And by my husband no less...
You see the painting I'm currently working on is a monochrome, meaning using just one color. Monochromes can be made with any hue, but this one, like most, is black and white.
Only like all art there is a bit of wiggle room in the definition.
So hubby was very surprised the other day to see me squeeze a drop or two of cadmium red into a batch of black I was mixing.
"Color?" he asked a bit disdainfully.
"Yes," I said with a cool look as I went back to stirring the paint.
"Well, but..."he paused a moment. "Are you really supposed to do that?" Mind you this is coming from a man who has never held a paintbrush in his life. I suddenly found myself slightly annoyed.
"As far as I know, nothing in the history of art forbids it."
His mouth worked back and forth in that way it does when he thinks I've suddenly been short with him for no reason.
"O-kay," he said, still sounding a bit skeptical. I held my breath, counted to three and opted to teach rather than yell.
"The color won't show, it just changes the shades of the greys slightly to give them a little more variation. Technically, it's still a monochrome."
"Oh, I didn't know you could do that."
No comment. I've found it sometimes takes another artist to understand the thoughts of an artist.
I was still annoyed, though. After all it's my painting and even if I was breaking some sacrosanct rule of art, it was mine to break. One of the key lessons of art is learning how not to let left brained ideas of what "should be" get in the way of what can be. If you do that you straight jacket yourself and many beautiful ideas never get borne.
Thinking about it a few days later, I've suddenly realized the same lesson can be applied to life in general and more specifically to kink.
Early on, pc had some definite ideas about how our interaction "should" be. I had a few of my own, but as I'd just found myself in whole new territory (going from spanking in my primary relationships to spanking someone outside a romantic context) I was a little more open to various possibilities. Many times when life's obstacles seemed overwhelming and insurmountable he found it just wasn't possible to live up to his ideas of what a submissive "should be". Usually when this was the case he'd decide if he could only do it half way (or sometimes not even half) he'd rather not do it at all and walked away.
Eventually things calmed down and he's always come around, but the times in between have be rougher than necessary on the both of us. (If anyone is wondering, yes, this is part of how he got his name.)
These days much as changed. Some of these changes were natural with the course of time: he's matured some and I've relaxed some. Other changes we deliberately made happen, such as a new location for both of us that made getting together easier. (Done for practical reasons on both ends but it did make our goings on more feasible.)
Mainly though, we learned to remember that nothing in this life is truly permanent and how to ride out those occasional storms until life calmed down again.
It's an important fact to remember.
Ms. Betty
