VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 23:15:46 10/31/09 Sat
Author: SS
Subject: ************OCTOBER282009ENTRY***********





Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
- Jack Benny

*

***ADVISORY: This Note contains adult content. If you are sensitive about such content, I would politely ask for you to avert your attention elsewhere! ;) Thank you! ^__^ )

*

It's impossible for me not to cry today.............when I have come out of a life-changing (in truth, life-changing would be a gross understatement), definitive year of my life.............not to mention have now completed the first quarter-century of my life and have now entered the next quarter-century of it with sugar in the gourd and honey in the horn........in Corybantic convulsions, thrilled over what the next few years alone will bring after flourishing in this flurry of firsts for me in the twenty-fifth year of my life.



Two years ago, I wrote a note on Facebook in which I reflected on the 23rd year of my life with great disappointment and dismay, where I saw myself quarantined in this "quarterlife crisis" (the most identified characteristics of a quarter-life crisis include 1) feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that meets the threshold of one's academic/intellectual level, 2) frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career, 3) having a general bewilderment of identity, 4) financial and emotion insecurity regarding the near future, 5) frequent re-evaluations of close relationships, 6) nostalgia for earlier life, particularly in high school and sometimes college, 7) general feelings of alienation and loneliness, and 8) an intuitive sense that everyone else in the world revolving around you is, for reasons unknown, better off than you are).............and, moreover, characterized myself as a "late bloomer"............in which I based that instinct on hearing "about old friends I knew from Colorado and elsewhere that are about the same age as me already enjoying stable careers, falling in love, getting married and having kids.". In that note, I also wrote the following:

*

Irony does surround adolescence indeed, but then again I’ve heard it said as well often that 'heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.' So I think that birdishness in myself is frequently evolving, and we often continue to re-evaluate it, and even on our forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and thirty-sixth test flight…….we’re still like young birds that have hardly begun to fathom our own genes……and that offers me a feeling of solace as I tackle this “quarter-life crisis” and reach back into the more primitive regions of my inner-self, trying to find greater meaning and purpose."


*



And it is in doing just that why this year has served as the beginning of a meteoric transformation for me. All I needed was something to contextualize the painful state I was in.............and when that historic snowstorm fell last December, where Portland was pummeled with nineteen inches of snowfall in the span of two weeks (Portland's average annual snowfall is a mere seven inches historically and, when only counting climate data from the Western Regional Climate Center from August 1st, 1973 to December 31st, 2005, it falls further to a mere 3.1 inches, with an average snow depth of zero) and made December 2008 the snowiest month for the city since January 1950..........that proved to be the cathartic contextualization I needed...........where I was literally living like Paul of Thebes in the confides of my own home, like a prisoner of my own compulsive social isolation and loneliness.........and I just cried on and off for days............where I KNEW I HAD to change my life..........although I still felt directionless still at the beginning of this year and can't be proud of how the beginning of this year turned out for me either.

*

*



Late March is where I believe my breakthrough began. It was shortly before that I had discovered this community known as Hands On Greater Portland...........a 501(c)3 non-profit organization which, in 1996, was formed by a team of community organizers determined to successfully replicate the "Hands On" umbrella network brand in the Portland area by connecting volunteers with one-time projects that required no advance training or experience...........which a decade later blossomed into an organization that has made more than 13,000 volunteer connections a year in partnership with 200 nonprofits, schools and community organizations. Their core values and beliefs include the notion that "service raises awareness of community needs and provides a platform for action." and that everyone has leadership potential and believes in providing volunteers with opportunities to build leadership skills (I, in fact, was just at a Hands On Greater Portland benefit last night at the Crystal Ballroom called the "World's Largest Office Party"..............where I doubled up on fake gambling money at the blackjack table I might add! ;) )



