A Tale of Chantix and Psychosis

I've been AWOL on the blogging recently, mainly because I tried to quit smoking using Chantix ® . Suffice it to say this is not the drug for those with mood stabilization issues. I spent four days that I barely remember in and out of psychosis. Not that I'm saying this drug doesn't work to help others quit, but for a bipolar with psychosis it's a recipe for disaster. By Friday I apparently threw up all over the bed, leaving emmie to clean up, which she had terrific difficulty with as she is not fond of bodily fluids. I have no memory of it. I have little memory really of the whole episode – nothing I took helped (and I have a cornucopia of antipsychotic drugs at my disposal) – but finally I slept so much on the last day that I never got around to taking the anti-smoking drug. Lo and behold, I got better, immediately better. Apparently the FDA wants to put a stronger warning on the drug, I say definitely do, and put something in the warning about bipolars, hey, we're people too!

Munch and Play Time

This weekend is the big play party (for us, at any rate - there is a bigger one but it's not really our scene). I'd like to play with both mitda and emmie but it is sometimes exhausting to play with more than one slave, especially in a (relatively) public space.

Apparently mitda does want to play with other people so I could let her do that and play with emmie. At the same time emmie might not mind the reprieve as she is does not so much enjoy pain but instead likes to please.

I will think on it some more between now and the party. There is a munch the night before which will be enjoyable as the group usually has a good conversational atmosphere.

Nurturing

At times the Master's role is to protect, to nurture, rather than opening up a World to the slave. It is in the hidden roots in the earth that things grow and mature, and come to fruition. Pushing the slave into doing things to boost his/her confidence, and promote his/her abilities by giving room for trial and error, failure and eventual success, is a major part of this nurturing process. Stepping out from what we already know into those areas that have remained opaque and mysterious grows the slave into a fuller human being and more valuable property.

Presence, Presencing, Presentation and Being

In terms of Being and Place, Topoi, it seems necessary to work out the differences at play between Presence, Presencing, and Presentation. Beings have presence, that is to say they are present in the present and abide by for a while. Presencing is the event of presence, therefore the event of the Being of any particular being, it's uncovering, its truth. Presentation is the situation within which the being may presence, and different beings may presence in different situations. Being itself is the hidden core of presentation, the point of excess that always threatens the situation with its overabundance. As punctual Being is the limit of the limit-situation itself.

The Situation, State of the Situation, and Training

To every Situation there exists a metastructure, the State of the Situation. This reduplication of the count-as-one of the multiplicitous Situation serves to protect the Situation's unity from the danger of the point-of-excess, the Void, or Being. In a nation the State's laws and regulations decide what is permissible and possible in the Situation - “Sitere” originally meant ot let, or permit. But the State is not merely an image of the situation. There are elements of the situation not contained in the State, and elements in the State's image that are extraneous to the situation. These elements, respectively, are the Singular and the Excrescent.

In the M/s Situation the State is represented by the authority of the Master. When I claim a shared Situation with my slaves it is my reduplication of the Situation that is shared along with it, with my interpretations, as-structure, and meaning. However my slaves always have things “of their own” that are not part of the State, but still belong to the Situation. Incorporating these things into the State of the Situation when they are singular, and driving them out of the Situation when they are excrescent, is at the heart of slave training. By careful repetition the purview on the World that the Master possesses is imprinted on the slave, until he/she cannot experience that which the Master does not permit to be experienced. Governance, then, becomes a tightening of the grip on the slave's very World-experience, performed in the safe, protecting, nurturing cover of the Master's secure hand.

Topology and M/s

“Place”, Topos, is always the proper place of some “thing” or some “one”. To bring into the proper place is the full meaning of appropriate used as a verb, rather than the common usage of to “take”. While I certainly do “take” mitda and emmie as slaves, it is truer to say that I appropriate them and in so doing bring them to their appropriate places. This “event of appropriation” is one way of translating Heidegger's Ereignis, the other way is “Enowning”, and the event of appropriation is in fact how one comes to enown another. That this requires enacting on the part of the slave as well as the Master should be obvious in the enowning/enslaving dialectic that takes place. Topologically a map is drawn of our combined being such that mitda and emme “belong” to the multiple Mitdasein. They of course are multiples themselves, so the set is always a set of multiples. I don't call the set by my real name, but by Mitdasein, because Mitdasein intimates the shared being we have together. As Master, I am of course Mitdasein, but they are integral to my Mitdasein as those with whom I share the Da, the “there”, the World.

