Why Write? Why Kink? Why Find? Why Say?

11219643_10206631497961241_2668328861748374150_nFrom the darkness… Creation. A light glows, imperceptible upon arrival, grows; soon unbearable its revelatory castings. Illumination of the surroundings shocks and surprises; we explore further. Knowledge. Finding. Soft touching in the dark becomes heat, breath, desire unspoken and found in shared imperceptible inches of consent. Movement yeses, eyes locked in fearsome asking, receiving smiles — all these affirmations. Together in time, between gain and retreat, we come whole and are spent.

I am asked, how do you set out on this journey into the darkness? How to prepare? How to find solitude and nothing when tears are heavy, excitement ready for flight, inner conversations shouting louder than the rumble of everything outside? What is beyond the trumpeting brass band of living? I hold attention with my eyes. I see you. I sigh. I close my eyes and inhale. My arm reaches towards your body and we touch. Melt, in fact, into one another’s flesh a moment. Held in comfort’s release. This. This is everything in the world. You are here. I am here. We find here for ourselves in one another’s company, sensual input, no input, even in the alone nothingness this body is always here to touch, even to feel from the inside out. My brain will whisper secrets if I listen closely… From the nothing creation will come; a something is born and will be when I let it.

Connection is the Temple where I pray and over time I’ve learned rites for growth, for reactionary anger-fueled tearing down for to build anew, rites for wild abandon to stir it all up, for fantasy sparking, and conversely for touching earth and finding calm, I have learned slow, I have learned the smell of decay, I have learned the fertile ground sewn by Sister Death.

Recently I had an emotional episode, emotional grinding and unbearable. The million wounds of living reopened and scrubbed mercilessly with salt. I was a melted pot holding nothing in the heat and overcome by my task. This went on, and longer. Even after my wet eyes dried and the wracking coughs of misery died, I suffered slow heart and tired. Days shuffled by and no more bearing to feel this chasm could be… Employing meditation, self care, kindness, I came to the conclusion that the only way to move forward was by radically letting go. There is nothing in this moment threatening from the past, and trapped there I am not able to be here. And I am here.

I am here.

I. Am. Here.

I am here now and what I can be is what occurs in each moment of my experience. To remain here is the work of a million moments of failure and introspection. What I need is to cut ties to past and speak to my present. I must listen and consider in real time. Now.

And so I lit candles and let go, jumped, brought free fall into my experience, and in falling I found finding. On the way down time expanded and I could construct all directions from my changing point of reference, even up.

This story is about a person: an Everyperson who considers opportunity for something more — I mean, we all desire, want, fail, hope, move through life with questions and impulses fed by imperfect wantings… Our Everyperson suffers the foils of a limited body and judgmental mind, but the character in our tale also moves impulsively and employs intuition as a guide. Our hero asks and tries and learns. Within these pages you will find magic and inspiration, the musings of kink and sexuality, of sensuality and life force (which grasps all creatures crawling the planet) in search of immortality held honestly in a real and recognized moment… This story is about what maybe we share, and maybe we don’t but can understand and empathize with in our genius. Everyperson is me and Everyperson could also very easily be you. This story is meant to Muse.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Kink Blog’s Resurrection Brought to You by the Asheville DMV

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Hatching too many plans will make a fool of you…

Why hello Dear Readers,

*Note: Blog updated 11/21/16 to reflect the current “published” status of my Patreon Page!

It’s been almost a year since my last blog, and I’ve run a million miles since we last connected… I have been toying with the idea of resurrecting ABCs for a few months now, and all of a sudden I find myself with a couple free hours courtesy the DMV’s insane lines… This is the second time I’ve been turned away at the window to get my new driver’s license — third time’s the charm, right? Oy.

Here’s the quick version of where I’ve been since October: I was on tour across the USA for 9 months with my at-the-time partner performing puppet shows as a full-time job. It was pretty amazing to have that job, great to see new cities, wonderful adventures were had, and I even managed to get out a few times to kink events in various cities we passed though. Play on the road didn’t happen enough for me to stay completely satisfied, but it was greatly educational when it did happen. Post tour I moved to Asheville, NC to be with my partner, but our relationship was not to last, and I found myself alone in this new city trying to figure out what my plan B for the next couple years should look like as I mourned the disintegration of my plan A… …And here I am: moved to a new place after an intense ride a very long way from what I’ve called home for the past 18 years. I am still figuring out what I want, where to go, who I am now, and taking stock of, well, absolutely everything.

Reflecting on all I’ve been through in the past year I realize there’s a lot for me to write about and the list keeps growing, subjects like:

  • Breaking the Ice in a New Kinky Community
  • Kink on the Road: playing with strangers and increasing your chances at being invited over
  • Negotiation Tactics and the Importance of Learning From Mistakes
  • Kinky People and Leather People: What’s the distinction?
  • C is for CIGAR PLAY
  • B is for BLOOD PLAY
  • B is also for BOOTBLACKING
  • H is for HOSTAGE TAKEDOWN
  • H is for HOOK SUSPENSIONS
  • Sexy Kinky Camping Weekends!
  • What if You’re More Kinky than Your Partner?
  • Sex and Kink or *No Sex* and Kink?
  • The Immense Importance of Autonomy
  • Mono/Poly Relationship Dynamics
  • The Finances of a Sex Writer…

Not a bad start huh?

