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New product!
10 April 2013 19:33
For everyone that had been asking me for sketchbooks, I now have a manga-sized gallery folio available exclusively in person!
Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.
Thoughts, ShibariCon
4 June 2011 14:56http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/06/why-being-broken-in-a-pile-on-your-bedroom-floor-is-a-good-idea--julie-jc-peters/
Still trying to find the time to reflect on ShibariCon. This was forwarded to me by (Formerly) Achingly Defiant, and I thank the gods for ex-girlfriends.
I'll write of at least one ShibariCon-based epiphany that I had, concerning Mirage:
It's not that she was The One That I've Been Waiting For, it's just that she was the first girl in my entire life with whom I finally felt like I could be fallible in front of. I gave her a type of virginity that I didn't even know I still had in me, and the reason I've been struggling so much to get over the pain of our breakup is simply this:
I'm a heartbroken, recently deflowered virgin.
Of course this hurts. I waited thirty five years for someone I could trust like that.
Still trying to find the time to reflect on ShibariCon. This was forwarded to me by (Formerly) Achingly Defiant, and I thank the gods for ex-girlfriends.
I'll write of at least one ShibariCon-based epiphany that I had, concerning Mirage:
It's not that she was The One That I've Been Waiting For, it's just that she was the first girl in my entire life with whom I finally felt like I could be fallible in front of. I gave her a type of virginity that I didn't even know I still had in me, and the reason I've been struggling so much to get over the pain of our breakup is simply this:
I'm a heartbroken, recently deflowered virgin.
Of course this hurts. I waited thirty five years for someone I could trust like that.
My impulse is to pull out documents, and reference notes, to include URLS and timestamps. But then I realize that this is all part of the thing that I do to avoid feeling, to avoid BEING a rope fetishist.
So, first and foremost: this will be my last publicly accessible post about my fetishes, my kink explorations, or anything like that. The period of my life where my need to get comfortable being all of who I am in front of everyone in the world no longer trumps my desire to be respectful of other people's sensibilities. I have no qualms about who I am or what I do, but I'm aware that others might, and so I will keeping those entries filtered as well as lj-cut from now on. If you wish to read of my kink explorations, please let me know and I will add you to the filter.
For the rest, you'll have to agree that you want to ( Read more... )
So, first and foremost: this will be my last publicly accessible post about my fetishes, my kink explorations, or anything like that. The period of my life where my need to get comfortable being all of who I am in front of everyone in the world no longer trumps my desire to be respectful of other people's sensibilities. I have no qualms about who I am or what I do, but I'm aware that others might, and so I will keeping those entries filtered as well as lj-cut from now on. If you wish to read of my kink explorations, please let me know and I will add you to the filter.
For the rest, you'll have to agree that you want to ( Read more... )
f(AD) called with a photography question, pre-empting the phone call I promised her over a month ago. While talking images, digital technology, never-ending lists of self-improvement tasks, and all the other things that make it seem like I loved her only yesterday, I mentioned Dragon Con in passing.
"Hey, what's up with you coming to Atlanta in March and only telling me after you left?"
Uh, I was having sex with a whole bunch of strangers, I replied flippantly. Didn't seem like a good time to catch up with you.
"Well, so long as I'm not in the same room, that would have been fine."
A pause then, as I sorted out the strange and confusing wave of emotions that accompanies that mental image: horror, shame, arousal, loss, desire. Somewhere inside me, it appears there is a part of me that, like sweet little Roo, longs to go back to something I once had.
And, oh yes, there was fear, too. The fear of trying to maintain a friendship with someone whom I once knew better than myself. I played my new little trick, the one Radiant Idol taught me, of letting my emotions wash over me, to let myself really feel them, and then take a breath and get back to the business of being an adult.
I've never really liked letting myself fear things.
Actually, the one thing GenCon taught me was that I really need a booth partner. Any interest in spending 4 days helping me sell my photos?
So, we'll see. There are details we need to work out, and at the very least, we can have coffee at some point, and a long drive. Time enough to talk. Time enough to be friends in person, for a change.
"Hey, what's up with you coming to Atlanta in March and only telling me after you left?"
Uh, I was having sex with a whole bunch of strangers, I replied flippantly. Didn't seem like a good time to catch up with you.
"Well, so long as I'm not in the same room, that would have been fine."
A pause then, as I sorted out the strange and confusing wave of emotions that accompanies that mental image: horror, shame, arousal, loss, desire. Somewhere inside me, it appears there is a part of me that, like sweet little Roo, longs to go back to something I once had.