Mastery vom Ereignis

To situate means to place, to put in it's (own) place. M/s situates both the Master and slave by placing them in their appropriate places relative to one another. My slaves are slaves in relation to me, not to anyone else. There is no expectation, other than general politeness, for them to act slavely to anyone else. By the same token I have no expectation of being a Master to anyone else. By enslaving them they have enowned me (enabled to own) and in a strong sense we are enowned over to each other. Via Mastery of philosophy Heidegger was able to write “vom Ereignis” or “from Enowning”, I can also write “vom Ereignis” through the deference shown me by mitda and emmie, but my Mastery is limited to their persons.

Feeling Blah thought Things Are GOOD

I've been really fighting a bad mood today. No really, I have been trying to be reasonably cheerful when every little thing is a monstrouis irritation. I've taken Ativan to no avail, put on relaxing music, even had a bath; nothing seems to be helping. The kidlet is a huge and near constant source of annoyance for me. I think because he watches so much TV or plays video games he thinks he needs a soundtrack of his life to go with whatever he's doing. So he babbles, sings off pitch and asks annoying questions constantly. Of course he's only 9 and has his issues. But I find myself wishing sometimes he has the autistic trait of being non-verbal, rather than overwhelmingly verbal as he currently is :).

Things aren't going so badly though really. House Daedalus has dealt with what seemed an insurmountable debt crisis by simply working out better terms with creditors (thank Luc and emmie for that), and we managed to scrounge enough cash from family to be solvent until I get a paycheque. With all that relief there maybe came a let down of adrenaline leading to this miserable mood.

Earth and World of the Master

Every site has its share of covering/protecting/hiding (Earth) and uncovering/revealing/showing (World). The M/s situation takes its part of both the nurturing and protecting and the uncovering and revealing that is the shared World of Master and slave. The Master's gesture in covering and protecting simultaneously leaves the slave safe to uncover his/her self and show his/her truth to the Master.

Narcissism, BPD, Bipolar, Mastery and Slavery

"and the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder came up. These include "has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations"".

This quote is from a well thought out post by Tanos on Entitlement, posted in his weblog and linked from the ownership wiki on The Slave Register

I lived with someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Looking back on it he had a somewhat D/s relationship with his lover, who had obvious Borderline traits. However there was no sense of mastery in his actions, attitudes, etc., merely entitlement without responsibility. Looking at my own behaviour I do, of course, act entitled, while at the same time discouraging such acting in my slaves. But I have a sense of responsibility and a dedication to them and their lives that is simply lacking from the purview of someone with NPD. I will and do take risks, including the risk of simply being an overt Master in a country where human ownership, consensual or not, is simply illegal. And that is a minor one given all the things in our lives.

A couple in our local scene are an obvious NPD/BPD couple, and the two tend to go together. While he seems to take reasonable care of his charge I feel a sense of creeping unease in their presence. Although emmie and mitda (and I myself) have all been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder 1 it doesn't seem to have any direct bearing on our M/s relationship. Obviously my moods and theirs impact the day to day functioning of that relationship but I can't say I see an overall tendency that runs from BP symptomology to M/s dealings.

Migraine

This afternoon I came down with a severe migraine. I've had to get up as laying down sent the blood to my head and made the pain all that much more intense. I feel like I've taken a bullet to the head although that might hurt less.

The girls have gone to fetch some Amerge from the drug store, fortunately enough one of them has a prescription for it. So I'm waiting while they make the 15 mile trek to the drug store and back. Damn I hate migraines, I don't know how I survived my 20's and early 30's when I had a near-constant migraine for about 11 years.

Being and Time; and Place?

