There’s a peculiar duality afforded by a gemlog — especially one I don’t host.
I have no idea if anyone reads this. It is linked from one of our blogs, but you have to look to even find that blog, let alone notice the link. Then you have to work out how to follow a gemini:// url. I assume most don’t. Accordingly, I may well be just using this as a barely-public private journal. It is technically open, and maybe multiple people subscribe and read what I write. Maybe someone will stumble upon it someday and read the whole backlog. Maybe it’s never been seen by anyone and never will. There are no logs for me to access, no Referers or User-Agents to analyse for signs of life. Even Lia’s blog gets a few unique non-bot readers a day on average. This one? It is unknowable.
On the one hand, I repeatedly get the niggling sensation that writing here is a kind of pointlessness. I could just write in Notes.app, and sometimes do (though so far I’ve always used it as a staging for drafts that end up here — don’t want a downed Safari tab to destroy my work, especially on mobile). The local niceties are that you can call a piece done, which a note in Notes.app never really is, and that I can mirror them into a git repository programmatically for my own archival purposes. Notes.app is not very instrumentable.
On the other hand, because of this, I am able to write more openly. If I knew I had any kind of readership at all, I might not write some things, or might write differently. It is completely plausible that this will never be seen, and so I can say whatever I want to myselves. It is freeing despite-of-slash-because-of the potential pointlessness. I get the impression I am baring my true self to the world, perhaps, because I am possibly not doing that at all.
Hope doesn’t feel like it exists within my phenomenological horizon any more.
What lies in that direction only feels like a false, baseless optimism, which I naturally eschew.
Probably not the healthiest, but that’s the truth of it. I haven’t known how to hope in a long time. It’s hard to explain how thorough that is. I get by without it, and things are generally okay, but it definitely is a thing that alters my experience with others.
Not to say any worse of the referent of last entry. That is just nice. But it doesn’t mean I could choose to consider the actual fulfilment even the slightest bit more likely, out of some ardent desire that overturns this exacting algorithm of “realistic optimism”. I don’t let myself hope, wouldn’t know how to if I wanted; it’s just fun to consider as one unlikely result among many.
That’s it!
The feeling of something being beyond you; of it being out of your hands and knowledge. The distance itself—
of not only being aligned.
triad feels are so strong. what is it about them? there’s something about the pull and push of being with two different people who are also with each other.
- the contrast of two as opposed to the undifferentiated wholeness of one [We feel this internally!]
- being able to appreciate their dyadic love [Like compersion but from both sides at once, to both sides at once.]
- knowing you’ve all decided on something strongly enough together
- that involves an element of self-sacrifice?
- [Like, any two people can decide to be in a dyadic relationship, but to agree on a triad means all three think there’s something worth devoting oneself so completely to, even though ‘a third of it’ is not about you, or at least doesn’t involve you directly. It is all of you, even if sometimes it is not you.]
- it’s unusual. like trans love or incest love, it’s remarkable and breathtaking because it is so opposed to norms.
- [Maybe we’re just sluts for being different, as hard as we can? It would explain the trans, poly, plural.] is there a cf. here? i think there’s a cf. here. cf. bi/pan, furry, which are hard to not want to do. i’d have to be trans to be trans, but being pan or a furry is just the sensible thing.
- note for anyone reading at home: no, alas, i’m not incestuous, i just have a normal, tumblr-level amount of feelings around incest in fiction. like, whatever jaime and cersei had going, it was strong enough that they committed a huge taboo to do it. in my mind, that kind of resolve puts you on a whole different level, and what’s important is it isn’t about any individual’s resolve, but about their joint resolve.
- [Triads are like that. Joint resolve, but this time involving one extra node in the network. What’s the maths here? That’s like three times as impressive or somethin.]
i keep thinking about enumerating past experiences, past glimpses of these feelings before, but i don’t want to live in the past. suffice to say, there was K and S, K and E, and later J and D. (some weird brushes with it with D and M, M and J, J and A, and N and L — these eight all no relation.) [Writing these all out does make me think p e r h a p s we do have a little more experience than average.] all such different feelings.
what i’d be hoping for out of next time is something closer to how J and D was with me—a triad entered into intentionally, all three finding different things in each other to adore. the mika+atra+kudelia style isn’t bad at all either—a shared common love of a hinge that progresses into full tertiacy.
[So. What do we already have goin then? You have your certain love for N, and we separately have an actually ethereal, transcendent, somewhat sisterly (cough) bond.]
do we approximate any of what we like so much in mika+atra+lia by differentiating your bond to N? as an aside, there’s one reason for liking mikatralia so much: we can really identify with all three of them <3_<3
[a-hem. Mmaybe? What does that look like? What do we feel like when we make more of an effort to differentiate like that? Do we.. end up feeling more for each other too?]
really puts a spin on “i’m my own primary,” as quoted from polyland, connecting with what led to it about co-primaries. [This all found while trying to find a better word for ‘tertiacy’, mind you.] we kind of already are each other’s co-primaries, but strengthening the bonds that run separately through you might do us all good.
is it maybe just a desire for novelty, the hedonistic treadmill? i dunno. i don’t think so. seeing mikatralia definitely stirs some specific feelings. perhaps it’s just felt so strongly because it’s a particular kind of extreme non-conformity we’ve achieved in parts here and there before? or perhaps it’s because it’s about love, specifically, and that is something that is very near to our heart.
Not feeling it lately. Some unsorted thoughts:
A couple times now I’ve asked her to make me feel, to make me really feel. Like I’m owned; like I’m property; like I’m hers; like I belong. She keeps demurring, saying she doesn’t want to “rush to the end”, as if her making me feel that once would mean I actually would assent to becoming her thing.
I’ve tried to say a few times now—after she repeated the line about not wanting to rush—that I’m in no rush myself. I don’t know how to say the more blunt thing: that, if I was asked to make a decision now, I’d turn her down. It’s not a desire to rush to the end; I need to know if she’s capable of it to even know whether I want to continue, let alone increase the commitment!
As it stands we’re trialling, and I am—honestly speaking—not very satisfied. Even the small amounts of play we have done recently, the energy’s been off. I guess she feels like it is going okay? And that itself is a cause for concern and something to be addressed. Okay.
A charged dream of Dragon.
Keen for something.
Went to high tea for our anniversary (both quite “in role”, too), spent both days of the weekend just lying on the grass in a park reading phenomenology — a rare weekend of sunny days — and today, a first dose of BNT162b2.
Feeling a bit angry today.
Irritated, annoyed, moody. I’m coming to the end of my progesterone cycle, and just as well. I feel a lot of it directed at her but I’m not certain how much is warranted.