And, oh yes, there was fear, too. The fear of trying to maintain a friendship with someone whom I once knew better than myself. I played my new little trick, the one Radiant Idol taught me, of letting my emotions wash over me, to let myself really feel them, and then take a breath and get back to the business of being an adult.
I've never really liked letting myself fear things.
Actually, the one thing GenCon taught me was that I really need a booth partner. Any interest in spending 4 days helping me sell my photos?
So, we'll see. There are details we need to work out, and at the very least, we can have coffee at some point, and a long drive. Time enough to talk. Time enough to be friends in person, for a change.
While I learned a lot from my first Art Booth experience at a sci-fi/gaming convention, this is the lesson I want to remember most:
Sitting in a small curtained room for 4 days of 8-hour shifts, hoping someone will walk in and look at something and wondering what is going on around you....not something I'd recommend. A booth partner is highly recommended.
Is anyone going to Dragon Con that would like to help me run my booth in the art show?
Sitting in a small curtained room for 4 days of 8-hour shifts, hoping someone will walk in and look at something and wondering what is going on around you....not something I'd recommend. A booth partner is highly recommended.
Is anyone going to Dragon Con that would like to help me run my booth in the art show?
Gen Con:Indy ?
12 August 2008 15:07I’ve just heard that there may be some booths left in the Dealer’s Room for Gen Con this weekend. I missed the art show deadline, but so did several friends of mine, and they’ve suggested that I bring my store down with me and see if I can grab a space.
The only problem is: I don’t have any gridwall to hang photos from, and since I’ve never done this show before, I don’t even know if I’d need some. I don’t suppose anyone has any hanging walls which they can bring to GenCon for me?
Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. Please leave any comments there.
Sometimes people say things to me, and I have to look around to see who they're talking to.
"You seem like you've got your shit all figured out."
"I can't figure out how you manage to let things just roll off you like this."
"It's funny, but you and [deleted] are both the two kinkiest men I know, but also the most gentlemanly."
Words like these I cherish, but not as much as the more subtle indications of trust and respect which is shown when someone confides in me, as did the perfectly sweet and vanilla girl at Duck Con who, after only a few short investigatory conversations, invited me to her room so that the two of us could talk in private about the relationship turmoil she was enduring. She needed to talk to someone who understood the world she had been thrust into, who would be as unbiased as he could, and who would not try to turn her vulnerability into something to be exploited.
That sort of bold and understated faith in my trustworthiness always causes me to feel a little giddy afterward.
"You seem like you've got your shit all figured out."
"I can't figure out how you manage to let things just roll off you like this."
"It's funny, but you and [deleted] are both the two kinkiest men I know, but also the most gentlemanly."
Words like these I cherish, but not as much as the more subtle indications of trust and respect which is shown when someone confides in me, as did the perfectly sweet and vanilla girl at Duck Con who, after only a few short investigatory conversations, invited me to her room so that the two of us could talk in private about the relationship turmoil she was enduring. She needed to talk to someone who understood the world she had been thrust into, who would be as unbiased as he could, and who would not try to turn her vulnerability into something to be exploited.
That sort of bold and understated faith in my trustworthiness always causes me to feel a little giddy afterward.
Rule 1: Do not email anyone who visits your website saying, "Hey, I saw you were on my site and looking at X," no matter how much you believe it may be the hot girl from the fetish convention you just got back from.
ShibariCon was amazing this year. I really enjoyed the way I wasn't working the event, and after some careful coaching, I started finding "play partners" everywhere. That term is a bit misleading though, since it implies sexuality. Rope work with strangers this weekend was much less focused on sexuality, and much more about simply tying people up for the sheer fun of it. I don't really know where it came from, but Shibari really has become a kind of fetish for me - it is something that I now do for it's own sake.
Intriguingly, although I attended every class session (and that's 14 sessions over four days, starting ungodly early in the morning), only two of those courses were "about rope." The other 12 classes I attended were all about the psychology of bondage: why you do it, how to talk to strangers about what they want out of a session, how to move beyond the strangely rigid classification system of Top/Dominant/Corporal/etc, how to coordinate your scenes, how to negotiate boundaries and still keep it sexy.
Oh, and here's something completely fucked up: out of 500 people from across the world, united only by our mutual interest in rope, I was not the only person there with a Winnie The Pooh tattoo! Uncle P has TWO of them, in color!
I also finally met Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly fame, and OH MY GOD is she hot! ( (gushing babble) )
Don't be fooled by the tangents, by the way. The incredibly attractive woman whose email address I am illicitly in possession of is NOT the bodacious Ms Minx, but a completely different fine-looking woman who apparently thinks of me as "the really hot note-taker," because of my frantic scribbling during one of the classes by Lee Harrington,. Lee, incidentally, is currently trying to have text-message sex with me while his flight is delayed.