Fascinated by the concept, I eagerly embraced this opportunity.........which the first project I took on was a two-hour shift at the Hollywood Theatre..........the last venue in Portland built both as a vaudeville house and as a movie theatre in 1926, which underwent several transformations over the years until the non-profit organization Film Action Oregon (FAO) purchased the building in 1997 in recognizing the opportunity to preserve an important part of Oregon's cultural history, which has since become a go-to place for independent film screenings and numerous live events............where I helped run the concession stand and assist with mopping the floor. From there, finding the experience more than satisfying, I signed up for more opportunities, with the second one I leaped into being one I am still most active with..........the Zimbabwe Artist's Project..........a non-profit inspired by Lewis and Clark College sociology professor Dick Adams' overseas programs to Zimbabwe throughout the nineties focused on gender and social change.............which helps women in Zimbabwe become economically self-sufficient through education, sale of their art in the United States and special projects, including helping Weya artists create their own cooperative association, assisting with constitution writing and fundamentals of bookkeeping, even transporting artists and supplies on the 200-mile round-trip to Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, so they can have critical access to health care. It was there I met a volunteer leader with Hands On Portland named Sigrid Boyer, who also specializes in apparel design in her spare time, who has since become one of my best friends.



The confidence I felt in making a difference, making some sort of impact, prompted me to take my volunteerism to the next level and try helping out at the second annual Better Living Show, which you can read all about my experience in my archived note here. After serving over all three days of the festival in numerous capacities, and receiving enthusiastically positive feedback for my efforts, I felt my self-esteem bend the throttle off the Richter scale, and from then on I've just become vehemently obsessed with volunteering as a mode of life, a temporary full-time (sometimes double full-time) job, where now I know that even once I find employment, I'll still be indefatigable about volunteering in much of the time I'm not working. I had joked often about likening myself the "Kirk Gleason of Volunteering": promiscuously and unpremeditatedly taking on opportunities at random from the most conventional to the most eccentric, with the obvious difference being I don't make everything fall into a down-at-the-heel, higgledy-piggledy, miscalculated muddle in the end! ;)



After a long string of various Hands On projects and festival efforts, I eventually got trained myself as a Hands On Volunteer Leader, started leading a handful of projects, and by May I was thrilled that I would have the liberty to help collaborate with Studio Concepts, Inc. for an entire week (March 30th-June 5th) as many as twelve hours a day some days in decorating floats for the 2009 Portland Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade on June 6th..........where I helped paint, decorate and apply raw materials to four of twelve floats in the convoy, especially the KeyBank float (I didn't write Notes much during this time, but I have a wide archive of video footage I recorded on-site you can find on my Facebook Video page).............which lifted my spirits beyond the outer-most limits and funneled confidence into my creative capacities.

*

*



So already, I had transcended many of the key characteristics attributed to a "quarterlife crisis" at this point. I wasn't feeling nostalgic for the first time in years and was psyched at the prospect of taking it one day at a time in the present and looking forward to ever-changing volunteer tasks. I wasn't frustrated with job prospects and various insecurities that used to plague me because I was keeping myself busy and enjoying every minute I was kept busy. I still felt lonesome in a sense, but nothing like how I used to feel because, this time around, I was engaged, rather than detached, with the community. And I felt in control with myself, and acknowledged "finding yourself" is a lifelong journey and accepted I'm a work in progress and nonetheless marveled over all the new colors that were being splattered on the canvas of my conscious experience.

*

*



Which leads to the next major milestone of this year of my life...........my sexual awakening.



Prior to this year, despite having written erotic poetry for over eight years now and having wet dreams well before my eighteenth birthday, I conceded, because I have Asperger's Syndrome and was socially withdrawn for so long due to previous traumatic experiences socially, particularly being physically bullied often during elementary school for being seen as effeminate and heartache generated by misunderstandings behind the attempted publication of one of my first erotic poems in high school that led to an emotional blacklisting of sorts............that I wasn't capable of love, that no matter what I would be seen as maniacal Martian to others with pitiful motor skills and a manner of speaking that might as well have others taking their time studying a chicken scratch version of cuneiform instead.........thus what I dreamed of was something I could never have, could never hold............and yet I kept writing erotica because I felt more a sense of intrigue and delight vicariously residing in this surreal world of romantic passion and desire than with anything transpiring in reality. It was both the source of my pleasure and pain.



