Silkenvoice

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 18:12:00 -0800

I've added some material to the Google Play Store.

I've moved my blogging over to my site www.SilkenOnSex.com.

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Pathos, Eros, and Aramis

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:12:00 -0700

[This will be posted as a Silken On Sex podcast episode in the near future]

The weather is California cliche: the sun is bright, the sky is a cloudless blue. The scent of California bay and eucalyptus waft by on a sea breeze. Children splash in the pool. Laughter bounces around the courtyard.

From my chair on the balcony I try to extend my senses, to feel something -- anything -- but what I’m feeling now.

Pathos.

I am doing my best to be present with my body, to understand how this pathos feels, not just emotionally, but physically.

Right now, it feels under-oxygenated. My breath is shorter, faster. It no longer fills my center. My muscles are tight. Twitchy. Restless. My shoulders ride higher, up near my ears. I feel it in my gut, too, the tightness. An ache has settled in my chest, my eyes. It is a long list.

This is what anxiety and anguish feels like in the flesh.

In my head, it feels like being small and afraid in the face of uncertainty. Trapped. Cut-off. Cornered. I feel like I must act, must do something, anything. But what?

And so I remind myself to breathe.

Life is uncertain, and no amount of resistance to that fact is going to change Reality. Reality is mutable, transient, turbulent. Unpredictable. And yet, it is what it is.

Accept, my mind says. But my body betrays emotional resistance.

I figured that my sisters and I would grow old together, the three of us. The Three Musketeers. I thought we’d be hard-of-hearing old ladies sitting on the back porch swing, laughing until we had to pee, talking about the good old days with Grandmother, the rides down the hill in our little red wagon, and riding horses on the mesa in Colorado. I thought we’d go on vacations, bicycle rides for three, and scold grandchildren. Then one sister died in 2008 after a long illness, and I revised that dream to just the two of us. But today, the likelihood of my baby sister surviving to my age is slim, never mind to old age. And I feel. A lot of things.

I know we all die. And I know it isn’t anything to be afraid of. I got that, really got it, when I was holding my grandfather’s hand as he exhaled the last bits of himself two years ago. I understand the beauty of the life-cycle, the transitory nature of it, the glory of a life well-lived. You could say that I am at peace with Death.

But to die young, ah. To lose someone in the prime of life. To watch them hunch in on themselves with pain. The pain of living. Of breathing. Of being. I can handle it. Watching someone die from cancer isn’t a new experience for me. But I’m not enjoying it. It is very stressful on everyone. Especially my sister.

Underneath it all, I’m sad for me. And for her kids. And for our parents — who will have to deal with out-living another of their children.

Life is. And quite often these days, life is Pathos.

Eros and Aramis.

Citrus, cinnamon, and sandalwood: the scent of his Aramis cologne envelops me as Gabriel’s arms do. I rest my forehead against his shoulder and breathe him into me. He always seems to know when I’m in that place, that overwhelmed, anxious and impatient place. He hugs me hard, his arms forming a tight band that pops my back. A welcome release.

“You’re cold,” he murmurs against my ear. “How can you be cold? It’s over 80 degrees out here.”

“I’ve forgotten warmth,” I mutter back, dispirited and exhausted. And cold. I’ve been sleeping with the electric blanket on. In Summer.

He steps backward, holding me at arm's length. He starts to say something, but his eyes are riveted on my breasts. My nipples. Bra-less and cold, my nipples were already hard, but his nearness, the scent of him, have added additional length.

His hand reaches toward my right breast, thumb grazing the nipple. His touch sparks through me, little electric arrows racing along my nerve-endings, dissipating the fog of despair wrapped around me like a comforter. I feel!

Another brush of his thumb and I gasp and sway, my eyes closing. So good. So sweet. Pleasure is so life-affirming.

He steps nearer, his hand never leaving my breast. I can feel the warmth radiating from him. I tilt my face up to his, eyes closed, like a flower following the sun. My mouth trembles with a sad smile and tears well up under my eyelids.

“Make love to me,” I ask him, implore him. “Make me feel alive.”

He steps around me. Pulls the hair away from my neck and brushes my skin with his shadow. A sharp, hissing intake of my breath. I feel that! Mmmmm… yes!

His arms encircle me, one around my shoulders, the other, my midriff. He draws me backwards, off the balcony, and guides me down onto the persian carpet. With feather-light kisses and touches he opens my blouse, exposing my breasts.

More tears at his gentleness. I need this.

When his mouth closes over my erect nipple, my entire body vibrates with erotic energy. My pathos subsides beneath a tide of Aramis-scented eros as I surrender to a new feeling: I’m alive!

So gloriously fucking alive!

* * *

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As the world grows smaller, so do some minds

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:11:00 -0700

These thoughts have been percolating for a while. Finally, everything settled well enough for me to write it out. Enjoy.

Most psychologists and sociologists seem to agree that in order for humans to function under the tension that the awareness of opposites engenders, we create a transitional, symbolic, expansive "play space" in our psyche.

"That's a lot of five dollar words," my sister Tammy would have said. "Can you please explain using fifty-cent words?"

Sure. Humans have an internal landscape that we hold experiences and perceptions in prior to applying meaning to them. The larger this space, the greater the potential to experience the moment as something new, rather than applying old, pre-conceived meanings to it. The larger the space between our ears, the better we are able to suspend the drive to immediately label and judge, and allow the meanings of experiences to unfold with time, without exerting control. This allows tensions to co-exist in conflict and collaboration until balance or harmony is achieved. It is in this transcendent space that we come to understand that control is an illusion, that our internal realities are subjective, that 'meanings' are ascribed according to our attitudes. Jung called it Transcendent Function.

It goes without saying that some of us create larger spaces than others.

For some, the boundaries of that space are clearly defined, for others, they are limitless. The size of this space is related to traits of fluidity, flexibility and adaptability. When this space is small, people immediately reject ideas that are foreign to them, that call their own beliefs into question, and readily conceive of others as "wrong." Theirs is an ingrained -- perhaps even racial-memory -- mindset known as tribalism. They are, to use a ubiquitous phrase "small-minded idiots." And as the world grows smaller, so do some minds.

In this age when information is readily available, when the corners of the world are reachable by international flight, cellular phone, and internet pipe, I am stunned by the willful ignorance of my society.

But I shouldn't be. I was once a very judgmental person, and I know how easy it is to cling to what we think we know. Over the course of a few months I learned that the world as it existed in my head was a highly subjective place -- by being presented with thoughts, ideas, and concepts that conflicted with my own. I was in high school at the time, a devout Conservative Christian Reaganite Republican, and a teacher in my Senior year American Government class tasked me with an Honors project that involved searching for the answer to a question. And the process of researching the question, of looking outside my normal, comfortable sources of information for answers, of juggling facts and figures and ideas and paradigms that conflicted with my own preconceived notions, literally blew my mind wide open. As a consequence, I learned to do something that is apparently remarkable: I can hold two or more seemingly paradoxical or conflicting concepts in my mind and see them both as being valid.

Like everyone else, I think I know what I know. And like everyone else, I prefer the company of people who are of the same mind-set, and prefer sources of news that present their information with a slant that agrees with my own principles. But unlike most people, I am -aware- of this, and unlike most people, I deliberately seek out people, opinions, and sources of information that make me uncomfortable -- that are in opposition to my own closely-held beliefs -- not because I like conflict, but because I am aware that closed-minded ignorance leads to complacency and that complacency leads down the garden path towards irrationality. Complacent people lose touch with reality because they don't want anything to change. In fact, complacent people have an irrational fear of change. Which we all know is inevitable.

We humans prefer to be comfortable, and once we've arrived at some stability and learned to be comfortable with that new paradigm, we tend to develop the mindset that the way things are now is the way they've always been. Like teenagers today who cannot imagine growing up without internet and cellphones (like I did), and adults today who cannot imagine going shopping with war-ration coupons like our parents and grandparents did. We've come a long way, technologically, and with those jumps in technology that have transformed much of our lives -- how we shop, how we get our information, how we sleep, how we eat, how we love, how we make love, how we get from point A to point B -- we've failed to transform how we think about ourselves, others, and the world. Most of humanity is still stuck in a tribalistic "our way of life v. them."

Many people here in the States are stuck there, stuck clinging to a way of life that is unsustainable and has been slowly unraveling since it reached it's height in the 1970s. And the best example of this and the devolution of our society, and indeed our species, is the failure of education to further develop critical thinking skills and transformative functionality. As the population grows and the corners of the world become more accessible, we're resulting to conflicts and jealous guarding of territory. We're insisting on making someone "other" and in making him "other" we find it easier to make him wrong. And once we've made someone wrong, well... we feel justified in doing whatever we feel is necessary to punish that person and make him see the error of his ways. And as justification, we use the phrases "tradition" and "that is how it's always been," all the while willfully ignorant of the origins of those "traditions" no matter how ancient or recent, and the variety once sanctioned within those traditions.

What comes to mind is marriage. Judeo-Christian marriage as we conceive of of it today has gone through considerable permutations from the social and legal contracts that involved swapping of chattel. My daughter for 10 sheep. My daughter for peace between our families, etc. For centuries, marriages used to happen on church steps because they were considered too venal for the sanctity of the church itself. Eventually marriage became an institution of social control via Churches, and when that happened, all sorts of marriage rites were developed -- and interestingly enough, there are records of same-sex marriage rites and same-sex marriages going back 1000+ years. Did you know that the first white lace wedding dress (worn by Queen Victoria) was a break from tradition? It was a commercial gimmick to spur the sale of English Lace. Ah yes, the power of tradition. But I digress.

