1. “I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.”
2. “Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.”
3. “There is no more lively sensation than that of pain; its impressions are certain and dependable, they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.”
4. “One must do violence to the object of one’s desire when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.”
5. “Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature’s mandates.”

Personally, for me being submissive and masochistic go hand in hand and it’s not always from a sexual point of view. As an example, I’ll point to a moment when BloodLustDaddy comes in the door at the end of the day, he may grab the hair at the back of my neck just to do it and that action does play apart in getting me excited sexually but it more so plays a part in it just being a physical act that reinforces his dominance over me and my submissiveness to him. The tighter or rougher he grabs at me the greater the pleasure I get from it both emotional and physically.

Pain in and of itself differs from one person to the next but for all humans it is part of our nervous system. A part in which, that is mixed in with our emotional responses as a direct connection to the physical body. Pain and what we perceive to be painful is a response, not a cause in our body. Lame example: for some a paper cut is a horrible annoying pain, while for other’s the cut may not even be noticed until someone else points it out to them. So, what I am saying here is that pain is individualistic and subjective.

At the start of play, there are moments that I am afraid. Sometimes I wonder if I will be able to handle being whipped. Can I withstand the pain? Then he whips me. The first sensations I get start from the point of the leather hitting my skin and then it spreads, the pain radiates through my body like a pebble skipping over water. It’s the ripple effect, if you will, of the sensation as it travels through me and while one part of my brain says, “Hey, this hurts!” another part of my brain says, “Yes, it hurts… whip me again.”

Masochism for me is about being at one with my body, about being grounded in a reality that cannot be escaped. Now, there are some people who look at it as being a means to escape the day-to-day but for me it just doesn’t work that way. When pain is introduced to my body, I don’t want to learn how to tune it out. I don’t want to go beyond my body, to leave it and there by leave the sensations behind… I spent most of my youth escaping my body and now as an adult I want to feel all that I can and I want to be aware of it. For me, having OBE is not the goal, as I can do that at anytime I want, when BloodLustDaddy inflicts pain for me I don’t want to miss a precious second of the sensation.

Many people, whether they are a top or bottom end up in situations where there is a level of not so good qualities that they put up with in order to keep focusing on the good. Resentment builds over the bad qualities until a moment comes where one person can no longer take the day-to-day of the relationship.

The closing of many relationships can be avoided by focusing on what you do not want before you look for someone.

Before Daddy and I entered into our relationship, we had both spent many years learning about ourselves and being with people that we knew were not going to survive in a relationship with us. We each did this on our own and in separate relationships. We took the time and had learning experiences that were emotionally draining in some cases but the key is that we learned through our actions all the things that we accepted that we did not want. We did this in such a way that when we agreed to enter into a relationship we named off what it is that we did not want first before we even covered the things that we had figured out that we wanted.

I have always seen body modification/scarification as chosen stories to be worn on the body. The importance for me here is chosen. If I am to have to be asked or pushed into telling the tales of my scars to people who can see them, I would much rather the tales have a significant meaning for me. I want to be able to chose my markings, collaborate on the design and own my own tale, my own meaning… my own skin. I want chosen significance.

Branding also, holds for me a greater meaning in an outward showing for use as a type of a rite of passage. We all go through certain events in our lives, whether chosen or not that have the ability to change who we are forever. The majority of the changes that take place are internal; it’s how we develop emotionally on the inside. Rites of passage mean different things to different people but for me it was being born marked with a birth mark, the start of my cycle which changed the landscape of my body and giving birth which also further changed my body from the inside out. All significant moments to be sure, but also still mainly internal with the exception of the birth mark. Sometimes, I have thought when something I feel is of great importance that I’ll try to hold on to a certain aspect of the event like a movie ticket stub or a card. Little mementos like those can be lost physically and sure, even though I will tell myself that the memory will sustain me, sometimes those also slip away. It’s happened to me and I know that it has happened to others. In choosing to be branded, it is a combination of an event and memento that will not soon slip away.

Having a brand means having an outside marking that one cannot not only see, as in a tattoo but also a marking that one can feel for quite sometime when it is placed in an area of the body that you cannot look at all the time. Branding burns through the skin, it sears you removing any outer layers of skin that may have grown on you through the years. The heat melts away, in a sense the ending of one period of your life by issuing in another one; takes away in it’s working to create it’s mark within you. The scar will begin to heal eventually but what is left, the raised or indented skin can be run over by your fingertips or felt against a partners skin and in turn will become a perpetual reminder and a lasting work of outward soul type art adorning the body. For example: many people can point to a time in which they have burned themselves on the stove by accident, those burns change the landscape of that area of skin in which it was marked. Personally, I have some burns, one is self-inflicted and was an accident by dropping a heated curling iron on my arm and the others are from various burns which were not self-inflicted but all have scared me, taken away the layers of skin it melted away and left behind new and oddly shaped skin. My burns are outside markings, reminders of non-rite of passage moments but of events that changed not only who I was on the inside but what appeared on the outside.

