It is 8pm, later than I'd typically be on my computer, doing something like work. And without an idea of what I'll write about. So I message my Daddy, ask for a prompt.
I wouldn't be committed to this challenge without him, no way. He's been my creative partner in the precious months since our meeting, in the bedroom and out. Conscious kink educator Kimi Inch describes the relationship between a Dominant and submissive as one between artist and muse, leader and follower. I've been exploring these archetypes as inner dynamics, facets of my own psyche, even while I play with them interpersonally.
The relationship between the artist of me and my inner muse has been broken. I often feel like I can't fully channel myself, as if there is a dam stopping the river of my life force. Groping in the darkness, I can't find my depths with my hands. It is frustrating. Sometimes I'm overcome with massive waves of grief for knowing feeling some immense source of creativity in me, that I haven't been able to draw out, as if there is a wild rushing spring just around the bend -- I can hear it galloping over stone while I die of thirst, never able to reach the river.
Even while I've felt this way, and for as long as I can remember, I do have a creative life. You've seen my collaging on this blog. I love to write, and wrote evocatively and poignantly as a graduate student, ready for the challenge of meeting requirements while maintaining my spice. And when my Dom asked me to write a poem, to speak about desire and anticipation, or the pleasure in pain, or whatever I wanted but including certain phrases, I could. It is a masculine thing, channeling, and a skill I'm trying to cultivate for myself, to be my own Daddy, and a big reason for undertaking this challenge. I need practice. So I'll tie and cast my fly for a month, and maybe learn to catch a fish.
Daddy told me to write about inner strength, what keeps us going against the odds, amidst the chaos, when it would be easier to admit defeat. When I type that word "defeat" I think of Rilke's poem A Man Watching, which I quoted in my piece I am Earth's Submissive, a poem about submitting to God or Mystery or the Universe, to shape you. I don't know if I'll ever get over the allure of that type of spirituality, or that type of sex. But I do know there is a place and a time to be unyielding and obstinate, to push through, to be guarded.
There is even a time for arrogance, and I wonder if it might be coming for me. I've spent a lot of time underestimating what I feel, what I know, what I can say, and what I want. I have very little experience taking what I desire, with the greed of a ravenous lover. Being taken by that lover, man or Mystery, yes. And I'm not sick of it yet. But my inner artist, the Dom in me, that comes much less naturally, and is perhaps more vital.