I am currently reading a book by the name of “Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World”. Why topology when Heidegger's most famous book is “Being and Time”? Heidegger's notion of Being and his notions on philosophy imply a certain situatedness and site, and he was certainly aware of Jasper's work on the limit-situation, having been the first reviewer of “The Psychology of Worldviews”. I will post more on this topic and how it relates to the M/s situation as I assimilate the ideas therein with the work on the mathematical topology of Being by Alain Badiou.

Master as Proxy to the Void

What does the Master, as the State of the M/s Situation, accomplish for the slave? In essence the Master keeps the Void at bay and serves as the point of Being for the slave by proxy. For the slave this results in lessened anxiety that more than makes up for the anxiety generated by the loss of freedoms (see the Reactance essay on Tanos' Ownership WIKI).

The Situation and State of Absolute Enslavement

The situation in Absolute Enslavement is that of a limit-situation, but in a sense every situation is a limit-situation, though this is not always transparent to those within the situation. In a transparent limit-situation something of the Absolute comes to the fore. It is my contention that the Absolute is that which partakes of the always excessive-to the-situation, or the Void.

Firstly the Void is not the classical physics notion of “Space”. Unformed matter, as Aristotle pointed out correctly, would be indistinguishable from such a concept of Void. Matter is formed space, as the fundamental particles of matter have no mass, and space has a “fabric” that can be distorted into form.

The Void, then, is punctual (there is a proof of this in the ZF system of set theory but I'll leave that alone for now). This point is, in itself, the point of Being, that is always in excess of any given situation. This is the Void, the unpresentable, the unnatural, the source of terror to any given Situation, that is hidden away by the situation's reduplication in the State.

The Site of the Situation is the proper place for some “thing”. Each situation has a “point of Being” that in a hidden way structures the Situation and makes it appropriate or proper for that particular being, yet always remains excessive to the Situation and therefore the point of that Situations finitude and destructibility.

Site and Situation come from the Latin Sitere, which also means to let, permit. “What is permitted” is what is appropriate to the situation. The State of the situation then is what is expressly permitted, while the Situation is the extent of the real possibilities inherent in it. In the M/s situation what is expressly permitted is up to the Master, and is made explicit in the slave's ongoing training. In this sense the Master is the State. In large part, then, the slave has to follow the Master's directions, however there are always things extant in the situation that are excrescent or singular to the State.

The Absolute Enslavement WIKI

It interestes me that topoi.net is a site dedicated to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I'm not altogether familiar with Lacan's work although I know some of his work in the specific area of mathematical topology rather than psychotherapy. It might be an interesting thread for me to follow in the future and perhaps a way of bridging the ontological (specifically, the topology of Being) tendency at work in my writings on Absolute Enslavement and the psychological theories that underlie the writings on Internal Enslavement by Tanos in the UK.

Not that Tanos needs any assistance, lol, although I'm sure he has more traffic for The Slave Register boards than for the Ownership WIKI, the Ownership WIKI remains one of the few internally consistent set of writings on M/s available on the net, and I am highly indebted to it.

There are those malcontents, of course, like myself, who are looking for a less psychological and more philosophical view of M/s. And for those people I set up the Absolute Enslavement WIKI. Have a drop by sometime and take a look around, maybe even add something or correct something I've written. It's open to the public and the M/s public can write, correct, or dispute anything in it. While it gets a good amount of regular traffic and those that do visit linger a while, nobody has so far delurked to add their $0.02 on what the various terms used in M/s really mean.

Mitdasein

Stories and Place

I came across a couple of great quotes the other day from a book I've read a number of times, but lost somewhere in my travels. The book is called “The Pound Era” by a certain Hugh Kenner and is a work of literary criticism focussed on the modernist writers Pound, Lewis, Eliot and Joyce. “That people live in stories that structure their lives”, and that “they contain the stories people tell themselves.”.

The closer the story one tells oneself comes to how one “is” at root, the closer one is to one's appropriate place. By place here I mean it in Aristotle's sense, as the goal of movement, and also in the topological sense that Heidegger uses it ( Topos = Place). As we move in and out of subcultures our personality, the effulgence of the stories we tell ourselves, morphs topologically as we feel more or less “in place”, more or less appropriate.