The underlying message of the weekend, for me, was one speaking to my fears and self-doubts, and calling them dirty names. I have carefully navigated the course of my life to a place that is as free from judgment and potential condemnation as it is possible to get without cutting yourself off entirely from other human beings. In such a place, fear and feelings of inadequacy, of self-depreciation, ought to have no power over me. Is it so surprising, then, that so many people joined me in learning how to overcome such demons under the guise of rope fetishism?
ShibariCon was amazing this year. I really enjoyed the way I wasn't working the event, and after some careful coaching, I started finding "play partners" everywhere. That term is a bit misleading though, since it implies sexuality. Rope work with strangers this weekend was much less focused on sexuality, and much more about simply tying people up for the sheer fun of it. I don't really know where it came from, but Shibari really has become a kind of fetish for me - it is something that I now do for it's own sake.
Intriguingly, although I attended every class session (and that's 14 sessions over four days, starting ungodly early in the morning), only two of those courses were "about rope." The other 12 classes I attended were all about the psychology of bondage: why you do it, how to talk to strangers about what they want out of a session, how to move beyond the strangely rigid classification system of Top/Dominant/Corporal/etc, how to coordinate your scenes, how to negotiate boundaries and still keep it sexy.
Oh, and here's something completely fucked up: out of 500 people from across the world, united only by our mutual interest in rope, I was not the only person there with a Winnie The Pooh tattoo! Uncle P has TWO of them, in color!
I also finally met Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly fame, and OH MY GOD is she hot! ( (gushing babble) )
Don't be fooled by the tangents, by the way. The incredibly attractive woman whose email address I am illicitly in possession of is NOT the bodacious Ms Minx, but a completely different fine-looking woman who apparently thinks of me as "the really hot note-taker," because of my frantic scribbling during one of the classes by Lee Harrington,. Lee, incidentally, is currently trying to have text-message sex with me while his flight is delayed.
The underlying message of the weekend, for me, was one speaking to my fears and self-doubts, and calling them dirty names. I have carefully navigated the course of my life to a place that is as free from judgment and potential condemnation as it is possible to get without cutting yourself off entirely from other human beings. In such a place, fear and feelings of inadequacy, of self-depreciation, ought to have no power over me. Is it so surprising, then, that so many people joined me in learning how to overcome such demons under the guise of rope fetishism?
Drowning in the woman
26 March 2008 04:30While I'm usually pretty good about unpacking as soon as I get home, a 12 hours car drive that left 12 hours later than I intended puts a cramp in my usually timeliness *cough, cough, giggle* I had to completely unpack in order to find the entire collection of business cards from this weekend, and of course the woman one I really wanted (Freud much?) was the last one I found.
While I will let myself revel and delight in sharing for this brief moment, let me also assure you that I am not so silly as to confuse conventions with real life, nor drunken intensity for honest emotion. That said, I giggle and laugh as I point you to the beautiful and brilliant, captivating and cruel model I met this weekend, through the shuttered eye of another:
www.drowningwoman.net
While I will let myself revel and delight in sharing for this brief moment, let me also assure you that I am not so silly as to confuse conventions with real life, nor drunken intensity for honest emotion. That said, I giggle and laugh as I point you to the beautiful and brilliant, captivating and cruel model I met this weekend, through the shuttered eye of another:
A Return From Bondage
29 May 2007 15:56Edit: Stupid LJ-through-IM Bot. Let's try this again.
Just got back from Shibari Con last night. After spending the entire weekend playing until 3am, and then trying to get up in time to help volunteer at 7am....I pretty much fell asleep face-first into my dinner of frozen fish sticks.
As I helped load the last of the equipment into the trucks, a fellow attendee made what I thought was a very astute point.
Me: It just sort of sucks, you know? We're going to leave here, and no longer be able to get into casual conversations with complete strangers about cock rings.
Him: Are you kidding? In our daily lives we can't get into casual conversations with complete strangers at all.
Now I'm sitting at Metropolis Coffee House, painfully aware of the sense of isolation. I came here to be with people, so that at the very least the sounds of life and laughter could drown out the machine-hum of air conditioners and humidifiers. That guy on the loading dock had a fair point.
I suppose that's why I like all of the conventions so much, not even for the subject of the event, but for the social freedom I feel in such places, confident that my need to reach out and connect to people will be cherished.
More about the convention itself, later, or never, as the case may be.
Just got back from Shibari Con last night. After spending the entire weekend playing until 3am, and then trying to get up in time to help volunteer at 7am....I pretty much fell asleep face-first into my dinner of frozen fish sticks.