Marriage is between one man and one woman, many say. This is sacrosanct, "God's Will." Except of course, where there are well-documented examples of multiple marriages and same-sex marriages all over the histories, many of the latter conducted in the Pope's own parish church, no less. It seems that at one time, Christ's Commandment of Love was followed more literally, and The Church consecrated unions between people who loved each other, regardless of gender.

What on earth does marriage and "tradition" have to do with small minds and transcendent function? Well, here it is: I happen to agree that marriage is between a man and a woman, that it has become a tradition of joining a love-match for the purposes of procreation/child-rearing, pooling assets, and growing old together. I also happen to agree that just as women and minorities should have the same rights to own property, vote, and receive equal pay for equal work as white men, same-sex couples should have the same rights as hetero couples to make a love-match, to raise children together, and to enjoy the spousal benefits of growing old together including inheritance, shared retirement benfits (like Social Security), health care access, etc.

And because the room in my head is so large, I can hold these two seemingly paradoxical ideas in my mind without conflict. I recognize that one, the former, is a Belief, and the other, the latter, is a Right. A rational person understands that Rights trump Beliefs, and regardless of whether or not I believe it is right or wrong for two people to marry, love-matches are love-matches and people in love have a right to marry, to make it a binding social, legal, and in the case of many Churches, a religious contract. And as long as our society conflates the legal rights and responsibilities associated with "civil union" with the religious rite of "marriage" then marriage is a civil right that should be extended to anyone.

Bottom line: I may disagree with what many people believe or say or do, I may consider them ignorant and small-minded and intolerant and just plain wrong, but I will defend their rights to be however they choose to be. Unfortunately, it appears that defenders such as myself are becoming fewer and fewer in number. The world is getting smaller. We're coming into contact with the wondrous diversity of humanity in unprecedented ways. And absent the pursuit of developing people capable of holding two or more seemingly paradoxical or conflicting concepts in mind and see them both as being valid, the ongoing cultural conflicts will continue to escalate from internal to external and our small world will unravel into further judgmental tribalism.

We need to learn how to play together in this sandbox called Earth. Love thy neighbor. Live and let live. Live free or die. Do anything but be small-minded, spreading hate and intolerance, complacency and insanity. What others do in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness only conflicts with your own pursuits if you think it is so. I adjure you to Find A Way. Our world, and your children, and your grandchildren, are at stake.

Related Articles / References:

Tips from a Missionary on getting along with "others": http://johnlambert.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/traits-ability-to-get-along-well-with-others/

Cheat-sheet on Carl Jung: http://castle.eiu.edu/psych/spencer/Jung.html

Book on Jung's Transformative Function: http://books.google.com/books?id=F29B3MFVKW4C&dq=carl+jung+transcendent+function&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=h-RpTPSwAYugsQOA4MSBBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Women's Suffrage Movement (world-wide): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage

Civil Rights Movement (world-wide): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement

Same-sex marriage in Early Christianity: http://www.jinxiboo.com/blog/2009/5/3/when-same-sex-marriage-was-a-christian-rite.html

The tradition of marriage is always changing: http://archielevine.blogspot.com/2008/11/traditional-marriage-perverts-tradition.html

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The Scent of Love

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:39:00 -0700

My lover sleeps in the arms of Lethe, sleeps the sleep of orgasmic oblivion, while I engage Insomnia in battle with womanly arts. I am leaning against the teak headboard of my tempurpedic bed, my feet struggling for purchase on the baby's-butt smooth one-thousand threadcount sheets, pillow and laptop on my knees. At my side, on a small cherrywood escritoire that doubles as a bedside table, is a bottle of the Domain Drouhin Oregon Estate's 2002 Pinot Noir Couvee Louise. Named after Veronique's youngest. A superb wine, really.

So I'm intoxicated. By wine and other things.

Other things? You are probably asking yourself.

Yes, other things. Like the fragrance of us wafting up from between my thighs.

I was puttering around in my vocal booth (for recording audios) when my lover surprised me there. I was on tip-tip toes, my arms spread wide above my head, when his hands closed around my wrists, pressing them down onto a shelf. He pressed himself against me, scraping his shadow along the back of my neck.

I moaned.

How could I not? There is something about that burning scrape that is so pleasurable that my skin pebbles and I gasp. And moan. And I ground myself back against him, arching my back, wriggling my hips and ass in a belly-dancer's figure-eight until he was hard enough for me to feel the heat of him. He released one of my wrists long enough to open his pants and free his cock, then he pressed it against the thin silk of my pajama bottoms, searing me with his heat.

I tried to turn around. I wanted to taste his lips. Wanted to thread my fingers through his hair and pull him toward me. But his hands held my wrists firmly in place. Words weren't necessary. The band of his fingers around my wrists communicated everything I needed to know. I drew my legs together and arched my back so my ass flared into him and I let my head drop between my arms. Staring at my toes, I sighed. A sigh of longing. A sigh of surrender. He knew what that sigh meant, of course, and with a squeeze, he released my wrists.

I held my position. Held it even as his hands slid down my arms and around to fondle my breasts. He teased my nipples until they were long, hard points of longing, until my breath was coming in tormented gasps, until I was dizzy and writhing.

And wet.

I could feel that wetness as he pushed the silky pants down over my ass. Felt the hot smear of it on my thigh. He swilled his fingers in it, teasing my labia, pretending to have difficulty finding my clit. I started begging and bucking, trying to force that slippery electric contact. But his fingers eluded me, frustrated me. Slipped deep inside me and out again, arrhythmic. It was maddening. Ratcheting up my arousal level without building up orgasmic tension. I wanted to grab his hand and put his fingers on my clit and rub them there -- there -- There!

But I didn't. I held my position stretched out in the closet, fingers clinging to the top shelf, body arched and swaying, and let him do whatever he wanted. It felt too good to stop.

When I felt the head of his cock nudging between my lips I thought I would scream with relief. I was trembling with the tension, aching for that moment of penetration. And it was upon me.

He was upon me. Up in me. Pushing slowly, wedging himself into me, his hands gripping my hips.

I took him into me, into the warm and slippery heart of me, and when he could go no further, I clamped down on him, trying to enclose the length of him, to prevent the inevitable prelude to aching emptiness: his withdrawal.

We remained that way for a long moment, his chest pressed against my back, his breath stirring the hair near my ear. And we breathed together, and as we did the two of us became as one. Breathe in... Clench and hold... Release. Breathe in... Clench and hold... Release. A dozen times, perhaps more, and then we began rocking together, eventually breaking that rhythm to collide against each other, our bodies thudding, thudding, thudding. Faster and faster.

Breathing sexual fire, trembling on the verge of orgasm, I sank my teeth into my forearm and screamed my release. He hastened to meet me there, jabbing upwards into me, his fingers biting hard into my flesh. I felt that pulsing, heard that sound he makes, that balls-deep groan that signifies an intense orgasm.

And then his scruff on my skin again. Making me hiss and twitch as I hung by my fingertips from the shelf, unwilling to trust my wobbly legs to bear my weight.

Love is a noun and a verb. Something I am, and something I do. It fills me even now, brimming between my thighs. And it smells wonderful. Yes, love has a scent. A potent, unmistakable fragrance.

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Choosing my Self in difficult times

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Fri, 7 May 2010 01:30:00 -0700

I'm journaling this because it helps me find clarity. Gives me perspective. Lets my friends know what is going on in my life... and might be helpful to others who are experiencing similar difficulties.

The topic is catastrophic illness. That, and how the temperment of the one who is ill affects both the outcome for themselves and those who love them. And I'm trying to figure out what I can do differently.

We are born. We live. We lose loved ones. And then we die. And I'm cool with that. Really.

I've had two sisters and a step-sister struggle with catastrophic illness. One died, one made a miraculous recovery after being on hospice, and the other... is... complicated.

With the sister who died, she was very headstrong and high-strung. She didn't want to make the changes necessary to recover from her illness. She lacked the patience and the self-control, frankly, and so she died, though a year later than I estimated, mainly because as her condition deteriorated she'd get scared, comply for a few weeks or a couple of months with medical care, and then she'd pull the plug, literally, and go back to a lifestyle that was physically depleting. She would get angry, and cry, and ask why this was happening to her, and I'd get her to a place where she'd acknowledge that she had been neglecting her health and that she was willfully non-compliant with regards to medical care and she'd agree to do what needed doing. And then she'd get to feeling better and revert to her prior way of being. And then she'd get to feeling worse, and she'd cry and beg for help, and get angry and irrational and verbally abusive when she didn't get what she wanted. She pushed people away with one hand and pulled with the other. It was a vicious cycle that last two excruciating years. My only consolation, my only rationalization, is that she loved what she did, and she died doing what she loved.

Sister number Two was put on hospice when she came out of remission and her cancer was found to have metastasized to several places. She was in discomfort, and my step-sister's twin, who is a pharmacist, and my step-mother, who was a home health care nurse, did everything they could to "make her comfortable." They'd lost their grandfather a few years previously after a terribly painful and drawn-out experience, and they didn't want her to suffer. This sister knew how to ask for help, and how to accept it. She was angry, feeling like her life was being stolen from her, etc, but she invited people in. Her church congregation stepped up, brought food and comfort and companionship. Her friends visited. And I visited. And I spoke my truths to her, too. I told her to get up out of bed. Told her that when people are asked what they would do if they were told they have weeks to live they don't say "I'd lay in a hospital bed drugged out of my mind." I told her her life wasn't over, that she had as much time as I had -- today. Get up. Get up. Live. And yeah, maybe saying those things was a bit harsh, and maybe I could have found better ways to say them. But she got up out of that bed, and she lived her life, and she did her chemo again, and she is here now, two years later.

