Pondering

"Were you and J Lovers?"

Good question. For me, there are three parts to "Lovers" -- physical, mental and emotional/spiritual.

Physical.
Sex. Capital S.
What constitutes Sex though? For me, some genitals must be involved. The hottest, deepest, wettest, most passionate kiss is just a kiss. Or maybe a K*I*S*S, but still not Sex. It is "only" mouth to mouth; no genitalia. I will stretch this definition though to include secondary sex characteristics because mouth-to-breast/nipples is definitely Sex in my book. And mouth-to-genitals counts as Sex just as much as hands-to- or genitals-to-.

But how much Sex does it take to be Lovers? 
Once is a one night stand, right? What about once before one person deploys for three years to some foreign war but the other two components (below) persist for the three years -- are they Lovers for three years?

Once, without the other two components is not enough; with both though, I think it would suffice. 'Twould be wicked frustrating, but would suffice. Several times, without the other two components? That is called a Fuck Buddy.

But Sex alone is not enough to constitute "being Lovers".

Mental
Don't know about you all, but my brain is definitely an erogenous zone. "Seduce my mind and you can have my body ..."  "All I need now is intellectual intercourse..."  I believe that Lovers must have some sort of meeting of the minds, be on the same wavelength, have some common cultural references. You need something to talk about while you are mustering up reserves for the next roll in the hay, eh? But even that isn't quite enough. Maybe enough for Friends With Benefits, but not for Lovers.

Emotional/Spiritual

"... find my soul and I'm yours forever."  "... a soul to dig the hole much deeper." You make my heart sing. The thrill I get every time I hear your voice. Knowing we share hopes and dreams and wishes as well as wants and desires. It is harder to pin down, but the emotional/spiritual part is to me the deal breaker. It must be there or we are only FWBs or FBs or something else, but not Lovers.

Answer -- J and I are Friends With Benefits. Further answer -- D and I were Fuck Buddies, M1 and I were Lovers.

"What I wouldn't give to find a soul mate, someone else to catch this drift ..."
M2 and I are Soul Mates, and that is another story altogether.
 
*****
aside: If you can have Oral Sex with yourself, please send me the name of your yoga instructor. Please?

Insecurity, envy, jealousy and low self-esteem

Wow.
Where do I start?
She has accused me of --

• uncertainty
• insecurity
• envy
• jealousy
• low self-esteem

 Yes, I (we) do have a certain amount of uncertainty -- not about our relationship together, but rather about our relationship with them. That is the main reason we broke off the relationship with them. We were uncertain as to their

• motives
• interests
• priorities
• lives
• schedules

I do not have any insecurity about your love or my place in your heart, your life. You have no insecurity about my love or your place in my heart, my life.

I do envy -- her travel, her collection of wonderful art, her sureness that she is always right. But I have traveled (Russia, Austria, England, Australia, Guatemala) and plan to travel more. In my travels I have collected, not wonderful art but wonderful experiences; I have meet wonderful people; I have wonderful memories. I am not sure that I am always right; but I am sure that I always try to do the right thing. There really is nothing there to envy.

I did feel jealousy -- for the time you spent with her that could have been (better?) spent with me. It is hard to spend a night together and then rush through a cursory breakfast because you are going to have frittata (among other things) with her. But when you are with C. or V. or B. or M. or A. or any of a number of others, I know you are happy and enjoying them and yourself; I do not feel jealousy.

My therapist and I agree that my self-esteem is not low. I have a good sense of my abilities and capabilities. My self-esteem is, however, fragile.  That is why I need a little bolstering every once in a while -- a reminder of my abilities and capabilities and place in your heart and your life.

Every experience is a learning experience. This one has been AFGE -- another fucking growth experience.
 I've learned a lot.

What do rabbits have to do with eggs and what do both have to do with Easter?

Way back in neolithic times, imagine seeing a "rock" start to wobble and crack and a feathered creature come out of it. Miracle, right? Yep, totally.

Even after observing eggs coming out of Mama Birds, and after discovering that newly emerged eggs were mostly liquid inside and tasted good, there was still a bit of mystical, magical, miracle about them. Eggs came to be symbols of rebirth, of new birth, and were taken up as symbols of the Spring Equinox and Spring Festivals.

Fertility rituals were performed around the time of spring planting to ensure a good crop, and during the spring mating season of prey animals for the same reason. Rabbits, even then, were notable for their fecundity and they also became symbols of the season.

Along came the Christians, trying hard to gain a foothold with the common people, the country people, the "pagans". "Our religion is just like yours. See how we use the same symbols?" The problem with borrowing someone's symbols without also borrowing their underlying religious significance is that mix-ups can occur. And so we have the Easter Bunny hopping around and bringing eggs to good children.

Don't get me started on Christmas or Halloween!

Making and Breaking

Some things I make are more easily un-made, or broken, than others. I think it may be a question of how much pre-planning goes into the thing.

Quilts, I plan and draft and redraft and fiddle and rearrange, long before I even touch [or buy!] a piece of fabric. My quilts are rarely broken once made. Even then, they are often only rearranged and reassembled, not re-purposed.

Pottery, I am still so new to the process that often it is difficult to achieve fully how I want the finished pot to look. My hands don't yet have the skill to produce what my mind has conceived. Sometimes my pots are broken, inadvertently or on purpose, at any stage. Broken unfired pots are crushed to become reclaimed clay and get to start over; broken bisque fired pots facilitate drainage in my flower pots; broken glazed pots become mosaic tiles for stepping stones.

Friendships, relationships, are not objects; not so easily made, but sometimes too easily broken. How much planning and preparation goes into making a friendship? Words, written and spoken, can help; but thinking and reflecting and planning are usually not part of the process. We jump into friendships, relationships, and think, "I've been making friends since kindergarten. This is easy." It is so easy to make, so hard to maintain, so easily broken.

Where do the broken friendships, relationships go?

Four years ...

Four years behind us;
Forty years ahead of us.
(But who's counting, eh?)

Happy anniversary to my Love, my Partner, my Soul Mate.

You make my heart sing, you make my spirit soar, you make my soul happy.

Tell me; Don't tell me

Tell me what I need to hear.
Don't tell me what you think
I want to hear.

Tell me what I want to hear.
Don't tell me what you think
I need to hear.

Decompression

Decompression
Compression
Depression
Expression

This time was not as difficult as the return from Black Rock City; but some of the same mechanisms work to make it happen.

Friends, food, hot water, cool wine:

• Dinner with Kate and meeting her new friend; 
• basmati rice under *anything* but especially the chicken and cranberry sauce; 
• hot tub shared four ways last night and two ways this morning;
• 'nuff said?

Some of my best thinking and creativity happen between the white lines, particularly on I-5 through the Central Valley, particularly on the return trip.

I have a "maybe" solution to the couch pillow problem at the Palm Springs house; ideas for some other sewing projects; plans to slab-build a set of coffee mugs for the desert house; and that was only this trip. Who could forget the board game we invented, a sort of spin-the-bottle meets strip poker meets Truth or Dare? And the metamorphosis of Silicon Valley Computer Support Services into S.V. Couples Sexual Services?