Is M/s a fiction then, a story emmie and mitda and I tell ourselves? Yes, but no more so than any other lifestyle that others engage in, whether their fiction is to be a politician or a cop or a mother. It is in finding the appropriate place that we appropriate each other and come to share a World.

Unlimited Responsibility and the Discourse of Mastery

I have been reading Derrida and others on the dangers of a “Discourse of Mastery”. The (vom Ereignis) in the subtitle of Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, pointing to the author as “enowned”, is of course a subtle indication that it contains a discourse of Mastery, and in fact Mastery comes up quite often within the text. As has been pointed out by Derrida, a discourse of Mastery implies “unlimited responsibility”, and while I do not think this is defensible in a horizontal manner (my responsibility for my cat doesn't imply responsibility for all cats) it seems to me appropriate that it imply an unlimited responsibility to the cat I in fact own (assuming I owned a cat, which I don't).

What does this do for human ownership? It means I have unlimited responsibility for the people who are consensually enslaved to me, through their enowning (enabling to own). Working this out in practice is always a situational, ethical problem, but it's one a Master cannot shirk or shy away from.

Code of A Herdsman

The Code of a Herdsman by Wyndham Lewis

Lewis was an 'avant-garde' all by himself, the greatest pictorial draughtsman of his time, the most controversial prose stylist of our day. Marshall McLuhan

1 N ever maltreat your own intelligence with parables. It is a method of herd hypnotism. Do not send yourself to sleep with the rhythm of the passes that you make. =As an example of herd-hypnotism, German literature is so virulently allegorized that the German never knows whether he is a Kangaroo, a Scythian, or his own sweet self. =You however are a herdsman. That is surely Parable enough.

2 D o not admit cleverness , in any form, into your life. Observe the accomplishment of some people's signatures! It is the herd-touch.

3 E xploit Stupidity. =Introduce a flatness, where it is required into your commerce. Dull your eye as you affix it on a dull face. =Why do you think George Borrow used such idiotic clichés as ''The beams of the descending luminary — ?'' He was a great writer and knew what he was doing. =Mock the herd perpetually with the grimace of its own garrulity or deadness. If it gets out of hand and stampedes towards you, leap onto the sea of mangy backs until the sea is still. That is: cast your mask aside, and spring above them. They cannot see or touch anything above them: they have never realized that their backs — or rather their tops — exist! They will think that you have vanished into Heaven.

4

A s to language: eschew all clichés implying a herd personality. Never allow such terms as Top-Hole, Priceless, or Doggo to pass your lips. Go to the Dictionary if you want an epithet. If you feel eloquent, use that moment to produce a cliché of your own. Cherish your personal vocabulary, however small it is. Use your own epithet as though it were used by a whole nation, if people would have no good reason for otherwise accepting it. Examples of personal epithets:
		That man is abysmal. That is an abysmal book.
						It was prestigious! Here comes that sinister bird!		Borrowed from the French
											He is a sinister card . (Combination of French and 1890 Slang) He has a great deal of sperm . I like a fellow with as much sperm as that.
B orrow from all sides mannerisms or callings or classes to enrich your personal bastion of language. Borrow from the pulpit, from the clattering harangue of the auctioneer, the lawyer's technicality, the pomposity of the politicians. =Borrow grunts from the fisherman, solecisms from the inhabitants of Merioneth. =''He is a preux, ah, yes-a-preux!'' You can say ''ah-yes-a-preux'' as though it were one word, accent on the ''yes.''

5 I n accusing yourself, stick to the Code of the Mountain. But crime is alien to a Herdsman's nature.

6 Y ourself must be your Caste.

7 C herish and develop, side by side, your six most constant indications of different personalities. You will then acquire the potentiality of six men. Leave your front door one day as B; the next march down the street as E. A variety of clothes, hats especially, are of help in this wider dramatization of yourself. Never fall into the vulgarity of being or assuming yourself to be one ego. Each trench must have another one behind it. Each single self — that you manage to be at any given time — must have five at least indifferent to it. You must have a power of indifference of five to one . All the greatest actions in the world have been five parts out of six impersonal in the impulse of their origin. To follow this principle you need only cultivate your memory. You will avoid being the blind man of any moment. B will see what is hidden to D. =(Who were Turgenev's ''Six Unknown''? Himself .)

