Beyond Words

I was listening to Radio Lab on "Words" (which, by the way, is a fabulous show--highly recommend!--yes, I am an NPR nerd...) and they were talking with this woman who had a stroke. While she was in the middle of the stroke, she lost language, and it was blissful.

That is was S&M used to do for me. I'm so defined by language. I use words to navigate not just the physical world, but also my emotional world. They tell me how I'm feeling. I love the word 'liminal' because it was a way of defining that space in-betwixt and between. Before I had that word, I didn't know how to embrace that space. I fell in love with John based on our words.

Somehow, when I first started playing with wiitwd, it was magical. I remember going out with this man who kept dropping hints about kinky friends, but saying "of course, I'm not into that." Over, and over and over. And on our third date, I looked at him and said "Are you really as vanilla as you keep trying to reassure me..." And then he took me home and spanked me. And ran ice-cubes on my hot ass. It was magical. And I stopped thinking in words and started thinking in pictures. Which is so odd, if you think about it. Why not feelings instead of words? Where did the pictures come from? But all of a sudden it was pictures.

I've thought about trying to find someone kinky again, but it scares me. Scares the hell out of me. And then I remember that I met John on collarme. And the vanilla men, well, they bore me. Bored or scared, bored or scared, bored or scared.

I ache for the sublime. Not in the modern sense, in sense of the Romantics. Terror and awe at God's presence. I think the closest I've found, outside of wiitwd, is that moment on the Maid of the Mist ride at Niagara Falls. Exhilaration and totally alive to the present without words to define and demarcate and limit.