Sister number Three is like sister number One. Headstrong and high-strung. She's never been very good at asking for help and she's very reluctant to accept help. She's also extremely contrarian, and bi-polar or similarly biochemically imbalanced. I wouldn't go so far as to call her mentally ill, though she does have her moments -- she did try to kill herself two years ago last month, and she battles both depression and "fits" of some sort in which she says and does things that are completely unacceptable and often doesn't remember what she said or did during her outbursts. She's lovable, but makes loving her very difficult. It's a push-pull thing, a cycle of trial-by-fire testing followed by love and affection. Enter another cancer diagnosis. We thought she'd dodged the bullet in Feb 2008 but it turns out the tumor the doc found and removed was not the original one.

So in October 2009 the original site was located, typed, and radical treatment was recommended. And she didn't tell anyone. She decided to delay. Couldn't make up her mind what to do. And her behavior, her normally high-strung, difficult behavior, became that of someone who was nearly unhinged. I thought it was a bad case of her usual Seasonal Affective Disorder. I asked her to talk to me. And she would, sometimes. But mostly she'd call and babble and cry and when I'd repeat what she'd said to me back to her to ask for clarity she'd get verbally abusive, yelling and asking me why I was saying things like that or putting words in her mouth. She was that... disconnected from what she was saying and doing that she could not remember it 2 minutes afterwards. She got fired from her job and lost her medical plan and her ability to take the medical leave of absence that she should have taken in order to treat her illness and have financial security.

Finally, in February, she started treatment. Not the full treatment the doc wanted, which involved radical surgery and radiation and chemo. But she did start the chemo. For a few weeks. And then quit in March after a few treatments because they made her so sick and was putting her at risk for cardiac arrest. And then she called and told me and our step-sisters that she had a very aggressive form of cancer, and that she wasn't going to do the chemo or surgery or any of the radical/aggressive treatments suggested by her oncologist, and would I please take her daughter when she died.

Of course I said yes, and of course I drove the few hours to see her, and to spend a few days with her. And though some of the time with her was good, some of it was unpleasant. Her outbursts, her way of communicating when frustrated or upset (which was often) felt like verbal assaults. I'd watch her daughter jump and freeze and then run off to do whatever her mother said. Anything to stop the yelling. We talked, and she told me she didn't want me to change my life right now, not yet, that she was doing ok, for now. After a few days I returned home, and I had a guest arrive from out of town, and she tried mending fences with our father, with whom she'd been at odds since her car accident Christmas Day. I researched her cancer, sent her information on recommended treatments that didn't involve surgery or systemic chemotherapy.

And I heard back from a friend about my inquiry about taking custody of my niece. This friend told me that when my sister dies, my niece's father becomes her legal guardian, that he is, in fact still her legal guardian. My sister is legally separated from her husband but there has not been a formal custody agreement, and regardless of whether or not there was one, when she dies, legal custody automatically reverts to him as her natural father. That the only way I'd be able to keep my niece would be if my sister's husband signed her over to me. And she didn't want to hear it.

There are a lot of things she didn't want to hear, didn't want to talk about, but they are things that needed to be said, needed to be addressed. She could pretend that things were going to go the way she wanted, she could pretend that she could keep her daughter from her husband so he wouldn't win the epic war that had been their relationship of a dozen years... but ultimately, I felt it would be damaging to her daughter to tell her that she was going to stay in CA and live with me, only to be taken back East to live with her father, who loves her very much and only recently agreed to let his daughter stay with her mother indefinitely.

So I put it in a letter, and mailed it off -- this reality-check, and it was not well-received. Shortly thereafter, Sister #2 used a photo I took of Sister #1 all bald and curled up in her bed as a poster-child of sort for Relay for Life fundraising. Without asking either of us, and seeing as I'd made the photo available to Sister #2 and a few others without her permission, I accepted what followed as my responsibility. It was a firestorm.

It took me a couple of days to figure out what happened. The different stories I got from my nephew, my father, and my sister made no sense, and in many cases, were technically impossible. But I figured it out, and once I did, I accepted it. All of it. Still am, even as my partner asks me why I take it, why I take the 3am phone calls, why I listen to the yelling and abuse that doesn't give me room to say anything before the call is ended by Sister #3. Only for the phone to ring again, 3 or 30 minutes later, for a new line of invective. She said she never wanted to talk to me again but she keeps calling. Her most recent call was to tell me that our step-mother told my niece that she needed to diet, as she's put on a fair amount of weight the past few months (not surprising given the stressful conditions she's living under) and that it was my fault. I'm not quite sure how that logic works, but somehow it makes sense to her.

My partner says that I am the most loving person he knows and that I do not deserve the abuse being heaped on me. He wants me to disengage further, to remove myself from a situation that makes me so sad, that dims my inner light. He says he's looking forward to answering her next phone call, since she keeps calling the line in is bedroom even though I asked her not to. A deliberate bit of inconsideration on her part, I know.

I do not know what to do. I know that I want to be with my sister. But I know that the price for that privilege is admission to a roller-coaster ride of emotional ups and downs, verbal abuse, irrational behavior. And keeping my mouth shut.

The latter I can probably do. If she can't handle the truth, she can't handle it. But its the roller-coaster ride I can't handle. She thinks we can't handle her being ill. She says that is why she took so long to tell the family, because she didn't think we could handle it. But that is self-deception. We've handled so much -- what's another bout of cancer? Another death? No, she's the one who cannot handle it, and what is more, her inability to handle it makes life unpleasant for everyone around her.

I can handle her having cancer. I can handle knowing that she's a good 3 years into an aggressive form of cancer that has probably spread to her liver and kidneys and bones. I can handle the care-giving. I've done it many times before. I can handle the normal emotional ups and downs of cancer patients, the anger and the sadness and the tears. I know how to be with, really be with others. And I'm not afraid of death and dying.

But what I can't handle -- is the frenetic, boiling, ever-changing emotional states. It's like being pounded by waves while caught in a rip-tide. I feel overwhelmed and afraid of capsizing. I feel like I'm suffocating on her emotion, like I'm choking on it as it fills the room, as she vibrates with it, blares it, assaults everyone around her with it. And whether she lives 3 months, or 6 months, or a year -- I'm not sure I can make the trade-off, pay the blood-price. I can't take abuse. Its like cancer -- insidious, invasive, deadening. I had enough to last me a lifetime already and I just don't want to see if I'm up to enduring the unendurable one more time.

Will I regret not finding a way to placate her and work things out whatever it takes? Possibly. But in the long run, I'll have saved myself the inevitable experience of her instability, rages, and abuses. In the end, I'm the one who is going to survive her, and I'd rather be mentally and emotionally capable of handling the mess she'll leave behind when she dies. I hoped that some how, some way, I could show her that path I've found and walked these past years, the path of inner peace and love and joy. But I can't choose those things and offer myself up denigration and abuse at the same time. So, I guess the place I've arrived at as I've written this down is... I choose me. My mental health. My vitality. And if she wants me to be a part of her life, whatever is left of it, she's going to have to accept that I'm not going to be her whipping boy just because she feels the need to vent her rage at the world at someone. I'm not a masochist, Sister. Find another puppy to kick. This one is staying out of harm's way.

The Hidden Costs (literally) of Health Care

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:55:00 -0700

I am coming up on the 2 year anniversary of my 2+ week hospital stay and I've some thoughts regarding health care in these United States.

One of the thoughts is that the reform bill that recently passed Congress places restrictions and regulations on Insurance Companies, which is a good thing, but it doesn't really address the outrageous and hidden Cost of Health Care.

One of the things that became apparent to me as I reviewed the nearly $200k worth of bills that racked up as a result of my bout with septicemia was that I didn't consent to those charges. Why is it that being admitted to a hospital and providing insurance information is a license to bill? As it is, my insurance company covered less than half of the cost of my care.

I lost count of the number of doctors who poked their heads into my hospital room. They'd say "hello," ask how I was feeling, and walk out. And bill me $150 to $300. And I'm not talking about my surgeon or the infection specialist, both of whom had good reasons to check in on me. I'm talking about the physician who was on duty when I was admitted, along with numerous others whose names I didn't remember and who didn't seem to contribute anything to my care.

Even my mechanic lets me know what the cost of repairs are going to be before he starts, and is required to let me know the cost of additional issues that pop up when he's under the hood.

But doctors? Hospitals? No. No one knocked at my door and said "May I come in? If I do, I'll bill your insurance $150." No one said, "If Dr X looks at your chart, it will cost you $300, if Dr Y does, he'll bill $275, whereas Dr Z will charge $325 -- Do you have a preference?"

I got a menu to select my meals, but not my treatments. No one presented me with a list of proposed treatments to select from. No list of the various blood tests and their fees. No option to opt out of any of the 6x a day blood pressure / temperature / pulse tests. No option to choose which Docs I wanted to see to review my medical records. I was stuck in a bed and it felt sometimes like I was little more than a sponge to squeeze money and blood out of.

And the same can be said about office visits.

I've never seen a list of services and fees. I've only ever been able to get a verbal quote, which, or course, isn't legally binding. The doc walks in, chats with me for at most 10 minutes, and bills $175 for the office visit. Then s/he hands me scripts for prescriptions (sans quotes for cost) and instructions to visit the lab for tests (again costs unspecified). Sometimes I've gotten a carbon copy page that shows the office visit fees -- after the fact.

