| | I would ask your forgiveness for my feeble attempt at humor. Let's just say I am an ignorant simpleton when it comes to this kind of lifestyle that you have so openly and honestly offered a glipse of. I do apologize and once again thank you for your candor. Very well, I thank you for an apology, and you need not humble yourself... Besides, I don't consider humility a virtue, and by preference I'm myself a submissive, so I've no wish to play dominatrix in this affair.
So now, let me answer you earlier queries:
As enticing as your offer might be I must respectfully decline. I do appreciate your candor though and applaud you for it. Since you are familiar with my God yet choose to follow another I would ask you a question that I'm not often afforded the opportunity. Are you truly, willingly offering your soul for the pleasures of the moment or are you decieved into believing that your rebellion will come without a cost? This isn't a trick question, I'm truly curious. Msr. Campbell,
let me try to answer this as concisely as I might.
1) In the strict sense, I'm not rebelling against your God or any other; I live by my own best reason and passion, will and experience, as to how I think I fill find personal joy. I don't accept your God's morality as a commandment to humanity, and consider the Christian ethic as developed by Paul and Augustine and others a monstrous crime against the human spirit and its compositions; I believe this life is rightly a place for laughter, and 'tis no crime to follow one's desire, and no sin to follow one's unbridled reason and imagination to find our own particular expressions of that laughter in life. I have no regard for Christianity's commandments of faith, of original sin, of shame and guilt and repentance; I reject the world-picture that divinity is spirit against our body and nature but rather believe that divinity is a name and a sight, a crystalization of spirit with which our bodies are whole. I believe this earthly and worldly existence in color should be our wonder and mirror's smile; we are born innocent and stand untainted upon this world. Sexuality, specifically, is something we should respect and cherish for its own sake, not sacrifice to duty in marriage and morality under confining white skies. I find the teachings of Christianity neither rational, nor benevolent, nor just. I don't essentially revolt against your beliefs; I do not share them in my soul in the first place, and I disregard them as foreign falsehoods.
I have some more regard for the Jesus of the gospels, whose message I reject as universal, but whose spiritual path and perspective in life I do not reject as a possible spirituality per se; like Nietzsche, I see nobility in the life of Jesus but not in the religion founded upon that life. We Pagan escorts often have a kind of soft spot for Jesus himself; there's a theo/alogy about that which goes back always and I doubt you'd like much; I'll just say a lot of escorts roll treat Jesus much as part of the family, with rolled eyes and lots of smiles. Nevertheless, whatever true spiritual experiences Christianity may embody are not my own path, either chosen or as an expression of my peculiar desires and stories in life. I have no wish to follow your God and nothing close to my heart which draws me to the Christian scriptures.
2) However, if we mean the institutions of your God are represented in the institutions and laws of this society, I jolly well do revolt against them... with full pride in it. The construction of society represented by your God the Father has no right to drive out and force to shame those who refuse His morality's demand for repression and guilt in sexual life. I revolt to the bottom of my soul your God's campaign to silence, discredit, marginalize, and shame this Life which I love. Tho' that Life has persisted despite thousands of years of persecution by patriarchs and Christians, and still remains its own culture as it did under Justinian's Byzantium, that persecution has cost the lives and happinesses of untold and unknown numbers of my sisters (and brothers) and has made ugly the society in which we must live. There is nothing inherently degrading about this Life- I do not experience myself as degraded- but there is degradation in being chased by the law, living in fear of landlords, having to lie and evade for one's own safety and walking armed and dealing with those whom I'd wish not because the law persecutes and does not protect us. Because of your society's marginalization, most of us expect to be arrested at least once, most of us expect to be raped, eventually, because we know the law would rather target an escort practicing her work in peace and harming none than a violent criminal. That, I do revolt against- the violence of a morality that decries human beauty and its expression in this world. I consider the sunset of the courtesan an evil as were the Christian burnings of the libraries of Rome and Alexandria and the closing of the schools of philosophy. I hope to see the day in which she returns.
So yes, here I revolt against your God's nightmare reign of cruelty, which I see far above my own concerns an eerie and hostile shadow putting all its world in invisible darkness. Life belongs to humanity- belongs to the living- we are not rooted in some essence to which as creatures we owe existence. We are creators- not creatures except as we remake ourselves- and the world is rightfully ours. Your God can keep his morality, laws, and hands off my body and spirit and get the fuck out of my house.
3) Do I think my rebellion will come without a cost? That is a complex question. As your morality sets the tone of our society, there will very definitely be an unnecessary cost- one I am willing to pay for my freedom and love of my profession, but one I will pay nonetheless. But that is not due to the nature of my life and no weight in itself. Beyond this, I will pay one price paid by all professions which demand we place our spirits in them- the path of life that is taken as a serious vocation changes oneself- whether that vocation is soldiering or statescraft or philosophy. In that sense, a Price will be paid, both by the the state of mind my Life engenders sets me apart from society, and by the nature of my work, which requires a very personal transformation in the changing of persons. We escorts are well aware of such a Price as a culture and I do not advise anyone join this Life without being willing and indeed yearning and desiring to live as an exotic person whose mind and style in living will always be estranged. Escorting taken seriously is about role-playing regarded in mind's frame as a serious art, and role-playing what becomes continuously from moment to moment is a dangerous game that can shatter and break a life. But it is a life in fascination; it is worth it.
4) So do I offer my soul? I have certainly dedicated myself to my vocation is life, and as the Life for me as a spiritual pursuit quite traditionally under the names of a goddess I think it is true that I have offered my soul. Which I do not regret. I've desired to be tatooed in my face to symbolize this- it is a long tradition among some types of sex workers- I should be tatooed was at this moment, but many things went wrong yesterday when I should have been marked according to my station. I am a Pagan, and tho' Pagans see spirituality as a function of a concretized abstraction, and tho' my spirituality sees human yearnings not moral law the essence of spiritual life, we do under different understanding dedicate ourselves, and if you wish our souls, to our particular gods. What price should I pay for this? I live life to the fullest, and make use of abstraction and visualization, symbolism and history, for and as part of this life I have chosen. 'Tis no price I expect to pay in this- save for that demanded unjustly by the world and by the nature of that which this life demands. If you speak of final things, I have no decided stance on eschatology; I am no convinced secularist that an afterlife is impossible, but I have no clear certainty or knowledge on what beyond might exist, if there be one. Christian Heaven and Hell are not among the possibilities I find worthy of entertaining as they offend both my moral sense and my reason. My spiritual traditions emphasize alternately reincarnation or salvation by knowledge, but I find neither ultimately convincing,
And it is not short term pleasure I pursue only. Rather I pursue a total life that will make pleasure in this and each short term possible, which will make my life a narrative, an adventure, and a dream- and one which climbs by pleasures enjoyed rather than pleasures deferred. For this I do not expect pain, but to love life. And yes, for this, I would give my soul. What else is a soul good for?
my regards
Forgive me if I cannot sign at this moment; 'tis a personal matter not tied to you and 'tis no meant offense.
(Edited by Jeanine Ring on 12/15, 11:56pm)
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