All of this changed this year when, beginning in late May, I had found out a first-ever erotic arts festival was being put together, which would become known as ErosFest Northwest. Tempted by this novel festival concept, given my own fascination with sexuality and erotica, I e-mailed the Volunteer Coordinators Avi and Ken, and they encouraged me to attend a weekly Planning Meeting in early June. So I attended and, after being properly acquainted with most of the Planning Committee, we set out to promote the festival at the Alberta Art District's monthly Last Thursday event............frolicking through the masses and galleries with absurdly large feather boas around our necks, passing out early versions of the festival flyer to attendees and gallery owners. Having gotten off on that one-of-a-kind volunteer effort, where I felt empowered unleashing my sensual side in public and not being judged for it, I instantly became obsessed with ErosFest Northwest, and from then on assisted the festival's Visual Arts Director Morgana de Fata in contacting erotic artists that were also featured at the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival and seducing them into jumping on the ErosFest Northwest bandwagon and co-administrating the festival's official web-site, as well as helping out with other outreach efforts which included booking an exclusive interview on KBOO Community Radio's "Positively Revolting" with Festival Founder and Chairwoman Gabriella Cordova, Morgana de Fata and Festival Curator & Featured Artist Crystal Zingsheim.



And yet...........despite being consciously aware of what I was helping promote to the greater Pacific Northwest.........I had not the slightest idea the festival would change me profoundly as well, as I originally just approached this festival as another entertaining, random volunteer opportunity. I became consciously aware of the politics of fear and repression, and that my own body had been commodified by them, had been held hostage to them, so fought them back with a rebel yell by embracing my body as the harp of my soul and celebrating my sexuality openly. I even became the official Twitter for ErosFest Northwest, and got off teasing and taunting all the Followers I had gained with my unabashed allegiance to debauchery and raving like a zealous porn star. I knew at heart I wasn't being trashy...........I was just consciously recognizing reality; believing: "How can we expect to either live, or live with ourselves, if we're ashamed of what Mother Nature intended to create?"



Even so, being a stranger to sexuality firsthand, and to this kind of love for that matter (I didn't even get my first kiss until the Fantasy Feast at ErosFest Northwest)............I was blissfully unaware of just how much an emotional magnitude what I was helping bring into fruition would shock me with (and most others certainly). Indeed I watched a lot of pornography on the Internet as far back as when I was fifteen, but beyond that I was a virgin surrounded by all this sex-drenched stimuli I had never been exposed to in reality before, yet much of it had long pervaded my punch-drunk imagination in my frequent erotic poetry scribblings. It was as though all my deepest musings had been summoned to life before my very eyes, and thus I was frequently transfixed and haunted at the same time as I went about volunteering with any task at hand...............until finally it all culminated into hedonistic heartburn and proved too much for me when, after I was haunted by my old social traumas in being too afraid to ask for sensual touch and affection at my first LoveTribe Romp..........and I was left feeling humiliated with myself, sitting in a lawn chair at the corner of the DreamBox room at the Jupiter Hotel where the Romp was taking place with my head buried in my tear-soaked hands..............realizing what I was lacking and both needed and want ever so ardently, yet anguishing at my crisis of confidence in obtaining it.