How can we be responsible consumers of medical care when the costs aren't disclosed in advance? Why can't medical professionals be bothered to explain the costs of their services and the services they order for their patients? And if they don't want to be bothered, shouldn't they have someone on staff to do the explaining?

Perhaps doctors, medical offices, laboratories, hospitals, etc, should be required to post their fees in public places. Perhaps then we'd have incentive to shop around, to haggle or bargain or even decline certain services that we feel we don't need or don't wish to be billed for. And then perhaps, just perhaps, the cost of insurance would also go down.

Mirror, Me

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:52:00 -0700

This is an incredibly expressive poem. I think most women will find that his poem touches a chord in them, in the place where our mystery resides, often covered with a veneer of socialized shame.

Mirror, Me
by Kathleen Landerman, from the book Pagan's Muse.

Breathing in, I am
one with my shame.

Fear to look holds my whole body
immobile; my weight holds me
with more than gravity.

Breathing out, I am
my ugliness.

Vile, wretched, contemptible thing.
If the Way is Love,
then I should not speak of these things
to myself.

Breathing in, I am
my body.

If I gaze only at the reflection
of my pale belly,
then I will not see myself cry.

Breathing out, I am
this image.

If I light candles,
and do not think of you,
then I can see a goddess
full of adundant harvests,
round and smiling,
in my thighs.

Through the smoke of incense
these curves change,
become secrets,
invitations in velvet Braille.

If there was another woman here,
we could whisper the secret,
tell each other why a mirror
conquered a gorgon.

Breathing in, I am
no longer turned to stone
with shame, regret.

Breathing out, I am--
I am.

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Conscious living, conscious dying

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:39:00 -0700

Here it is late March. SO far the first quarter of the year has flown by. The trees are leafing out right now. All of a sudden there are tiny green leaves everywhere, competing with the flowers on the magnolia, plum, and cherry trees.

Spring is here, and the blue skies and warmer days has come the realization that life goes on... and so does death and dying. Today I learned that one of my sisters has been lying to me about what she's been getting medical treatment for. Two years ago she had surgery to have tumors removed. 6 months ago, she learned cancer is back. She's been doing chemo in the three months since I last saw her and today she decided to stop. Its not working, she said. They want to do a PET scan because they think its in her bones now, too. She didn't want to trouble me with it until she knew what she was dealing with, she said. But when the inevitable happens, will I raise her daughter? What the hell?

I'm feeling angry and sad again. I know it is natural. This is my baby sister. The one I diapered, the one I dressed for her first day of school. The one who tried to kill herself 2 years ago. Life is strange. My lover insisted I put my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat, and as I did, the tears fell. So much loss so recently. And so much fear. When/if my sister dies and when/if I raise my niece, everything changes, including my relationship with him.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as I cried silently on his chest.

"I feel this tremendous sense of loss. I'm going to lose my sister and I'm going to lose you."

"Don't make assumptions," he said, holding me close.

"I'm being pragmatic," was my response. "Time to make some changes. I think I'm going to have to go back to work in corporate America."

"Yes," he said, "If you're going to have responsibility for your niece you're definitely going to need to make some economic changes."

Indeed. And in the meantime, my sister is alive and living her life as fully as she can. She's asked me to respect her wishes not to tell other members of the family, including her children. It's her secret to tell, when she's ready.

Sex and Disability

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:54:00 -0800

(photo from Ina Mar Disability Awareness product catalog)

I’ve been writing and recording erotica for 5 years now, and in those 5 years I’ve gotten feedback from a subset of my readers/listeners saying how much my erotica benefits them because they are somehow disabled — in that they can experience things vicariously through my words that they otherwise cannot. And from that group, a number of people have asked me if I’d write erotica for or about sex and disability.

Not quite 2 years ago I had a medical emergency that left me temporarily disabled — and made sex a tricky proposition — for several weeks. I’ve been involved in a three-way relationship (couples domination) with a couple who are both blind, and I’ve friends with disabilities in various areas, from autism to impotency, multiple sclerosis to spina bifida. I’ve had sisters fighting cancer — going the chemo and radiation route — and talked with them about how it impacted their sex lives. So I’ve some knowledge and experience with sex and disability, but not enough for what I’d like to do.

And what I’d like to do is write a collection of erotic stories — and possibly a series of podcasts — basically “Silken on Sex and Disability” and I’m reaching out to everyone I know, both in person and online, who is either disabled/experienced disability or is/was partnered with someone who is disabled. I’d love to talk with you. I know from my own personal experience that people with disabilities are just as sensual and sexual as the next person. I’d like to explore that, explore the fantasies and realities, the challenges and opportunities that come with the territory.

Please contact me at the following email address SILKENnotVOICED at GnotMAIL.com (without the nots) if you’d like to share your insights, fantasies, and experiences with me with the understanding that they might become fodder for erotic material

(cross-posted from SilkenOnSex.com)

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Catching up!

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:08:00 -0800

I can't believe it has been so many weeks since I wrote something on my blog. Again, I really want to write, but so much of my creative energy has been tied up in putting together the www.SilkenOnSex.com site and planning the weekly podcasts, as well as handling domestic stuff (moving/unpacking/traveling) that I've not had much to spare.

But now that site is live and I've got a good work-flow down for the weekly podcast recordings and I'm home after some trips up and down the West Coast.

Time to get down to recording some custom audios for some people that have been trying to chase me down for the past few months.

I've also got some ideas for a new writing and podcasting project -- just thinking about how to fram it so I don't offend people ;)

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Help me choose my new site layout(s)!

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:46:00 -0800

So far it looks like my decision to re-brand my podcast as "Silken on Sex" was a good one.

On Jan 13th I Tweeted: "My Silken on Sex podcast is up to #21 in the iTunes Sexuality category! Getting there--I was at #7 a month ago before my old RSS failed." 10 days later it was at #3, and seems to be holding steady in the #4 - #7 range. It only took 5 weeks to recover. But... I've not seen my sales recover. And I've now got about 1000 more listeners than before. I am sure part of it is the economy, but I'm not going to take the easy way out and blame it on circumstances beyond my control.

I'm certain that a lot of it is my AudioSensual website. It isn't as smooth and silken as one might expect from my voice -- so I've been working (for months) on a site re-design. And because I don't know the first thing about javascript or css stylesheets or CMS platforms, and can barely navigate Dreamweaver, it was going rather slowly. In fact, my site re-design project had stalled completely by the time the original podcast crashed. I was thinking about aggressively putting money aside so I could get a real web-designer involved. A friend of mind recommended Joomla to me a few months ago but I was rather intimidated by it, so I didn't explore it further.

I admit I've been feeling a bit glum and my partner has been amazing. He put me in touch with a friend of his who does SEO optimization and marketing and she asked me some great questions that dovetailed with some of the one's he's been asking. He's been working in the e-Commerce arena in some form or other for over a decade, so he's made some great suggestions and asked me to clarify my vision for "Silkenvoice." Which I've been doing, with some difficulty, since I'm terrible with drawing free-hand and not much better with graphic design. He recommended I use a CMS like Drupal for building an integrated site, and has been teaching me how to make good use of Google Analytics and the stats from my hosting company, Go Daddy.

I looked at a LOT of sites this weekend, particularly the sites for podcasts in my category (sexuality) as well as others that use the podcast as part of a commercial enterprise. I liked some of what I saw, and didn't like some of what I saw. And what I didn't like was the amateurish sites, and the obviously Blog*Spot ones, of which mine are both. So... I started looking at Blogger themes and widgets with an eye toward making a more professional-looking site. In the process my search engine turned up CMS again, and Joomla and WordPress. The latter made me do a double-take. WordPress (which I have a rudimentary knowledge of) isn't just a blog software, it is a CMS platform, and has plugins and widgets for doing everything from generating sitemaps and robot.txt files to providing product sale/purchase platforms. And the themes! Oh heavens, there are thousands upon thousands of themes, and finally, finally I found ones I like that made it possible to have a blog and a podcast and a shop and whatever else I want, all with nice, slick, silken-smooth and aesthetically pleasing pages with properties that populate to all the pages under that theme automagically.

So now I am in the process of setting up some tests of the various themes that I like and I'm asking for volunteers to contact me if they want to (and have the time to) look at the functional mock-ups, answer a few questions, and give comments of their own. So please pop me an email at tester [at] silkenvoice . com and I'll send you the particulars.

Once I've got that up and running, I'll actually work on getting some pertinent affiliate links / ads on my site to generate a bit of revenue, too.

Thank you in advance!

------------------------------
PS: The Silken on Sex podcast comes out every Wednesday, so look for it in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow.

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silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:45:00 -0800

Last month I got a call from an old lover of mine with whom I have maintained contact all these years (We went our separate ways in 1993). He said he wanted to do a psychic reading for me, and for me to think about a question and he'd call me back in an hour. I've never had a psychic reading before -- at least, not intentionally -- So I wasn't sure what to expect, but I agreed to be available when he called back, and to have that question waiting for him. Below is the question I asked, the cards he pulled for me (in order), and his read on them:

Will I be able to make a living as Silkenvoice?

1. Foundation Achievement card: Anything you do will be successful -- You can put out into the universe what you expect and the universe will create it for you. This card also represents family in some way.

2. Heartache and Loss card: When heartache and loss come, step back and reflect on what you want.

3. Standing Your Ground card: Stand by what you believe or what you want to do -- don't let others discourage you.

4. Emotional Loss card: Something you wanted to do but didn't pursue will be a source of feelings of loss.

5. Spiritual Strength card (next to Standing Your Ground): You have spiritual strength, and will become more and more spiritual as you get older.

