Domination and Mastery

Today mitda got her hair cut in a more modish fashion, and I picked up a few clothes suitable for work at the new place. I’ve been working on the new car a fair bit and it now picks up speed much better and the idle is smooth. It’s rather fun working on the car, not that I’ve done anything difficult to it. It also saves a good deal of cash that would otherwise go to a mechanic. The internet has proved a handy mechanics’ tool as well, as I found out things about the particular model and the symptoms it was having from various car owner forums.

I have today and tomorrow free, and then I go back to work. Here’s hoping this will be a job I can stay at for a decent length of time.

This morning the girls and I are having a sit at a local coffee shop. As of next wednesday I am officially employed again, having fought through a 3.5 hour interview yesterday. It looks like a pretty good gig, mostly open source software stack and not too much undue pressure. It’s warm and sticky in central Texas today, not wintry at all, more like a late Canadian Spring. Ah well, at least it’s below 80 degrees for now.

We brought the new (to us) car today. We call it black and tan after the famous drink. It’s a subtle car in some ways, you don’t feel your speed, even while accelerating quickly, but it really does go. It could use new plugs and a new air filter most likely, and that might improve the mileage some. But since I’m going to be working I’m not going to worry about the fuel costs too much, just put em down as a business expense and write off the tax.

It looks like mitda will be doing some political work for the next election. Perhaps she will make some contacts outside of the M/s community : ), although it’s with some slice of irony that a person in the M/s community has put her forward I’m a bit on the apathetic side viz politics but I don’t actually disagree with mitda’s goals so she’s welcome to have them. Certainly any new government is liable to be better than the current set of mofo’s.

So one more week at home with the girls and then back to work for me. Luc is certainly happy about it as money woes stress him more than the rest of us.

It’s been a difficult few weeks, really, what with dealing with the USCIS, mitda stressing about her getting a job, Luc stressing over money and emmie still a bit yo-yo-ish in the mood department.

However things are seemingly looking up. I have two interviews today, one by phone the other in person, and I usually do quite well in interviews. It also seems that mitda is mostly over her bronchitis or similar URI and emmie is calmer, if not entirely stable. Along the way we cut back on family expenses by trading a car for an older model, and various other pushbacks on expenses, so once I start working again it shouldn’t be a situation where both Luc and my salaries go completely to bills.
The 9 yr old, emmie’s son, has hit the “why?” period. Yes I know 9 is very late but this is one of the places we see his developmental lateness (he is high functioning autistic). Unfortunately it’s even harder to be patient while a 9 yr old goes through it than when a 4 yr old goes through it. It’s just not cute, lol. We will have to try to stay as patient as possible though and hope he goes through it as quickly as possible.

Some people have misconstrued my posts on “Care” as the meaning of human being as a “life’s burden” type of attitude. Nothing could be further from the truth for me, as Care is a joy to me and not a burden. Being concerned with things, whether important or trivial, keeps me interested and alive in a way that flat, flitting curiosity could never do. Concern for the people close to me makes all the stupidities and difficulties that life throws at me worthwhile.

The other day emmie’s therapist asked “when does Das get time to decompress in that situation” or something to that effect, my decompression is the very thing of seeing the results of my concern come to fruition in whatever way they do, whether as a piece of software working, a server up and running, or a lover satisfied, a wife content, and a slave happy.

Often blogging helps a complex situation by clarifying how each person sees things that are happening. In our case we read each others’ blogs and other writing, and I find writing things out leads to a healthy self-discipline in being clear with each other and making less assumptions. Unfortunately emmie and I don’t always like to be that clear, she works out her thoughts until they are clear to her but not necessarily to anyone else, and I have an esoteric vocabulary that comes from a good deal of study.

It can get upsetting when your words seem clear to you but not to others, as mine often do. I’ve been making a concerted effort to be more clear in my language without modifying the intent of what I’m saying, hopefully it’s helping people get what I say without too much confusion : ).

I’ve noticed a lot of differentiation between Dominants and submissives in general, one of them being that Dominants don’t like to speak about WIITWD as much as submissives, whether due to censure or not we tend to be on the quiet side about M/s and bdsm in general.

I have written on the WIKI and blog in the past about total subjugation and its necessity as a part of the absolute enslavement process. In terms of this, while the one being enslaved does do a lot of the work in opening him/herself up to being owned, the actions of the Master are what put the slave into the appropriate place and thereby the appropriate relation to the Master. Subjugation takes many forms, from gentle chiding to more robust measures, but it seems to be necessary at least for the slaves I have that I push them, just that little beyond where they believe they can go in order to cement the enslavement process.