That last subject, “The Finances of a Sex Writer”, is one I’d like to elaborate on briefly now as naturally it’s something I’ve been thinking about for some time. To make ends meet I currently work full-time in a cafe which is exhausting physically, mentally, emotionally, and takes a lot of extroverted energy. Carving out space in this new life and the new place I’ve landed takes time end energy to build up. With a full schedule I find it difficult to meet kinksters and performance artists or even make it out to events that fall outside my evening and weekend work hours. I am starting this blog up again, and my current goal is to publish at least once a week. I want to ramp back up into actualizing the performance art that happens in my head, and I want to tour the country and abroad performing my work, teaching, and continuing to research kink and the kinky communities I come upon. I want to scene, demo bottom, burlesque, drag, clown, puppet, write, direct, teach, learn, and build what is most meaningful to me as a thinker and as an artist, and create what I feel my audiences get the most from…

I need income coming from a source other than my day job for my goal to manifest fully. I need the time and the space (mental and physical) to create. I need to be paid for my time and the effort that I take to research, negotiate, experience, process, reflect on, and put my point of view forth in both written words and performance creations.

There are already a couple ways you can support me for my work on this website and I [Update: Have just published]am in the process of adding a Patreon project to the current list. Please consider whether the ABCs Of Kink blog has meant anything to you or someone you care about, and if you find the answer to be yes, please financially support me so that I can continue to build the sex-positive, kinky, queer, loving, open-minded, constantly learning and teaching artistic vision of the world I struggle to make. These are ways you can support me, and thank you for your consideration:

  • Donation Link: At the top right of this and most pages on this website is a “SUPPORT THE ARTIST” button. Please click on it for one time gifts or recurring payments to be processed. As little as a few dollars, or $10, $20, $50+… a month is extremely appreciated and helpful. Thank you!
  • Kink Academy: If you like the website www.KinkAcademy.com, please consider getting a membership (short term or ongoing) using *THIS LINK* to access the membership page, and I will receive a percentage of your sale. This website is a resource I personally love and value and I’m happy to be associated with them through their referral program. Thank you!
  • My Patreon Page: This campaign [Update: is awesome and live and please check it out]is still being created and I’ll update the link when I go live… Please check back!
  • Other Ways to Support Me: If you don’t have money to spare or you want to help me make what I make in other ways, please be in conversation with me. Drop me a line, check out the CONTACT PAGE on this site and write to me. Hearing from you is a great way to keep my spirit and energy afloat as I work. I do this for me, but I also do it for you.

I look forward to bringing you content that will be exciting, interesting, educational, and a great push off for conversation. I look forward to hearing from some of you. I look forward to suggestions about what I should write about… Thank you for reading my words.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Tension and Release

IMG_1504I don’t want to write a blog right now I want to write a love letter or meditate on the importance of weird gut feelings and how vital they are, or I’d like to masturbate until I release all of the electricity in me and shut down like an old televisions’s phosphorescent faded glow…  I want to make out, roll around in the hay, hike through the woods with someone I admire, or fall asleep.  I feel too full to function.  I am tired and just want to shut down and die for a week before reactivating to take over the universe.

I woke up this morning remembering how hard the things I love are, and that collision of understanding and a crazy energy to just blindly make is still in me.

An example:  Puppets.  When I toured the country as a puppeteer for a year I was contracted (for very little pay) to work 40 hours a week in a puppet studio when we weren’t out on tour.  It was grueling physically, mentally and creatively, and when we were on the road very time consuming.  I learned a lot by showing up to the workshop, when we were in town, having to make my own plan for what to tackle every day.  Sometimes it was restoration of old puppets, sometimes learning lines and rehearsing a show we were about to take on tour, it was rebuild and design work, research, booking hotels, cleaning, reorganizing, making sense of a very large and chaotic workshop, going to meetings, practicing moves or learning a new puppet’s limitations and finding ways to make it live, load in and out of the puppet van our gigantic sound and light systems and 9 foot tall set pieces…  And then sometimes it was building something from nothing.  Making puppets of my own.  Learning to design, find the tools, structure, create, jury-rig as alternative to a more complicated process I didn’t have the resources for or as inventive solution and artistic choice.

Meet "General", my first puppet made completely from scratch

Meet “General”, my first puppet made completely from scratch (yes, those are leather chaps)

I would get tired.  I would struggle.  I would worry that everything I laid my hands on was failure and I that I wouldn’t be able to keep it up long enough to make my mark the way I wanted it.  I would crisis in the middle of this, my own vast fortune.

This perfectly describes the tension I live in.

Tension is probably the most perfect way to look at living a fulfilling existence…  Is this my masochistic theory I wonder?

It is stunning at times; when I look back at those days of struggle, yet I look back and wish I was engaged now in similar ways… and then realize I suppose I am.  My struggle today encompasses writing three times a week and publishing, teaching and promoting myself, keeping a steady job, creating work and performing in shows as a soloist, performing and rehearsing with my troupe, learning choreography and lines for the other shows I am cast in, mediating for the communities I do that type of work with, remaining open to new ideas and opportunities as well as staying rooted and connected to the work I’m committed to, maintaining relationships, learning new things, and still tinkering at my work desk making costumes, props, set pieces, and sometimes just work for me and my brain…

I juggle and I balance.  I fail at being perfect at everything (or anything), but I continue to try and measure my progress in terms of increasing capacity, increasing understanding, increasing skill and POV.  I am a growing organism.  I evolve or I die.  I understand new ideas or I wither and become complacent.

Embracing all the different aspects of my sexuality I see myself challenging the easy unfulfilling modes of behavior I’ve repeated historically, including a strong capacity for self repression.  I am learning new ways to approach the life I have with elbow grease towards becoming the life I want.  The tools I am becoming familiar with are transparency, self-confidence, meditation, and clear communication.  I am blessed to feel this tension in me vibrate, shift, and thrive.

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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