6. Hope card: Life is like a playground for you; don't worry about negativity or it will become a block; remain hopeful.

7. Mental Conflict: You will find yourself wondering what direction you should move forward on -- go with your intuition.

8. Triumph card (above heartache and loss): All will go well, all will turn out well.

9. Recognition/Rewards: Business is picking up -- will pick up -- will develop into other things: the acorn will become a tree.

10. Disruption/Destruction card (running parallel with mental conflict card): I see you torn in 4 different directions -- lots of pans in the fire, not sure where to concentrate -- slow down, meditate, think about what you want to do.

11. Positive Movement Forward card (individual in a boat heading toward a sunset): Moving forward, all will go well if you are moving in the right direction for you.

12. Rejoicing and Celebration card (3 people toasting with a goblet of something): There are more positive, great things coming with the direction you are going -- lots of happiness and celebration.

13. Suffering in Silence card: Even though in the future you will rejoice, there is the idea connecting with emotional loss that there are going to be some things that bother you when you're older that you didn't complete... something started and not fulfilled (regrets). Overall balance of life though, the regrets will be outweighed by celebration.

Summary: Take time to reflect on what I want out of life. Contemplate, then choose. Overall -- When I look back at my life I'll say "Wow, look at what I've done!"

Answer to question: Will I be able to make a living as Silkenvoice? YES

The most peculiar thing about this reading is that he did it just a couple of days before my AudioSensual podcast RSS had technical difficulties that resulted in it being de-listed from iTunes. This might not sound like a bit deal, but it was. The podcast was the main venue for driving sales to my Erotic Audio site AudioSensual.com as well as my AudioSensual Erotic Shorts CD. When the podcast went down, so did my sales revenue, and in the resulting period of distress, I forgot the details of the Reading, until I stumbled upon my notes today.

Within the context of the Reading and its central question, my radical, pattern-making brain is picking over the cards.

#2: Heartache and Loss -- Well, I guess the loss of the podcast and the revenue stream in December, and my sister's car accident and related family drama could be what he saw coming. His recommendation with regards to it was to "step back and reflect on what you want." Which, interestingly enough, is what my lover has been encouraging me to do, again and again, all month.

I have been seriously re-considering my choice to pursue making a living doing what I love rather than return to Corporate America. I even checked a few job sites, but the pickings are slim in my field right now, and the few openings I've seen would require commutes of 2 to 3 hours a day. This is where #3 Standing Your Ground comes in, I suppose. Stand by what I want to do and don't be discouraged -- because card #1 indicates that whatever I put out into the universe as an expectation will be created. OK, I can handle that.

I'm not quite sure what #4 will represent within the context of him saying it will be with regards to something I wanted to do but didn't pursue (unless it is giving up on my dream). I suppose time will tell. However, the subject of my spirituality and the strength of it (#5) has come up repeatedly since the Reading. I am not sure of the significance of it being near the Stand Your Ground card, except perhaps if I am steadfast in my choice to make a living as a writer and narrator of erotica that I will find it a source of spiritual strength, too. #6 is an injunction to be hopeful, not negative, because I become blocked if I do.

#7 is about mental conflict, which he said to resolve by going with my intuition. Which is interesting at this time because I am in the process of re-thinking everything I am up to, and I have been following my intuition, all the while I am being pulled in different directions (#10) with regards to family, friends, lovers, traveling, and the various income opportunities that are surfacing. On this card (#10) he said to slow down, meditate, and think about what I want to do, which is rather similar to what he said on card #2.

#8, #9, and #12 (along with #1) seem to indicate success, triumph, rewards, joy and celebration. It is fun thinking that he sees that in my future, and that it will be so even given the two "loss" cards (#2 & #4) early on in the Reading. He tied #13, Suffering in silence, to card #4's "regret about something started and not fulfilled, but states that overall, my regrets will be outweighed by the great life I'll live.

Exciting! I'm posting this out here so I can look back at it sometime in the future and (hopefully) marvel at the accuracy.

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My imaginary friend: The G-Spot

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:14:00 -0800

Soon to appear in the Journal of Sexual Medicine is a study involving 1,800 women (900 twins) that found no proof of the G-spot in the women they questioned. Questioned, not even examined. And this despite the fact that more than 50 percent of the women questioned, many of them young women, did indeed insist they had a G-spot -- but their sisters were no more likely to make the same claim, the scientists said, leading them to conclude that if a female claims to have a G-spot, it is only because she thinks she has one.

I'm sorry, but this is like saying a recent study proved the foreskin is a myth because all the twins they questioned were circumcised! And this, despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Ask any woman who can squirt if she has a G-spot. The answer is "Hell yeah!" But then again, I am sure the same scientists would debunk squirting as a myth, too! And by the way, shouldn't the study have been performed in a society that is more open about sexuality and sexual pleasure? No offense intended, but the British are notoriously sexually repressed.

Interested in learning more about the controversy? Here are some links:
What An Anti-Climax: G-Spot Is A Myth [TimesOnline]
The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist' [BBC News]
The real G-spot myth [Guardian]
Sexy G-spot a myth [NY Post]
The Great G-Spot Debate [Salon]
G-spot is a myth! [Times of India]
Scientists Say “G-Spot” Doesn’t Actually Exist [Jezebel]
Sorry Ladies, Study Finds G-spot May Be Myth [Fox News]
How a group of scientists made the G-spot disappear [Susie Bright]
Death of the g-spot 'myth'? [Daily Loaf]

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I proposed: the Supreme Court made me do it

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:01:00 -0800

Tonight I asked him to marry me.

The news I was expecting to hear (but hoped for a miracle anyway) materialized.

No, I'm not talking about the election in Massachusetts.

I'm talking about the Supreme Court decision today to include Corporations under the umbrella of the First Amendment. The possible repercussions, the inevitability of them, swamped my emotional boat.

When he told me about the decision, I asked my lover to promise to take me with him when he moves back to Canada. He laughed and said "Sure!"

"How do I become Canadian?" I asked him a little later, after the full weight of the situation settled on me. He chuckled, barely turning his eyes away from the work he was engrossed in.

I gripped his hair with my fingers and pulled his head back. I looked him in the eye and said, "Will you marry me?"

More laughter from both of us. I am so not the marrying kind. I noticed that he didn't say yes. But he didn't say no, either.

"I'm at least 51% serious," I said, "We've got 4 to 6 years and then its Snow Crash." The book by Neal Stephenson, written about 20 years ago.

"I was just thinking that, too." He replied.

And then he held me. I nearly asked my employer for a transfer to Canada when Bush was re-elected, and instead, did my best to participate in my local communities while the National political nightmare unfolded. But this Supreme Court decision, well, it has the potential to be insidious, to invade and usurp local and community politics, pervading even the ability of people to govern commercial zoning, exert control over the products being used and sold in schools, etc etc.

Normally a very positive person, willing and able to create a positive future for myself and others, today, all I forsee is... a descent into an even more corporatized government. Even dictators die. Corporations don't. They file for bankruptcy protection and get the government to bail them out, and then they keep going, generation after generation. I feel sick.

I've a feeling that one day I'll be writing from British Columbia, not as a vacationer, but as a resident -- and possibly as a married one. Heh. That makes me laugh. Finally.

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Haunting Dream

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:26:00 -0800

I was in a house. It felt like my house, though it was mostly empty, and I was waiting.

I heard sounds and went downstairs and my lover was there, with some workmen.

He looked very surprised to see me and pulled me aside, into another room.

He said, "What are you doing here?"

I stood there, with every bit of love I felt filling me, shining out of me.

"Waiting for you," I answered.

He looked surprised, looked like he didn't know what to say next.

"I have just one question for you," I said to him. "Did you try to contact me even once in the past two months?"

His eyes fell away from mine. "No," he said. "I've been very busy with work, very distracted."

It felt like a literal blow to my chest. There was a "whomp" feeling there, like the feeling I get when I'm at a fireworks display and they launch the canisters into the air.

Something fell out of me, fell from chest height and shattered like a pane of heavy glass, showering our feet with shards of light.

I woke up crying. Shivering. My chest aching. Still partly in my dream-state, I watched myself push past him, heard myself say, "You broke my heart. I never want to see you again."

I lay in bed for a few minutes, disoriented and soaked with dread.

"It was just a dream," I told myself, but I couldn't shake it, couldn't shake that pressure in my chest, that horrible heart-broken feeling. Tears fell, and shivers rocked me.

I got up from my bed and went to his, crawling up to him, saying "I had a bad dream."

And he pulled the covers back and said, "Put your head on my heart," and I did, my hands gluing themselves to him.

His heart beating in my ear, I shuddered against him, and tears fell on his chest.

"You broke my heart," I said to him, and my voice sounded like a child's, plaintive, and faintly accusing.

The arm around my shoulder tightened. I told him the details of the dream.

"Do you hear that?" He asked. "That sound in my chest? Lub-dub. Lub-dub?"

I nodded my head. His heart beat strongly in my ear.

"I love you double," he said. "Love-doub, Love-doub."

My smile surprised me. I wanted to groan over the bad play on words, but couldn't. He hugged me close, and slowly the pain seeped out of me. The last time I woke up crying was from a dream about my sister.

I got up from his bed. He needed to get going, I knew. He had to be at a meeting in 15 minutes.

A few minutes later I was standing at the bank of windows in the living room, looking out at the rain, when he slipped his arms around me. The feelings from the dream still draped me like a pall, but they were far less crushing than just a quarter-hour earlier.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

I folded my arms over his, hugging him back.

"Much," I answered.

"Good," he said.

