Bubbles

I have returned! With a new laptop and…a cold…

Actually, I’m mostly over it now, but it’s the first time I’ve been legitimately sick for quite a while. Incidentally, it also coincided with a very quick flight to Sydney and back again to see my grandmother who is in hospital, my plague and a very busy week. Shit is all over the place.

Since I last wrote, the rope workshop has been and gone, I’ve attended my friend’s 50’s-themed wedding, I’ve had a few social outings, I’ve angsted a great deal about moving to a new apartment and I’ve been caught up in various other things that have conspired to keep me in a state of non-blogging.

I’m also honestly still feeling a bit rocked over Kaya’s terrible loss of her son. It’s always very sobering when something profound like that happens and you realise that your whole life and everything that you hold dear can change in an instant. I feel nothing but sympathy and sorrow for her and Scott.

Kaya and I both started blogging around the same time. Back then there wasn’t really much around about bdsm and/or slave blogs. It was before fet, in those heady days of alt.com chatrooms and castlerealm. I’ve never Kaya in real life, but we’ve read each other’s blogs for years and you know what it’s like when you read the minutia of someone’s life for so long – they end up becoming a part of your life. I feel a bit funny (guilty?) about continuing my blog and making light of life, while she has put a stop to her blog and is dealing with pain and insurmountable grief.

But anyway, I guess we just have to be thankful for what we have and send her positive thoughts and love.

A couple of people have asked me how the rope workshop was. It was about a month ago now and usually I’d be jumping up and down like an excited puppy when there was rope talk to be done, but I found the whole experience to be very unfulfilling. Not only was the location cold and generally unpleasant, but the rope itself was ‘wrong’. I don’t know whether it was a tension issue or whether it was me, but it all hurt – and not in a good way. It wasn’t dangerous or technically ‘wrong’ but none of the suspensions (of which there were many) or floorwork really ‘did it for me’. It was the first time in my rope experiences that I’ve wanted to get down almost as soon as I was up.

I think the thing I enjoyed the most about the weekend was chatting with the Japanese sensei during the breaks. We talked a lot about innocuous things – food, Australia vs Japan, his photography/video work in Japan and shibari in general. We chatted away in Japanese, talking about everyone and everything and it was entertaining.

One of the most interesting things he said was in a response to a question from one of the attendee rope bunnies. He has a shoulder problem and found being in a chest harness with his arms behind his back for extended periods of time painful so he wanted ways of being suspended without using a TK. The sensei’s comment was that he should just ‘endure’ it because you do suspensions using a chest harness i.e. ‘that’s how it’s done’. That lead into a discussion between us about how rope is not for everyone – it’s inherently dangerous and uncomfortable. It’s not meant to be an accessible, fun thing for ages 8 to 80.

I felt  it was a telling difference between Japanese ideas and ‘western ideas’. We’re all about inclusivity and adapting things so everyone can have a go. We also often like to put our own spin on things and make them ‘better’ for our own purposes, but in Japan it’s very much that you do it how you were taught and if you can’t do it that way, you don’t do it at all. As that learned one says, “Do or do not do, there is no try”.

There’s another rope workshop in October, but I won’t be able to attend because I’ll be in China for work. I’m not sure if I’m sad or relieved that I can’t make it. I ended up buying 6 hanks of rope to add to the toy box. I’ve always wanted some proper rope, but I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with now that I have it. So that was the story of the rope workshop.