Another level of significance to branding are the reasons that people choose to have them. For myself, I have mulled over getting branded for a very long time, though I have never done so. My reasons for having one would have to be of very high importance because it involves for me an outward showing of ownership; both of my own and my partners. My want of being branded is to be marked outwardly, a higher sign of commitment burned into a deeper level of my skin. I want my partner to work with me on choosing a location on my body and on choosing a design and I want it to be something of significance for us both. I have not gotten branded as of yet because I have not wanted to get burned with or for anyone else that I have ever been with. Honestly, no one that I have ever been with have I felt even the slightest bit of comfort when discussing branding at all not merely with my fascination with it but also my thoughts on actually being branded. (I suppose, that for me it adds to the ideal of a working 24/7 D/s relationship) This is also the reason that I have not gotten a tattoo or piercing on my body… but those can by essay topics for another assignment.

Pain is certainly involved when thinking over the idea of branding. Some people enter into an adrenaline rush and barely feel a thing and others feel an excruciating level of pain while being branded. I do believe that the level of pain being felt has a great deal to do with ones view on the branding, the reasons for being branded, the design duration that it will take to actually be formed and the method being used to brand. Personally, I wouldn’t presume to know what my tolerance level for that kind of pain would be, since I have never been branded but I would enter into understanding that the pain is only apart of the process and to get through it, all I would need to do would be to accept the pain and let it flow… almost like accepting the pain through childbirth. I have to admit that I like that there is such an amount of pain involved… it makes sense. It is not that I am a complete masochist, it is just that I feel there should be pain involved when entering into the idea of burning layers of your skin off for scarring. It should take a certain constitution to be able to go through with the process and for that matter even be willing to go through the process at all. Branding is not something that people should do because they think it is cool or the next fad, it should be treated with a certain level of respect because of the permanence and because of the level of pain involved. I think that the a fore mentioned is one of the reasons that branding hasn’t overgrown tattooing in it’s popularity.

The two forms used for branding are strike(multi) and cautery (electro). Some people call strike branding, multi-strike and the process involves using carbon steel sheet metal. The metal for this application is cut into small strips about one inch in width. The strips are then further bent and cut to shape in order to create the design that has been chosen to be strike branded. Once the design is set, the strips are heated with a torch until the steel is literally “red hot” enough to create a branding. Then each of the strips are struck against the skin for a second and then removed. Depending on the design and how many strips are used depends on how many applications are struck towards the skin. Cautery(electro) branding uses a surgical cautery pen to draw the design into the skin, much like how a soldering iron is used. This method is popular among the branding community because it allows for a more detailed design application to occur more so than that of the strike branding method. Cautery is also said to be the less painful method to go with, although with burning though layers of the skin you can count on some pain. Now, in cautery branding there are different tools used depending on what brander you choose to go with. The main line tool of most cautery brands is the use of the surgical pen but another tool would be the hyfricator instrument. With the hyfricator the tool can have various different design metal tip heads but uses smaller amounts of electricity than the surgical pen to cauterize the skin.

Something that many people do not take into consideration when dealing with or choosing the design for their branding is the size. Highly detailed patterns do not work as well on human skin as they would on an animals because of our skin tissues biological makeup. Our bodies are geared towards healing and with branding the goal is to scar well enough to keep the design that you originally wanted in the first place. Also, with any design in combination to our healing processes it is important to note that each strike of the brand, though a mere inch wide piece of steel will scar up to three times in design size, so it is best to start of with a conservative design for the first go round of branding. I admit that this is one of the things that fascinates me about the branding process. Our bodies are designed to heal themselves and it will fight to heal as best it can any attack on the body, mainly the skin as that is the organ that takes the hardest beating. By choosing branding people are choosing to destroy themselves to create something else. Part of the after care for branding is to ensure that the brand scabs scar up as well as it can.

Another thing that people may want to consider is how to deal with society’s acceptance of their body art. Branding and even other forms of body mods and scarification are not legal in all states. In fact it took Oklahoma until this year to lift it’s ban on body modification laws. State governments are not all accepting, just as people that you may run into at the local store or your bank may not be that accepting that you have gone and paid someone to burn through several layers of your skin to create a scar. The most common remark that I have heard when branding has been brought up is the reference to cattle. So, it’s a good idea to not only prepare yourself for the process leading up to your branding but also to prepare yourself on how other’s, even your family may react to you new body modification.