With one last squeeze, he turned away in search of an umbrella, his mind already distracted with his work.

Want more Silkenvoice?
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The First Amendment, Feminists, and Our Christian Nation

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:09:00 -0800

I am one of those feminists who often finds herself at odds with other feminists. My mother was an old-school Andrea Dworkin-style lesbian separatist. I went to a women's college, the same one that produced Betty Friedan (when I met her at a reunion she was a sharp-tongued, witty, and crotchety old woman) and Gloria Steinem, and, well, lets just say that the fact that I subscribed to Playboy raised more than a few eyebrows. For years I stopped self-identifying as a feminist because the young women around me demanded such conformity of opinions, particularly when it came to things like "pornography". It always seemed to me that the distinction between healthy erotic objectification of women and exploitation of women was being missed, to the detriment of women, men, and families. On occasion I would quote Betty Freidan to my cohorts: "To suppress free speech in the name of protecting women is dangerous and wrong." But most people don't want to consider differing opinions. People cling to their own opinions like they do to their faith in their religions.

Even though my days at what FrontPageMag.com called "Radical Feminist U" are far behind me, I keep up with what women are doing out there in the world to further the empowerment of women. Feminists for Free Expression has a great site that I visit periodically, and when I visited earlier today I noticed a call for essays on how the First Amendment impacts our lives, as well a note that a recent survey revealed that young people don't consider the First Amendment to be an important factor in their lives.

I decided to respond for their call for submission with the following essay:

I find it ironic that young people, who constantly complain about being told what they can and cannot do or say, would think that the First Amendment is not vital to their lives. One could see that as an indictment of our educational system, if our educational system wasn't a reflection of societal values. I don't blame our educators, who are doing the best they can within the stifling framework we provide, but rather today's intellectually lazy children and their parents, who, for the most part, don't want their children educated so much as baby-sat. And certainly this apathy works for civic and religious leaders to whom freethinking is a threat, always a threat, to the status quo.

As a writer and narrator of erotica, the First Amendment and the Rights it protects are of great importance to me. There are people out there who would, without ever reading or listening to my work, determine that it is obscene and without merit, and would love to shut me up. Since the First Amendment protects my right to express myself and be published, they cannot stop me, however, they can try to censor me, to moderate how I express myself, and to reduce the venues for that self-expression under the guise of protecting others from my words. Despite the opposition I endure and the censure I receive, I continue to give voice to the sensual immediacy of life. Why? Because it seems wrong to me that people are so repressed and knotted-up about something as integral to their being as their sexuality.

The obsession with sexuality and sexual repression endemic in this country is engendered by the revealed religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This is supposedly a Christian Nation and Christians seem to think that sex is dirty and the urge to copulate must be repressed, and therefore, anything that inflames the libido, intentionally or not, must be eradicated. What most forget is that the actual Founders of this country, the ones who declared Independence and wrote the Constitution, were Deists, not Christians, and in fact many of them were anti-Christian.

While the first European settlers of this land were indeed the fanatical religious rejects from Northern Europe, The Founders were children of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, and their distrust of the centralized power of government and Christian fanaticism is addressed by the First Amendment's guarantees. George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Ethan Allen were Deists. Thomas Paine, a prominent American Revolutionary, wrote an indictment of institutionalized religions and the political and financial power-grabbing of the Christian Churches in his book The Age of Reason. Thomas Jefferson, whose is name and image is known to every American, was anti-Christian. He despised the religion, and stated in his Notes on Virginia: "Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one-half the world fools and the other half hypocrites."

Fool I may be for insisting in the value and necessity of upholding the First Amendment, but a hypocrite I am not. Thank you, FFE, for your efforts to preserve our rights to produce and access the materials, media, and messages of our own choosing.

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Polyamory: Safer-sex

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:06:00 -0800

I received an email from someone the other day asking:

Hey Silken, this whole polyamory thing makes me nervous because I'm paranoid about getting an STD. Doesn't being poly increase your risk of STDs? I'd think poly people practice safe sex, but doesn't that get in the way of intimacy?

1) There is no such thing as "safe sex". Not even masturbation is safe sex, since you can give yourself something if you don't keep your toys clean. So, when we take precautions, it is safer-sex, but its still not 100% safe.

2) Practicing safer-sex is very, very important. But in poly-sexual situations it is critical. This is the 300# gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about because it may seem paranoid, untrusting, crude, or melodramatic. As a proponent of polyamory, I am also an advocate of safer-sex practices, because the last thing I want to do is transmit something to someone I love.

3) Some people think that practicing safer-sex means using a condom during intercourse. This is naive, almost criminally so. If you are using condoms when you fuck but not when you suck him, or don't use gloves and a barrier when you are giving her oral, then you aren't practicing safer sex, you are playing at it. (Read more about how to have Safer Sex at About.com)

4) Polyamory is Polynomial. In the not too distant past, I had three partners. Three. Now lets do the math. If I have three partners, and each of them has one other partner, and each of their one-others has one-other, how many body-fluids are possibly being inter-exchanged? 10. That is a lot of semen and vaginal secretions, saliva and mucous membranes, and if I hadn't been scrupulous about screening my sex/play partners, then I put myself and everyone I was with, and everyone they were with, at risk.

5) Everyone who is sexually active in non-exclusive relationships should have regular screenings for STIs (sexually transmitted infections). You may trust your partner(s), but do you trust your partner's partners? Is your inner circle sexually responsible enough for fluid-bonding (Don't know what fluid bonding is, read this clear explanation at SmartSexTalk.com)? There are many stories of fluid-bonded couples who have had to go back to using barriers because one of them had poorly-protected sex or took on a secondary partner who couldn't provide proof of recent screenings and the other partner(s) felt it was prudent to practice safer-sex during the 6 month testing interim.

6) The importance of confidentiality and/or anonymity for screening. Consider whether or not to use your insurer / primary physician for screenings. I know we are in the middle of a health care crisis and reform, and Insurers are Big Brother in all this. The have the pot of gold, they want to keep it to themselves, and they use your medical records to discriminate against you. If they know that you are regularly tested for STIs, they may consider that an indicator of "risky behavior" (rather than health maintenance) and drop you or raise your rates. There are companies out there like getSTDtested.com, as well as various local clinics, that offer testing at a variety of rates without compromising your medical history.

Just a few anecdotes:
   It is not uncommon for poly-couples to have a contract for themselves and their secondary partners -- contracts that are reviewed and signed prior to intimacy, not after. Such contracts often require that all partners be tested semi-annually, disclose any and all exposures, and to use barriers during sex for at least six months before considering moving to a "fluid-bonded" status. I've been presented with and signed more than a few of these over the years and I've always found them to be an affirmation of my judgment in my partners.

STIs can show up in surprising places:

   I have some friends in a monogamous relationship that were "serial-monogamy sluts" before they got married. They didn't realize they had genital herpes until he had a flare-up -- in his eye. He is one of those pussy-eaters who really likes to rub his face in it, soaking himself from his hairline to his chin. They aren't sure who gave it to whom, and though they've tried to notify past partners, for them, its too late. They've got it for life, and he gets to worry about going blind if he doesn't keep it under control.

   I have another friend who learned that a wart on her husband's finger have been transmitted to her vaginal and anal openings. The treatment was embarrassing, extremely unpleasant, and so painful she screamed every time she went pee for a week.

The message of this post? Even monogamous couples transmit STI's to each other. Practicing safer-sex isn't just about taking care of you: it is about taking care of the ones you love, and the ones they love, too. Yes, you might think it would interfere with intimacy -- if intimacy was just about sex. In my book, sexual intimacy (as delicious as it can be) is just the icing on the cake.

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Accepting Responsibility: In Defence of My Beloved

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Sat, 9 Jan 2010 11:16:00 -0800

In publicly airing my conversation-with-myself regarding My Beloved, I've gotten interesting feedback from people, and there is a specific kind of feedback I'm going to address here.

Some people perceive the agony I experienced when he cut me off and they say (or think) something along the lines of "Wow, what a jerk, he hurt you very deeply. How can you have anything to do with him now?"

For the record, we both did things that caused each other pain, but it was never intentional. The one time I did lash out at him, and said deliberately hurtful things to him, he went to his then-girlfriend-eventual-spouse for help and their conversation resulted in her saying something like "She's nuts, you broke up well over a year ago, you need to protect yourself and put some serious distance between you." Whether her motivation for those words had to do with wanting David to herself, or (I hope) motivated out of genuine concern based upon a lack of context, I'll never know. David didn't tell her that the behavior I exhibited that day was Very Unusual for me. He did not take the time to ask himself questions as to why I might have said those things, because he was still reeling from the painful impact of my words. And we all know how good I am with words, so imagine just how effective I could be if I wanted to be hurtful.

If he had been in a more rational place, or if he'd gotten different advice, things might have been different. And if I hadn't reacted as I had, things might have been different. There are things I didn't tell him that were very important. He knew about my Grandmother's death, but not my mother's, or Carol's, or Gerald's. He didn't know about the abuse from S. He didn't know why I'd so completely freaked out on him over his half-assed procrastinated fulfillment of a promise -- he only knew that I had. And here is where accepting responsibility for my own pain comes into play.