After having a heartfelt conversation with Gabriella over the matter, where her comforting words proved most helpful, Freddy Zental Weaver, a Chicago-based Tantric practitioner and stage performer I befriended the first day of the festival through volunteering together in preparing for the Opening Day Exhibition's Grand Opening, surely must have heard about my situation through the grapevine, and urged me to meet him for breakfast the next morning at the Doug Fir Lounge. I agreed to.............and when I got there early that morning around 8 AM, he was conversing with visiting featured artist Nancy Peach and a couple of Tantric Circus members.........................and once he saw me and greeted me "Good morning!", Freddy got right to the point, and believed someone as sensitive as me would benefit immensely from a session with a Tantrika/dakini, and demanded I break away from my established volunteer schedule for a little while to meet a Tantrika that he had invited up to his hotel room on the second floor of the Jupiter Hotel. Initially I was hesitant to because, after all, I have a fervent sense of loyalty to all my volunteering responsibilities and didn't want to leave anyone feeling marooned or believe I was being deliberately irresponsible, but Freddy said with utmost insistence that this was more important and he could always explain what happened later to the Planning Committee, and so then, completely oblivious of what Freddy was insinuating he wanted me to do and what the gathering would entail, I nonetheless could tell he was absolutely serious and, because I already believed him to be an incredible inspiration and most extraordinary friend, I knew he was only looking out for me and doing what he thought was best for me given his impeccable credentials and finding his live production most persuasive, inspiring and believable, so agreed to meet him and the Tantrika in his room at 9:30 AM a certain time with his guest.



As it turned out, Nancy Peach and I accidentally got carried away with a most moving conversation regarding balancing work and family, her own recent experiences with Asperger's Syndrome in her family, which I am most grateful for but also made me feel bad I unintentionally left my friends waiting in their room, so almost an hour had eclipsed by since the time Freddy told me to meet him in Room 234.............and I hurried up to the second floor of the hotel, knocked on his door, and Freddy invited me in, asked me to take my clothes off and then recline on the bed and close my eyes. Given how dim the room was and that both Freddy and the Tantrika, who was lying on the bed, were naked, I could already feel my heartbeat quicken, so you can imagine that I surely had to have been nervous, getting naked in someone's hotel room in front of someone I had only become acquainted with three days earlier and another I had just met, with little idea of where this session was headed..............but somehow I wasn't. I had a great deal of trust in Freddy and I knew he was trying to help and heal me to the fullest extent, and the empathy he provided me filled me with assurance and confidence. So I laid back, with my head on the pillow on the left side of the bed, and Freddy asked me to softly keep inhaling and exhaling, where he added that in Tantra there are breathing techniques that help us expand our prana, or life-force, called the pranayama. So I followed his instructions, and suddenly I began to feel the Tantrika's silky fingers caress my lingam.......which made my body shiver at first touch.......and as she continued to caress it with light, airy motions........I licked my lips as I felt my heart race faster and velveteen vibrations sibilate through the valleys of my veins..........and felt my body quiver in supernatural stimulation.........convulsing in a coruscating crescendo until, finally........my body beamed the sweetest release..........and I rested there, eyes still closed, my heart racing at nearly twice its normal speed.........in perfect contentment.



I then opened my eyes, seeing the Tantrika staring into my eyes smiling immediately as they unfurled. Freddy asked me how that felt, where I blushed with a grin responding in a near-whisper tone "That felt wonderful!". Freddy then complimented me for having a healthy, strong lingam, with Sam concurring, which made me blush with laughter, then thanking them both for their kind words. I blushed again when Freddy reminded me that my nectar had creamed, had stained the sheets.........nonetheless feeling a rush at the sight, and continuous thought, of it. Freddy then proceeded to engage Sam in the missionary position, showing me how the pranayama can be exercised in a basic sexual position. Given this was the first time I had actually seen a pair having sex before my own eyes, I nonetheless didn't find the sight of it awkward at the very least to me because I saw this as a learning experience for me and that we all are because of the missionary position, the reverse cowgirl, the lotus position, etc. It all felt essential, felt natural, to me. After all, all life is made possible through all of this.