So Valentine’s Day went off without too many hiccups, other than one of emmie’s presents coming a day later than everyone else’s present that were meant to be presented together (I purchased everyone in the household a watch for our time together past present and future). We exchanged rings and a simple pledge to each other at a coffee shop and then meandered home. Tonight’s planned salsa festivities were rather hampered by mitda contracting the bubonic plague and the proposed 30 degree temperatures outside being about 45 degrees too few for emmie, but we’ll get that together another weekend.

Another odd thing this last couple of weeks has been used car salesmen that are incapable of carrying through on a deal. One went as far as making the deal and taking the deposit with plans to deliver the car the next day, only to fail to show up and then back out of the deal completely. Hence I don’t have the soccer mom wagon after all. Our substitute third car wound up being an older benz coupe in black and tan, she is a sweet ride so we’re referring to her as black velvet. She’s big enough and heavy enough that I feel comfortable with emmie driving her around – emmie’s not the most confident of drivers and both she and I will feel safer with her in the semi-armoured teutonic beast.

After much fussing with OS’s over the last few months I bit the bullet and virtualized my laptop. Now with OpenSolaris as the host OS and innotek’s open source virtual machine I can run Windows apps to my hearts content on my Solaris desktop. I currently have Windows Server 08 installed but may switch to Vista once the Vista recovery cd’s for my laptop arrive.

Yay, Unix with my SonicStage minidisc player software.

1. Master

   Care as it manifests in the Master’s views and actions centers around his slave(s), his work, and the household. Obviously it manifests in very different ways to that of the slave. In accepting enownment the Master takes on unlimited responsibility for the slave. Mastery also involves Mastery of one’s fundamental discipline, or work. Finally the Master is responsible for the household, for seeing that it is maintained to a proper standard and that everything in it is appropriately shared.

   1. Slaves

      Unlimited responsibility is a difficult idea at first, but in a true absolute enslavement relationship the slave gives up all responsibility except that of serving the Master. As a result the Master absorbs all of the slave’s responsibilities to him/her self in an unlimited manner. Anything and everything that the slave does is the responsibility of the Master, and when the slave does things in an appropriate manner he/she should receive the Master’s praise and blessing, as he/she receives the Master’s punishment when there is errancy from the Master’s will.

   2. Work

      A Master is usually involved in one or more avenues of personal discipline, whether it be paid work or otherwise, and has responsibility to be concerned about this discipline. Often the “cares of the day” on the Master are ameliorated plentifully by the attentions and assistance of his/her slave.

   3. Household

      While in most cases the day to day running of the household is left up to the slave, the Master is responsible for setting guidelines and ensuring they are met. Taking care that things are done appropriately and praising the slave when they are, punishing when not, is a responsibility and a concern the Master may not abrogate simply because he/she has other things on their mind.

Meaning of (“matters to”) the Slave in M/s Practice

1. slave

   Things that are to “matter” to a slave obviously include his/her Master, his/her duties, and his/her household. Things pertaining to the household in Greece were known as the art of economics. In whatever way the slave’s Master wishes things to be performed and arranged the slave learns the procedures and protocols, and absorbs the necessary skills. These things can include sexual service, domestic service, and other types of service. The slave does all things in view of the Master’s will and within the context of the Master’s World. Wearing the collar signifies that the slaves will is not their own but is subservient to that of another.

   1. Duties

      While duties may conceivably include anything the Master wills the slave to accomplish, common types of duties include sexual and domestic duties, for example. For a slave to perform these duties appropriately he/she needs to understand the meanings of the actions within the context of the Master’s world-view. Training is therefore crucial in enveloping the slave in this world-view and shaping the slave’s concerns to mirror those of his/her Master. The slave is also lacking the structure of human being we call “mineness” to the greatest degree possible, because the slave is “mine” to the Master, not to him/herself. As a result “ my” wishes and desires on the part of the slave really mean the wishes of his/her Master. Residual wishes of his/her own take second place in importance.

   2. household

      1. “economics”

         Within the household, many slaves are skilled and trained at household management, or the old Greek art of economics. This frees the Master to engage fully in the outside world while knowing the household is taken care of . While the slave, then, is often ostensibly “in charge” of the household the household is and must be run to the standards and in the manner that the Master sets forth. Some slaves give up financial responsibility altogether, but in other cases the slave is responsible for the household finances, and responsible to execute them in accordance with the Master’s will.