8 N ever lie. You cannot be too fastidious about the truth. If you must lie, at least see that you lie so badly that it would not deceive a pea hen. — The world is, however, full of pea hens.

9 S pend some of your spare time every day in hunting your weaknesses, caught from commerce with the herd, as methodically, solemnly and vindictively as a monkey his fleas. You will find yourself swarming with them while you are surrounded by humanity. But you must not bring them up on the mountain. =If you can get another man to assist you — one, that is, honest enough not to pass his own on to you — that is a good arrangement.

Lewis is the most fascinating personality of our time . . . the most distinguished living novelist. T. S. Eliot

10 D o not play with political notions, aristocratisms or the reverse, for that is a compromise with the herd. Do not allow yourself to imagine ''a fine herd though still a herd.'' There is no fine herd . The cattle that call themselves ''gentlemen'' you will observe to be a little cleaner. It is merely cunning and produced with a product called soap . But you will find no serious difference between them and those vast dismal herds they avoid. Some of them are very dangerous and treacherous. =Be on your guard with the small herd of gentlemen!

11 Y ou will meet with this pitfall: at moments, surrounded by the multitude of unsatisfactory replicas, you will grow confused by a similarity bringing them so near to us. =You will reason, where, from some point of view, the difference is so slight, whether that delicate margin is of the immense importance that we hold it to be: the only thing of importance in fact. =That group of men talking by the fire in your club (you will still remain a member of your club), that party at the theatre, look good enough, you will say. Their skins are fresh, they are well-made, their manners are good. You must then consider what they really are. On closer inspection you know , from unpleasant experience, that they are nothing but limitations and vulgarities of the most irritating description. The devil Nature has painted these sepulchres pink, and covered them with a blasphemous Bond Street distinction. Matter that has not sufficient mind to permeate it grows, as you know, gangrenous and rotten. Animal high spirits, a little but easily exhausted, goodness, is all that they can claim. W hat seduced you from your severity for a moment was the same thing as a dull woman's good-looks. =This is probably what you will have in front of you. =On the other hand, everywhere you will find a few people, who, although not a mountain people are not herd. =They may be herdsmen gone mad through contact with the herd, and strayed: or through inadequate energy for our task they may be found there: or they may be a hybrid, or they may even be herdsmen temporarily bored with the mountain. (I have a pipe below myself sometimes.) T here are numerous ''other denominations.'' Treat them as brothers. Employ them, as opportunity offers, as auxiliaries in your duties. Their society and help will render your task less arduous.

12 A s to women: wherever you can, substitute the society of men. =Treat them kindly, for they suffer from the herd, although of it, and have many of the same contempts as yourself. They are a sort of bastard mountain people. =There must be somewhere a female mountain, a sort of mirage-mountain. I should like to visit it. =But women, and the processes for which they exist, are the arch conjuring trick: and they have the cheap mystery and a good deal of the slipperiness, of the conjuror. =Sodomy should be avoided, as far as possible. It tends to add to the abominable confusion already existing.

13 W herever you meet a shyness that comes out of solitude, (although all solitude is not anti -herd) naiveness, and a patent absence of contamination, the sweetness of mountain water, any of the signs of goodness, you must treat that as sacred, as portions of the mountain. However much you suffer for it, you must defend and exalt it. On the other hand, every child is not simple, and every woman is not weak. =In many cases to champion a female would be like springing to the rescue of a rhinoceros when you notice that it had been attacked by a flea. Chivalrous manners, again, with many women are like tiptoeing into a shed where an ox is sleeping. =Some children, too, rival in nastiness their parents. But you have your orders in this matter. Indifference where there should be nothing but the 'whole' eagerness or compunction of your being, is the worst crime in the mountain's eyes.