Yes, D was my soul mate, and him cutting me off was incredibly painful. But I turned that pain on myself. I didn't have the tools to handle so much loss or grieve such losses, and his disappearance from my life resonated with a time and place when 9-year-old me was dropped off at the Grandparent's by Mommy and didn't see her again for 8 years. So, emotionally, with regards our situation, I was 30 going on 10. I made my mother's abandonment mean there was something wrong with me, that I was not worthy of being loved. And I essentially did the same thing with D. I chose to see what he did, not as an act of self-defense, but as both abandonment and fundamental rejection. At a time when I really needed my soul mate, he'd walked away from me, shut the door, and barred it, ignoring my infrequent knocks. It didn't matter that I hadn't told him Very Important Things he needed to know that might have tempered his reaction. Like a mother, a soul mate is supposed to be there for you and love you always, no matter what, right? Uh, yeah. Right.

We hurt each other. And we accept responsibility for that. And the harm we did to ourselves in the aftermath -- we each accept responsibility for what we did to ourselves, too, rather than blame the other. It is important to make that distinction. He's not responsible for my suffering. My suffering was entirely subjective--it was the consequence of my mental and emotional responses to my experiences of pain and loss. Eventually, I found the way to alleviate my suffering, to transform it, to turn it into something transformational and transcendent rather than a perpetual cycle of tragedy and drama.

I obliterated him from my life story because I didn't have the tools to process the pain, and when I did go into therapy, my relationship with him didn't come up for processing. So in trying to find a way to relate with him in the context of my life today, I'm processing the past as fairly and efficiently as possible.

It is important for us to be complete with regards to the past, so it does not cloud today and tomorrow. If you've got any ex's in your life that you've loaded a lot of emotional baggage onto like a scapegoat, I'd encourage you to examine the role you played in your own suffering, process it, accept responsibility, make any necessary apologies, and then get on with your life. Real as it may seem at times, the past pales in comparison to the immediacy of the present.

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Feeling fortunate

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 23:03:00 -0800

There are certain qualities I like in my men. Sitting in the same space with My Beloved and My Lover, it was quite obvious. Physically they are very different. M is dark of eyes and hair, while D is fair. M is slender and smooth-skinned. D is nearly 6" taller and hairy. But they both have those hands. The hands of an artist or a surgeon: graceful, long-fingered, expressive. They are both introverts, though D makes the effort to be outgoing. Low-key and yet intense. They are both deliberate speakers. Thoughtful, they choose their words carefully. They are both highly intelligent, and comfortable with it -- geeks in the sense of being techno-fetishists. They have the systematizing, mathematical, analytical minds. Delightful senses of humor, with a penchant for puns and other word-play. They have a British influence to their upbringing and their tastes in food. Neither cares much for alcohol or vegetables. They are playful, love to learn and travel, enjoy being touched to the point that they purr, and are very aural. They know how to Be Present in the moment. They have alpha male qualities but don't flaunt them. And they are keenly sensitive. I won't go into the sensitivities because they are not mine to share, but like me they experience the world very keenly, to the point of debility at times. The other men with whom I've been intimate over the years have many, if not all, of these same qualities.

I enjoyed that the two of them seemed comfortable with each other. For most people it would seem counter-intuitive -- a recipe for disaster -- putting the man who was, for all intents and purposes, my common-law ex-husband in the same room with my current lover, a man who expressed an interest in me while D and I were still together a decade ago. But they are kindred spirits, the kind of people who know each other upon first meeting on a level far deeper than the ass-sniffing and territory-marking behavior one expects of most men in that situation.

M is in the midst of a life-changing project and his mind churns problem-sets in the background most of the time, something I accept for now because I understand the potential pay-offs, even as I miss the attentiveness, the focus, to which I have become accustomed these past few years. D seemed to understand what that M's distance wasn't disinterest. He gets where M is -- we've had other friends make it big in Silicon Valley and we both know the effort it takes to bootstrap a company to the point of attaining those life-changing rewards.

M is secure in who he is and how I feel about him, and so he does not worry about D the way most men would. He is not concerned about the time I spend with D -- there are no worries about loss or relationship-changing developments, and when he misses me, he lets me know when he wants time with me -- just as I do with him. Which reminds me, once again, about how much I love the way we communicate.

I'm a lucky woman. And I've got great taste in men :)

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Two years ago today

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 08:46:00 -0800

Two years ago today, my 38 year old sister suffered the massive brain hemorrhage which is the official cause of her death. She went to the emergency room complaining of a Very Bad Headache. It was one of more than 20 visits to that hospital in the previous year, and thinking it was just more of the agony related to pancreatitis-induced malnutrition, they sent her home with a prescription for Tylenol #3. A few hours later she was back at the hospital, this time, in a coma. On the morning of January 8th, she was declared brain dead. At the time of her death she weighed 80#, down 100# from two years previous. Photos of her that New Years Eve show an ethereal pixie. She glowed, as if the barrier that held her life-force within her had thinned considerably. Egg-shell thin. She knew she was dying. She'd been on hospice care for months. She'd already said her goodbyes, and asked everyone to let her go. "I'm so tired," she said at Thanksgiving. "I'm ready to go be with Mom."

Today, I can write this without sobbing uncontrollably. The tears are there, yes, hovering under my eyelids, threatening to spill, but they break the surface tension one at a time, these tears, rolling slowly down my cheeks. I miss her. God how I miss her. But I'm not angry any more, just terribly sad. I thought we'd grow old together, me and her, be two weird old ladies together, laughing until we needed to pee, helping each other down the steps, chastising our other sister's grandchildren and great-grandchildren for being, well, children.

I suppose we'll still grow old together, in my mind. But for now she is still young, glowing with that terrible beauty I've only seen in those near death, smiling her little girl smile, and giggling.

Miss you, sis.

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Reclaiming the stories of the past

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 03:28:00 -0800

When My Beloved and I stopped speaking, it was because the woman who would later become his wife urged him to cut off communication. We'd broken up over a year previously, and it didn't make sense to her that we were still so connected, still prone to ache over our separation and the strained conversations. And so he stopped. Just stopped. Stopped taking my calls and answering my emails. There was no explanation, no "Goodbye" communication. He just willed me out of his life, and ceased being a part of mine. Poof! Four miles away from me, and working for the same company, but he was gone. And knowing him as I did, and fearing further and more painful rejection, I did everything I could to respect his obvious desire to eliminate me from his life. And here it where it gets interesting.

When we split up, he cut me out of his life, physically, but still carried me around in his pocket, as he says. He tells me that he mentioned me to others as a formative force in his life, etc. Though I was no longer physically a part of his life, I nevertheless remained a part of his life story.

But I dropped him from mine. I was aware of him physically, of where he lived and where he worked, and every time I crossed the street he lived on (almost daily) I wished him well. But I stopped speaking of him. Stopped thinking of him in personal terms. I told no stories of him. Carried nothing of him within me. His withdrawal was so sudden and so complete that there was nothing left behind--the memories of our seven years together were swept back from the shore of my life, carried off by the tide of emotion to waters that run very, very deep. The hordes of friends I made in Portland post-2000 never heard his name. They heard of MAR, who came before him, and SEK, who came after, and of my Dutchman and CAW, and MR in SF and even KR in Seattle. But never Him. Two close friends of mine have both told me how odd they think that is, that this man, My Beloved, has been missing from my personal narrative so completely that they'd no idea he'd even existed.

And when they each communicated this to me, I was reminded of something that Elie Wiesel once wrote in Gates of the Forest, something along the lines of "When a friend denies you it is worse than death; it is as if you never existed for him, or him for you." His denial of me seemed so complete to me, that it was as if he didn't exist, and neither did I -- In fact I re-created myself in the following years, even to the point of using different names: The one he knew me by was reserved for professional me, and I chose a new one for playful me, for the me I wanted to be.

In thinking about it, in thinking about him and me, I recognize that I wiped a very important person and several years from my life story, and it is time to write him back in. It is time to graft that branch back onto the trunk. The question is how? The difference in our ages (5+ years) means that I was more often the one imparting knowledge and lessons. I was the one who handed over books to read and confronted him with new experiences, who noticed his hubris and challenged his opinions. What did I learn from My Beloved? What did I take away from our relationship? I thought learned from him that I was lovable, that I was worthy of being loved--but the magnitude of his rejection obliterated that. I was left instead with a powerful need to apologize for being me. An apology he didn't have ears to hear. As I pick now over the jumble dotting the shore of my consciousness since he swept back into my life, I'm struggling to find a common thread, trying to find a way to string these random, disparate bits of memories and emotions into stories. Stories of us.

And I think I've found a way. He mentioned, after reading some of my erotic stories, that he thought some of them were about him/us. Nope. Not a single story. We lived together for 7 years, had sex every day, sometimes two and three times a day, and with all that material to work with, I never delved into those experiences, never drew from them. And I think... I think it is time to change that. It is time to open up to those memories and write some stories, naughty stories, about two people in their early twenties, exploring their sexuality with the exuberance that is born of love and adventure and acceptance.

Yes. I've some stories I can tell, and in the telling, return My Beloved to his rightful place in the story of my life -- and his.

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Polyamory: Know Thyself First

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Fri, 1 Jan 2010 16:51:00 -0800

Earlier today the friend of a friend sent me an email:

I am currently working on reading the second edition of The Ethical Slut... was wondering if you had any ideas of other books I could read on poly that are any good?

Here is my response:

Regarding polyamory and reading material -- I've not read *any* books on it and very little in the way of online material. I come to polyamory by nurturing -- my parents are poly and I lived communally until I was 10 or so. So I can't really recommend any reading material from personal experience of it. I actually own The Ethical Slut but I've not read it. Why? I found myself resisting reading it and after thinking about it, decided that I didn't want to influence my own innate understanding of it with someone else's attempt to explain it or persuade others to give it a try.

