tends to be fortuitous for both. I offer you my intensity/laughter/ bent vision/innocence/curiousity writ large and a joie de vivre that won’t die. I am a small storm. I know we will find one another.