A question that I have asked myself many times, through the years when considering getting branded is, “Why do I want to disfigure myself?” Well, I have no simple answer for that. Do I really consider it disfiguring? Not really. Yes, branding is the process in which you burn through your skin to create a lasting scar and too many that would equal disfigurement but it just doesn’t to me. In choosing a design to wear both in and out of my skin, it is creating more of what I see as a wounded piece of art. I see myself as broken in many ways but that doesn’t mean my wound cannot be just as beautiful as other types of adornments that many whole people chose to attach to themselves. I know that it may seem like a simple comparison to equate branding to somebody wearing a ring or buying a certain coat but to me that is what it equals to… something simple but with a greater meaning.

Why a Lady Shouldn’t use Profanity, Punishment Essay #2

Profanity is not an essential component in a lady’s lexicon.  She does not need to express upsets in such a common manner.  She has a myriad of more refined tools, and talents in her repertoire that she should have no need to lower herself in a vulgar way to the mediocrity of everyday society. In many ways this is exactly how a lady establishes herself as apart of and even above societal norms at the same time.

A lady, in and of herself is a mystery.  She has an air about her that men are drawn to and women try to emulate.  She knows the art of subtly, compassion and decorum; none of which owe themselves to the use of profanities.  She holds herself in a certain way, speaks with a certain tone and almost always has the ability to put those around her at ease. She does this by not incorporating certain common aspects into her demeanor.

Keeping in mind, there are different ways to show disdain or take part in a disagreement that do not include the use of profanity.  A lady can cast her eyes in a certain direction, shift her posture or quietly remove herself from the situation.  She does not jump in with a verbal assault unless the situation completely warrants such action but even then she should still be able to do so with out the use of vulgar language.

A lady is seen as such for various reasons, but the presentation can be irreparably altered when the use of profanity is incorporated.  A fine example of this would be to think upon a glided lily.  The lily is a pure white color, supported on high by its long graceful stem.  All movements that come do not shake the lily but serve to gently sway the flower showing in its manner the ability to seemingly float through any tumultuous weather.  Now picture yourself leaning into the lily, admiring its beauty and its sense for peace. Get closer, so close that you could brush your lips softly among the soft petals.  At the exact moment your lips touch the flower it rots immediately, bringing forth a putrid smell only to whisper an obscenity as it dies.  This is not, by any means a picture perfect moment and you would become instantly repulsed.  Imagine this lily, being now broken from its stem and rotting away before your eyes.  Ask yourself the question, “What will I remember the most about this flower?”  Will you remember its gentle sway or the delicate pureness of the white petals? No. Simply, all that will be remembered is the decay and the blossom’s dying word.  The point being that no matter how such a gilded lily or lady, for that matter, is presented all it takes is one irreversible representation and the demur is gone.

Profanity, in it’s vary nature is to discount what words are chosen for our expressions.  The use of vulgar statements has the power to strip away even the kindest and heartfelt words that we could ever say.  Given, that a lady does not wish to discredited herself or those around her by breaking presentation, were she to use profane language she would no longer be a lady.

Dawnscape by Lynn Paula Russell

Artist Lynn Paula Russell’s work is both thought provoking and beautiful. Many of you may have seen her work, it is all over the internet but not many people credit her creations. These works she creates are imaginative and express the sheer talent that she has artistically when creating any piece she is working on. Please , check out her main web site here: Lynn Paula Russell

The piece shown here, is one of my favorites and it is entitled “Dawnscape”. It is also available for sale under her Buy Prints section through her main site.

I wouldn’t be so brash as to call it “mission accomplished” or anything but I do admit that my emotions are out of control.  I feel deeply, I feel strongly and am at a point where I can no longer handle intense emotions without him. I need him in order to process deep emotions, I need him in order to be able to deal with things This is something that he is very excited about and pleased by.

I’m excited about it sometimes, other times I get overwhelmed with emotion and it freaks me out a bit. He’s thrilled and I’m still adjusting to being this vulnerable. It is an interesting journey, I will admit that it may even make my art better. Who knows? Only time will tell really. Am going off a bit on topic What I wanted to talk about was what the effects of having this emotional bondage created in our relationship.

It may be easier to breakdown some effects instead of trying to explain such a large topic. So, I will start with how I react to things in a way that show him how much I need Daddy now to function.

• cannot sleep without him next to me
• cannot handle not being in the same room as he is in for more than an hour
• must be in constant communication via text, chat, phone and e-mail while Daddy is out of the house
• must get his things gathered in the right way, any show of displeasure on his part and I am crushed to the point like the whole world is falling apart and it’s all my fault
• when not allowed to stand up for myself in stressful situations, I revert and become completely non-functional where Daddy has to take care of me until I am in my right mind

That last one was the scariest one for me so far. I became so non-functional I couldn’t drive,  couldn’t eat or even talk. I was shaking with emotion that I couldn’t process or handle and my mind shut down. Freaked me out to no end and am still freaked out by it. Meanwhile, Daddy thought my breakdown was “cute”.

These are just some of the things that have come about and as I think about more, I will write more about it. I am still in the process of trying to understand myself this way as we go deeper into the emotional bondage that we have created.