The Tantrika then got dressed, saying it was time for her to go and attend to an obligation, saying later we could exchange contact information and keep in touch, which I happily agreed to. After she left, Freddy asked again how I was feeling, and after mentioning how my head has never felt this light and youthful before, said that it was a shame we couldn't have had a longer session where I could have been practicing expressing my sexual energy with her at a more intimate level and get a feel of how pranta can be expanded in terms of basics, but added that he believed that would still suffice splendidly until next time. It was then that, given my lingam and upper legs were soused with my own nectar and I had spent the night at the Jupiter Hotel and my hair probably looked unkempt to many presently like I had been living under a bridge the past three days, LOL, that Freddy offered me to use his shower and, after getting myself all scrubbed up and rinsed off, I stuck around his room to help him prepare for his 11 AM check-out. While he was still tidying up his belongings, he invited me to listen to his playlist on his Blackberry Pandora: replete with mid-tempo fare spanning from Bob Dylan to Issac Hayes to Bobby McFerren, and even performed a work of progress to me with his bongo drum (I wish I could think of the title, but the theme of the song had something to do with "being at home", which uplifted me deeply to the point I was up on my feet, swaying like a date palm across the floor to the rhythm) Finally, just after 11 AM, he was ready to move his luggage down to the valet parking lot, which I volunteered to give him a hand with it...........and I glanced over my shoulder into Room 234 for the last time, I knew I had lost a piece of myself in there this morning........but ooooooooohhh, how beautiful it felt being broken apart...........only to be made more whole in the process.............for as Frou Frou sings in "Let Go": "There's beauty in the breakdown!"



Since then, the Tantrika and I have remained great friends.............but as it turns out often in life, we all have times in our lives where we feel less-centered than others due to obligations, stress and other factors, so after about two months hoping for a first follow-up session, she told me that research and other life obligations had left her feeling as though she wasn't centered presently, thus it wouldn't feel right to be my Tantrika until she sorted out what she needed to in her own life..........which I understood completely and told her that I want her to be happy above all else and, while I was open and honest with her about just how much I thought of her and desired her all this time (not a day went by when I didn't think of her, eagerly anticipating her touch and every single time the moment I pressed the "Talk" button on the phone after dialing her number (prior to this year I virtually never used the telephone), I always felt my heartbeat quicken to double the speed and nearly lost my breath, with me feeling I needed to gasp for air a few times after I finished talking with her on the phone) ultimately when she may call me back and announce she feels as though she's ready to be a Tantrika again, as ecstatic as I'll surely feel to hear that, I'll be even happier to hear that she's in a happier place in her own life.



So, to tell you the truth, the night she said where she was at in her own life, after I hung up the phone, I cried, then cried myself to sleep in mixed feelings of gratefulness and frustration, because this was the first time in my life that I was desired by another person, where for the whole rest of the first quarter-century of my life I was a complete stranger to love, yet dreamed endlessly about it, for it, since I was eleven years old.............and with this blazing rush of ecstasy I felt I also invested myself wholeheartedly in the opportunity to continue meeting with her, and to see it ultimately freeze indefinitely couldn't help but leave me feeling sad and frustrated all the same in that, while on many levels I've grown since ErosFest Northwest.............I'm back to square one when it comes to identifying with the physical joy and experience of love.........where I'm essentially no less a stranger to it now than I did then.........and after all the excitement and anticipation I had leading up to then and having a blissful breakthrough of sorts..........the inside of my heart looks like Sydney, Australia during one of their recent chaotic sandstorms........a surreal, vesuvian Diwali of a place.



But I for one am glad I feel this strongly, because this is truly a sweet, not bitter, experience, of which I'm very grateful it happened..............because...........I have made a new wonderful friend.........for knowing that, for the first time in my life, there was someone who truly wanted to make love to me...............and for introducing me to the Sacred Circle Dance, among other things..............and it was Freddy who made it all possible, for who I will forever be blessed to have crossed paths in life with. Also, obviously I couldn't have known it in previous years when I was unfamiliar with Tantra..................but I now realize................when glancing over all my poetry from before, I've ALWAYS longed for being in love, not just falling in love...............and just didn't become consciously aware of it until this summer..............and it was this experience that opened the eyes of my heart to this realization...............that I need someone who understands my deep, sensitive, spiritual nature and can also fulfill my intense sexual needs...........and both rest at the essence of Tantra in unity. This experience demonstrated how all the feelings I have are real and profound and that I've been listening to my heart.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.