That said, I have read a bit of the Loving More site (http://www.lovemore.com/) with an eye toward being a contributing writer. My friends Y and his wife X run the Poly Circle Discussion Group (http://pcdg.portlandpoly.org/) and the books I know they recommend in addition to The Ethical Slut, are:
'Polyamory: Roadmaps for the Clueless & Hopeful' (Ravenscroft)
'Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits' (Anapol)
'Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships' (Taormino)

I've met Tristan Taormino and she is a friend of Y. She comes to Portland often to speak, so I'd say to try her book next.

I can tell you that the tendency of society to insist that we chose one person to be all things to us creates a lot of unnecessary tension and stress. A lot of people get into that mode of feeling like they settled for someone, settled for Mr Right Now instead of Mr Right, or worse, withhold forming intimate bonds thinking they'll miss out on something better later on if they do.

I can also tell you that being self-honest is an absolute necessity. Self-inquiry and contemplation are practices that you are going to need to be comfortable with -- you can't really have healthy relationships with others until you've established one with yourself. In many ways we are each of us the biggest mystery to ourselves. We don't know why we do half the shit we do -- we just do it. Getting eye-level with your consciousness and being alert to your feelings and reactions helps resolve a lot of the self-sabotaging that goes on in each of us. I recommend meditation and journalling. We are blessed with being self-aware and each of us is a book-in-progress, so write your story, revise it, consider how things could be done differently in future situations, and outline the future chapters. We can live life intentionally, rather than accidentally.

Establishing good self-communication then makes it possible to have good communication in relationships. Especially poly ones. Jealousy is the biggest problem in any relationship, be it sibling, friend, colleague or partner. And the root of jealousy is issues with scarcity / abundance. Being self-aware and having good self-communication means we can often intercept the negative self-talk that arises as a result of feeling threatened by the prospect of scarcity / loss. Being able to share our feelings and thoughts with partners is both beautiful and necessary, so long as we learn to approach it in such a way that it is not a Blame Game. As soon as we make someone "wrong" or as soon as someone feels we are making them "wrong" we've lost the opportunity to communicate effectively.

My ex-girlfriend used to say "You made me do it" or "You make me feel like I'm crazy" and it really pushed my buttons when she did. If she could find a way to make something someone else's fault, she would. She lived her life as a victim, and last I heard, she still does. But not me! I accept responsibility for my thoughts and actions, and I recognize that in the arena of thoughts and actions, I have control. But I also know that feelings are feelings, that they are what they are and that they arise from deep within, and I honor them and recognize that while how I feel is *always* appropriate (because it is how I feel) -- I get to choose both what I think about how I am feeling *and* what I'm going to do about it -- and thus I am responsible for the outcomes. There is no escaping that, no matter how much I may want to deny it, and did live in denial of it -- ultimately I am responsible for my life, and being involved with others who also accept responsibility for their lives makes everything easier.

So basically, I guess what I am trying to say, is the best thing you can do is to make sure that you're in a good place with yourself. If you are healthy and happy and self-aware, then everything flows naturally from that place -- if you have a loving relationship with yourself love comes naturally, and the more you love the more love comes your way. From there it makes sense to keep expanding the circle of loved ones and exploring the various permutations of loving -- there is little to lose and much to gain.

Lastly, be aware... things change. Like the ocean, we ebb and flow. One day or week or month we may want to be free to love anyone and everyone, and then the next, we want someone all to ourselves. Some of it is tied to hormones, seasons, lunar cycle, and emotional rhythms. Some if it has to do with aspects specific to each person we are involved with. It is important to remember that how we feel and what we want is valid AND that what others feel and want is also valid. Sometimes the two (or three or four ;) are in conflict and that is ok. The "conflict" may be temporary or permanent but it is only an earth-shattering disaster if we choose to make it one. Giving ourselves room to feel the emotional intensity while not succumbing to the pressing urge to act now is a good pressure valve to develop.

I hope I don't sound too preachy. You may already have some or all of this down and if so, great. If not, that is cool, too. I mean no insult or injury in what I'm trying to communicate, only a desire for you to know love and happiness. I've learned to operate from the space that everyone is perfect, whole and complete just as they are while also understanding that most people just don't realize they are ;)

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I've been wanting to write naughty things

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:54:00 -0800

I've been wanting to write. The need to write has been building up like a pressure inside me. Its like sexual frustration, this need. But since mid-November I've been caught up in so many things that I just haven't been able to create the time.

With the re-appearance of both my childhood sweetheart and My Beloved in my life in November, things went a bit haywire. I've written enough words in emails to publish a novel, I swear! The meeting with My Beloved went well -- we talked for three days, hugged, and then he drove off on his motorcycle while I went to the airport to pick up a friend flying in from Sweden. It was wonderful to see him, to talk and spend the night snuggling. My lover displayed remarkable equanimity through it all.

Since then, I've been packing and moving to a new place. It is a very walkable neighborhood on the edge of a commercial district--I walked to my favorite sushi place about a half-mile away and passed about a dozen restaurants I'm going to want to stop in at some point -- there is the tapas place and the Peruvian place and the bakery and the bagel shop and that Chinese place that smelled divine... well, needless to say I'm going to be doing a lot of walking just to work off all the good food :)

On the walk home I went through the Park. The magnolias (I think they are magnolias) are starting to bud and the camellias are blooming. The big redwoods look so shaggy and huge compared to the other trees who are showing off their pale cold bones, naked for the winter. I bypassed the Japanese Garden this time, as I was starting to get chilled, but I do look forward to spending even more time with my camera in this garden than I did at the Chinese Garden in Portland.

The movers took twice as long loading and unloading the truck than estimated. I told them I had a lot of boxes of books to be moved, but I don't think they believed me. They even over-loaded the elevator and one of the movers got stuck inside for an hour. But, the good news is that me and my many boxes of books are in the new place. All I have to do now is paint. I'm doing accent walls in one of the Ralph Lauren metallic colors. I'm hoping it will work out well, especially at nearly $50 a gallon.

I've got naughty stories to tell. Lots of them, and soon. Until I get the time to write them down though, you're just going to have to be patient, and create some naughtiness of your own.

Have a great 2010!

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Changes to the Silkenvoice Podcast

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:10:00 -0800

Well, the AudioSensual Podcast was removed from the iTunes Store due to a bad RSS feed from Feedburner. The bad data isn't present in my Blogger Atom feed, but when FeedBurner made the conversion to RSS something was happening that caused it to outright fail for a while. Right now I still have errors.

Since the Podcast section of the iTunes Store does not generate any revenue for iTunes, they don't bother supporting podcasts. If your podcast is removed for technical issues, you have to submit with a new name and a new RSS. Re-submitting isn't possible.

I have since cloned the podcast and re-submitted it to iTunes. It is listed under The Silkenvoice Show, or Silken on Sex, and doing a search for Silkenvoice or Audiosensual should bring it up.

Unfortunately, FeedBurner doesn't allow me to edit my RSS feed so I cannot add the iTunes tag to the old feed that will automatically re-direct people to the new feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/SilkenvoicePodcast

This is all very discouraging, as the AudioSensual Podcast was consistently ranked in the Top 10 podcasts in the Health/Sexuality category. I had over 30 ratings and 7 reviews with an overall rating of 4.5 stars.

I'm also updating the various podcast directories and will be putting out a new podcast that explains the situation as soon as I find the time. This is the cherry on the sundae, as I am also in the middle of moving! :)

Want more Silkenvoice?
My AudioSensual CD: on iTunes or Amazon.com
My Erotic Audio Site: www.Audiosensual.com
My Silkenvoice Blog: Silkenvoice.blogspot.com
My Erotic Podcast: SilkenPodcast.blogspot.com

Thanksgiving 2009

silken.voice@yahoo.com (Kayar Silkenvoice) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:31:00 -0800

Sometimes I marvel at life, the simplicity of it, the complexity of it. I cradle a changing leaf in my palm, seeing the color variations with a child's eyes, breathless with the beauty of it. It looks so simple, this leaf, slender and ovate, and yet I my inner-scientist knows how complex it is, knows about the plant hormones that control abscission and marvels at the capacity of something so fragile to split molecules and excite electrons in order to create sugar from sunlight and air.

Yesterday I was at Kelly's Cove at the very northern end of Ocean Beach, my arm linked with JL's. We watched kite surfers zoom down the length of the beach, pulled by parachute-kites, their boards leaping and writhing along the silvered sea. He'd brought me chanterelles all the way from Sweden -- picked and dried them himself. I took him to Muir Woods and Stinson Beach, top down on a misty day, and willed the sun to come out as I drove with the heat cranked up on the winding road, the engine of the two-seater purring like a big happy cat.

As JL and I walked into the wind I looked up at the bluff that towered over my right shoulder, the bluff that Cliff House is built into, and looked back at the park I'd taken My Beloved to. Sutro Heights Park, where we'd sat on a stone wall overlooking the very spot I stood in and talked about the world the way he sometimes sees it -- the way I experience it most of the time. I remember the joy I felt at realizing that he got it, got me still after all these years. And in some ways, understands me better with the benefit of time and life lived apart.

I feel luminous and loved, grateful for the people in my life. Tomorrow I call my aunt to discuss her recent cancer diagnosis, and offer what help I can. One of my talents is to provide love and comfort, to heal the soul and ease the passing of the spirit. Dying and death can be beautiful and transformative if the loved-ones are in a place of gratitude and joy. I am fortunate to see it so, and to be able to share my vision with others so they are less afraid.

Want more Silkenvoice?
My CD: on iTunes or Amazon.com
My Site: www.Audiosensual.com
My Blog: Silkenvoice.blogspot.com
My Podcast: Audiosensual.blogspot.com