Love Letter

A necklace I made of my favorite symbol: the Sun, gold, and ever expanding knowledge.

You are the point in the center of a circle. Everything inside the circle is what you know.

The circle itself, the line drawn, is what you know you don’t know.

Everything outside of the circle is what you don’t know you don’t know…

As you grow the circle gets bigger. You know more, there’s more you’re aware of which you don’t understand, and still, the space outside that ever-growing circle of knowing is vast and infinite. And it’s still very much connected to you.

A circle with a point at it’s center. The symbol for gold and the Sun. This is my favorite symbol, I draw it on the wall in pretty much every home I live in and have for a long time. I like thinking about the space outside of my circle, that space which spreads across the plane of the wall to the ceiling and floor, into the next room, around and over the house, through my neighborhood, onward and outward into infinity… All these things I don’t know I don’t know. I take comfort in it, this understanding that I can be connected to everything yet still understand so little of what everything truly is. Looking at life this way, I can approach the world knowing that I’ll make mistakes. I might not know something important about how to interact with another person or situation, but that is to be expected at some level: I am allowed learning.

I am allowed learning. What a beautiful and important permission. One of the major reasons I’m committed to my exploration of sexuality and sensuality is that at one point in my childhood my ability to discover those things on my own terms and in my own time was taken away from me. I feel those wounds still. I know I react to the worlds of sexuality and sensuality with knee jerks at times, and those reactions were put in place long ago to protect me, but I don’t need all of them anymore. I know that there is more out there I want to be open to. There are things inside me I cannot begin to understand yet because I haven’t opened myself up to exploring them. Yet.

This is the most profound reason I love my friends so incredibly dearly. All of my open, caring, queer, curious, brave, struggling, articulate friends have given me pieces of what I didn’t know, and even what I didn’t know I didn’t know. They connect me to them, and in so also connect me more deeply to myself.

This is a love letter to the people in my life who have seen me and applauded my struggles and findings. This is a letter to those people who I see once in a blue moon, yet fall into their arms deeply and joyfully every time. This is a love letter to all of those people in my life who reflect back to me what I have helped them know. This is a love letter to people who laugh when I find out something new about myself, and who say they already knew it (there are many of you out there). This is a love letter to those people who keep asking me to try new things, who invite me to play, who don’t fault me for not being in the mood, who slow down when I get overwhelmed, who read books and watch instructional videos to learn the mechanics of acts we’re interested in, who share fantasies with me, who ask questions and get super nerdy with me about the answers, who research what happens when… This is a love letter to all those people who think that what makes us tick is worth exploring.

Thank you for existing. I need you on this journey, and like you maybe needing me, we’ll find things we didn’t know we didn’t know. We’ll face them connected, autonomously, and together.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature (Crea)

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and support me. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

Thank You, May I Have Another

Connection. Help. A tension, a purpose between two people.

Connection. Help. A tension, a purpose between two people. Photo by Justin Moore

I find myself thinking about the ways in which I am thankful for people in all of my communities who help me to be a more whole human being:  my family (of origin and of choice), my GLBTQI, Poly, Kinky, and Sex-Positive playmates, my Drag / Burlesque / Actor / Dancer / Artist / Puppeteer / Maker peers and contemporaries, my friends, my lovers, and my partners (current and past).  I am thankful to everyone who has ever taught me something about themselves and in so allowed me to look at life and at myself in a new light.  I am thankful for the people who were aware and accepting of the little parts of me that emerged as I have discovered myself more deeply over time.  I’m thankful for those who have taken a chance on me in my wandering “youth of new ideas/identities”; those who offered philosophies, suggestions, and new games to play to aid in my development.  I am thankful for the people who respected my newness in any community I found, and who have taken the time (still to this day) to explain how things can work differently than I have believed them to before…  the list goes on, but the root of what I am thankful for is that there are profound depths of acceptance in this world, and I have been able to consistently find them when I have needed to.

What I hope is that I return the favor to those around me.  I hope that by grounding myself in my own new discoveries, that I offer a space of calm and trust other people can use to expand on and explore in their own journeys.

I’ve been writing to my born-again Christian Grandmother lately.  I made it clear to her a little while ago all of who I am – amongst which the descriptors queer, poly, sex-positive, kinky, and a teacher/blogger/performance artist who often graphically explores these themes in my work (I’ll post that letter one of these days).  She asked, in a letter to me recently, who we should be thankful to on Thanksgiving, if not to the God many people no longer believe in.  This was my response:

I am thankful for a great many things, and believe it is important to acknowledge to myself – to FEEL and think about – that thankfulness.  By internalizing these ideas (the things I am thankful for), I am able to hold onto them and incorporate these things as an active and meditative part of my work in this world.  I don’t think I need to be thankful TO anyone necessarily (other than the people I am thankful for themselves).  The practice of being thankful is an important individual and familial ritual to me.  Saying these things out loud is an opportunity to share my thoughts and values with the people I choose to have around me, and to learn about the thoughts and values of those I’ve surrounded myself by.  These things are fundamentally important for me to know about in the people that I love.

I hope we do have hard conversations, and that we stumble and fall over ourselves.  I wish for grace in the getting back up, and that there is always one more try on the horizon to understand and love one another better.  Without tension held perfectly between us, we can not find our way to close perfectly.

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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