As I helped load the last of the equipment into the trucks, a fellow attendee made what I thought was a very astute point.
Me: It just sort of sucks, you know? We're going to leave here, and no longer be able to get into casual conversations with complete strangers about cock rings.
Him: Are you kidding? In our daily lives we can't get into casual conversations with complete strangers at all.
Now I'm sitting at Metropolis Coffee House, painfully aware of the sense of isolation. I came here to be with people, so that at the very least the sounds of life and laughter could drown out the machine-hum of air conditioners and humidifiers. That guy on the loading dock had a fair point.
I suppose that's why I like all of the conventions so much, not even for the subject of the event, but for the social freedom I feel in such places, confident that my need to reach out and connect to people will be cherished.
More about the convention itself, later, or never, as the case may be.
Get my Frolic off
10 April 2007 03:22Got back late last night from Frolicon.
I got there near the very end of Broken Angels, which wasn't nearly as conceptually interesting as Altered Carbon. AC managed to make an interesting story which completely explored the deviation of the story (eg, what the world would be like if we could download personalities). Broken Angels, on the other hand, just sort of exists in the world he created in AC, without adding anything interesting to it. I had high hopes for the xeno-archeological aspects, but in the end, was pretty disappointed.
He still writes well, though.
In my recap below, I'm specifically avoiding any discussion of the vendor's booths, as that will need to be a separate post. It....raised some interesting questions which I want to talk about with specific people before sharing my thoughts to the world.
That last sentence sounds funny to me.
( recap )
I got there near the very end of Broken Angels, which wasn't nearly as conceptually interesting as Altered Carbon. AC managed to make an interesting story which completely explored the deviation of the story (eg, what the world would be like if we could download personalities). Broken Angels, on the other hand, just sort of exists in the world he created in AC, without adding anything interesting to it. I had high hopes for the xeno-archeological aspects, but in the end, was pretty disappointed.
He still writes well, though.
In my recap below, I'm specifically avoiding any discussion of the vendor's booths, as that will need to be a separate post. It....raised some interesting questions which I want to talk about with specific people before sharing my thoughts to the world.
That last sentence sounds funny to me.
( recap )
Notes from Frolic Con
15 April 2006 20:22We left ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soundoflight's place Wednesday and made it to Kentucky, before deciding to call it a day. Took a small detour to the Mammoth Caves and camped there for the night. Bluebeard pretty much had the camp set up before Jayda and I even got out of the car.
The two of us went out to go scrounging for wood, and after 30 minutes came back with a small pile of finger-thick branches. BB walks behind the tent and comes back five seconds later with half a tree.
We set up a hammock and a couple of chairs, sat by the fire, and listened to a horror story on audio book. BB crashed out almost immediately, but J and I stayed up talking until god only knows how late, the full moon bright and clear through the trees in the cloudless sky, looking down upon the subjects we discussed and smiling her lunar smile.
( Read more... )
soundoflight's place Wednesday and made it to Kentucky, before deciding to call it a day. Took a small detour to the Mammoth Caves and camped there for the night. Bluebeard pretty much had the camp set up before Jayda and I even got out of the car. The two of us went out to go scrounging for wood, and after 30 minutes came back with a small pile of finger-thick branches. BB walks behind the tent and comes back five seconds later with half a tree.
We set up a hammock and a couple of chairs, sat by the fire, and listened to a horror story on audio book. BB crashed out almost immediately, but J and I stayed up talking until god only knows how late, the full moon bright and clear through the trees in the cloudless sky, looking down upon the subjects we discussed and smiling her lunar smile.
( Read more... )
Spent the night at soundoflight's place, walking the Indianapolis canal, talking about everything under the sun from politics and programming to music and madness. Spent quite a bit of time talking about polyphasic sleep some more. I'm really tempted to try it, but I still want to see if any long term research has been done on the subject.
Today I discovered that Atlanta is only 11 hours away from Chicago, and since we left two days early, we have the burdensome problem of figuring out what to do with half a day on the road with nothing to do, nowhere to be, and no rush to get started.
Oh, darn.
( To Do )
soundoflight's place, walking the Indianapolis canal, talking about everything under the sun from politics and programming to music and madness. Spent quite a bit of time talking about polyphasic sleep some more. I'm really tempted to try it, but I still want to see if any long term research has been done on the subject.Today I discovered that Atlanta is only 11 hours away from Chicago, and since we left two days early, we have the burdensome problem of figuring out what to do with half a day on the road with nothing to do, nowhere to be, and no rush to get started.
Oh, darn.
( To Do )