14 C onquests have usually been divided from their antitheses, and defeats from conquests, by some casual event. Had Moscow not possessed a governor ready to burn the Kremlin and the hundreds pf palaces accumulated there, peace would have been signed by the Czar at Bonaparte's entrance. =Had the Llascans persevered for ten days against Cortés, the Aztecs would never have been troubled. Yet Montezuma was right to remain inactive, paralyzed by prophecy. Napoleon was right when he felt that his star was at last a useless one. He had drained it of all its astonishing effulgence. =The hair's breadth is only the virtuosity of Fate, guiding you along imaginary precipices. =And all the detail is make-believe, anyway. Watch your star soberly and without comment. Do not trouble about the paste-board cliffs!

15 T here are very stringent regulations about the herd keeping off the sides of the mountain. In fact your chief function is to prevent their encroaching. Some, in moments of boredom or vindictiveness, are apt to make rushes for the higher regions. Their instinct fortunately always keeps them in crowds or bands, and their trespassing is soon noticed. Those traps and numerous devices you have seen on the edge of the plain are for use, of course, in the last resort. Do not apply them prematurely. =Not very many herdsmen lose their lives in dealing with the herds.

16 C ontradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.

17 T he teacher does not have to be , although he has to know : he is the mind imagining, not the executant. The executant, the young svelte, miraculous athlete, the strapping virtuoso, really has to give the illusion of perfection. =Do not expect me to keep in sufficiently good training to perform the feats I recommend. =I usually remain up on the mountain.

18 A bove all this sad commerce with the herd, let something veritably remain ''un peu sur la montagne.'' Always come down with masks and thick clothing to the valley where we work. Stagnant gasses from these Yahooesque and rotten herds are more dangerous often than the wandering cylinders that emit them. See you are not caught in them without your mask. =But once returned to our adorable height, forget your sallow task: with great freedom indulge your love. =The terrible processions beneath are not of our making, and are without our pity. Our sacred hill is a volcanic heaven. But the result of its violence is peace. =The unfortunate surge below, even, has moments of peace.

Wyndham Lewis, 1914    

Text re-edited in 1977 by Alan Munton. © 1977 Anne Wyndham Lewis.

Meanderings

Today was a frustrating day dealing with bureaucracy. Fortunately I was kept buoyed up by mitda's current euthymia (general mood of well being) and the road trip we had to take to file some paperwork was much easier with her company.

I have decided to put more effort into the Masters' Workhaus group (see sidebar on left for info) and also on a local group called Explorations, where a group of local M/s practitioners get together with specific exercises in mind. The next planned event is a protocol dinner with post dinner erotic entertainment by the slaves. While emmie plans to dance for the group mitda is looking at an erotic reading.

I was sad to find out that the person who penned Married Man's Fucktoy has deleted her blog without explanation, obviously anything personal could happen that would lead to such an action, but it would have been nice to know the reason, and nicer for it to not have happened.

Catching Up

I have been rather remiss at blogging lately, what with the holidays, dealing with bureaucracy and switching jobs. We have been semi-active in the local scene, attending a play party last night, although we didn't actually play at the party. The party was alright but rather crowded and wasn't conducive to a playful feeling for me, we stayed a while and had a few interesting conversations but were headed home by midnight.

It has been a bit of a difficult week for emmie. Between bouts of insecurity and paranoia she has just generally been in a deep depression. She sees the pdoc this week but in the meantime she is upping her Risperdal a little and dropping the Paxil, which seems if anything to have brought her down rather than pushing her up moodwise.

The kid-who-is-18 left January 1 for the army. E. has heard from him once since then, basic training is a busy time. While I like the kid and hope to God that nothing untoward happens to him in the military, it is a relief to get the extra room back and be able to spread out a bit in the house.

I also, through a social networking site, regained contact with a number of people I haven't seen in over 20 years. Most seem to be doing fairly well, which is nice to see, and one of them fronts a band that will be touring the US this winter, so I will be able to catch up with her at the gig in Austin. Ironically she lives in Los Angeles not far from mitda's residence when we first met.