Diversity and The Space Between

A few thoughts on similarity, difference, and the space in between...

So, I'm over at a friend's house last night, and he hands me this passage out of Foucault, and pretty much goes 'what d'ya make of them onions, then?' Now, my poor befuddled brain sort of went 'splat' and fell over at this point, but it seemed to me to be something about the arbitrariness of groupings and categories, the way we envisage similarities between things, and also, the space in which something is *not*, the absence of something, and the invisible.

It put me in mind of my old record label boss, who used to say, sometimes it's not the main melody that makes the song special, but what happens around it. Sometimes removing your favourite riff from the song can actually make it *better*. At the time I thought 'that sounds like bollocks to me', but maybe there's something to it. The Velazquez painting that Foucault refers to is remarkable, not for what it shows, but what it does *not* show. The dance is beautiful, not because of where the dancers touch, but where they do not...the space between the dancers. It is not what is spoken but what is *not* said, that gives you the key to unlocking the puzzle.

To visit my friend, I had to take the same journey on the train that I only ever took to visit my ex. Walking out of the station - the empty space where he was not there to meet me...that was the bit that hurt. It was not what he did while we were together, but what he did *not* do, that broke my heart.

My friend suggested that, because I'm married, the majority of people will struggle to love me the way I love them. Because people who want a long term relationship will feel I can never belong to them, so they will hold back. It's what they perceive as what I can *not* give them, that means they'll never return my feelings fully. This saddens me. My love for my husband is completely separate from my love for anyone else. I don't love other people *less*, because I'm married to him, because I love him. When I fall in love with other people, which I've done twice this year, they get everything that they would have got anyway, if R didn't exist, in terms of my heart. I might have to share time and practicalities get in the way, but when I love someone, I love so completely, so openly, that there is almost nothing they can do to make me not adore them. It's almost, but not quite, a kind of unconditional love.

My family and friends solution to this is - don't get emotional. Don't fall in love again. Don't get emotionally attached, just get beaten and shagged. Sounds great in theory, but I can't do that, I'm not that sort of person and never will be, I don't think.

So. Last night, my friend and I were also talking about different approaches to BDSM. For example, we both like spanking. Like...a LOT. For him, with his collection of household objects he likes to be hit with, his perfect scenario is caring, loving, discipline and humour, warmth and spanking in the middle of making dinner. The strict but loving domme.

Technically, we can both be grouped together as perverts and spanking sluts. But our approach is so, so different. For me, if someone laughed during a scene or hit me with a household object, I would get really upset. When I submit, the layers of protective personality that I use to defend myself - the stroppiness, the laughter, the confidence - all these are stripped away. If someone laughed or did anything that wasn't completely serious; it would be like laughing at someone when they've just shared an incredibly personal or private intimacy about themselves with you.

For me, BDSM is very, deeply sexual, and what turns me on is the sense of suppressed anger, violence, darkness. Yes, I want the person to care for me and cuddle me afterwards. But I want to feel empowered by the sense that I've caused such passion in someone else. This is what is missing in my life. This is what is *not*.

In other news, I have already fallen over on the ice today. I sometimes think I am officially the Clumsiest Person in the World, Ever. And then once I've fallen over, I carry on walking but become entirely rigid with terror. It's not so much Bambi on ice as someone pushing a stuffed moocow onto a skating rink with a broom.

In other, other news, listening to Breed 77's 'La Ultima Hora' obsessively is not helping to calm my libido down. There's something incredibly erotic about the rhythmic rise and fall of the vocals, the swelling, cresting fusion of latin, middle-eastern, metal and goth, the passion and the drama. It makes me want to dance, and it also makes me do my 'anguished ecstasy' face, which is probably not sensible when listening to it whilst walking down the road. Passers by probably think I'm having a stroke. I'm just waiting for someone to stop me and ask kindly, 'Is there anyone with you looking after you, dear?'