Bossy

Bossy:
adj. boss·i·er, boss·i·est
Given to ordering others around; domineering.

Boss:
n.
a. An employer or a supervisor.
b. One who makes decisions or exercises authority.

v.tr.
1. To supervise or control. See Synonyms at supervise.
2. To give orders to, especially in an arrogant or domineering manner: bossing us around.

v.intr.
To be or act as a supervisor or controlling element.

In the dictionary of my youth I swear next to ‘bossy’ would have been “like a boss” or “to behave like a boss” and then I’d have to raise my finger up to the entry for ‘boss’ too. This is how I learned there’s a real difference between being “like something” and “being something”.

My wife has said before she doesn’t want “to be in charge” of our relationship or really “in charge of” anything, in large part I think because “being in charge” has connotations for her of a “management-employee” dynamic and/or of “force and obedience” that she doesn’t quite want to have in a partnership/team of equals.

What she does say, and what she sticks to hell-n-high-water, is that she’s ‘bossy’, that she happens to have a lot of things she wants done and done her way. Yes of course, with my often ambivalent and always uxorious personality, in a real sense she rather ends up the de facto ‘boss’ who’s “in charge” anyway.

But if I asked in my last post, Does my wife want a “female led relationship” or does she just want to have what she wants?, and pointed out how at some level these different things, correspondingly ‘boss’ and ‘bossy’, are de facto, “in practical effect”, the same thing - in this post I’m pointing out these similar things are also different on another, different level – a level that’s important to my wife, a level where she preserves her interior sense of self, character, principles and personality.

For if she can be said to ”be in charge” only in a de facto way due to me and my uxory, only because I am constantly choosing for her being in charge in this de facto manner, then she can thus be ‘bossy‘ and make decisions without being ‘domineering‘, i.e. arrogant, tyrannical, imperious – and safely avoid any “domineering-henpecked” dynamic.

Domineering:
adj
acting with or showing arrogance or tyranny; imperious

 

Story Wordlets

I have updated the info on the About the Stories page and as suggested and promised added word clouds for most of the  stories.

As I played around with the ‘wordlets’ far too much over the past few days I discovered the only color scheme I liked conveniently and unsurprisingly goes with the the blog’s scheme, and the font I picked reminds me somewhat of my favorite font, Garamond. But I think the truly nice thing about having these variables remain static is that it allows one to really compare the content among the story wordlets.

The wordlet for Differently Beautiful (story/wordlet) is probably my favorite; its “Woman, Getting, Wanted, Beautiful” shows how word clouds have a tendency toward a sort of visual poetry.

More interestingly the wordlet for The Incoming Class (story/wordlet) I think quite reveals the intended ambiguity: Never, Ever, Seemed, Nothing, Something, Everyone, Nearly.

In the stories where I’ve clearly used the word ‘just’ far too much it’s hard for me to notice anything else about their wordlets.
~ Mr. Uxory (story/wordlet)
~ Cosmic Bump (story/wordlet)
~ the erotic Forty Years (story/wordlet)

But in the wordlet for Exposure (story/wordlet), look for the long hyphenated sentence ‘growl-whispered’ by the man humorously appear as one word. My favorite thing here is the ‘Ma’am, Yes’ but there’s also ‘Just, Shower, Naked’ and a few other strings of words thrown humorously together.

Adore: Sacred or Sacrilege

“I (positively) adore you.” I say it all the time. Just last night when I said this my wife replied, “Good - I like being adored” and I felt a wonderful sense of completion — a sense of completion sadly broken a moment later when I started thinking about exactly what the word meant. (Didn’t someone somewhere once say you can think or be happy but not both?)

Like most words, its meaning can be slippery and depends on context, intent and people’s general predisposition. I’m reminded of the word ‘submissive’ and how some people dislike and object to the meek/weak/less than/servile/’sub-human’ connotations on principles of equality – occasionally even voicing distaste for the implied superiority as well. Yet other people, Shadowlady not least among them, defend the word for the connotations of choice, of an offering or proposal, even of an application, and see it’s principle of choice and of difference working together.

By and large to these sorts of preferences I simply say different strokes, different people, different meanings, intentions etc. Yet similarly I think there’s something interesting behind the principles with the word ‘adore’.

From Dictionary.com Unabridged: verb, a·dored, a·dor·ing.

–verb (used with object)
1.  to regard with the utmost esteem, love, and respect; honor.
[World English Dictionary: to love intensely or deeply]
2.  to pay divine honor to; worship: to adore god.
3.  to like or admire very much: I simply adore the way your hair is done!

–verb (used without object)

4.  to worship.

—Origin:
1275–1325; < L adōrāre  to speak to, pray, worship, equiv. to ad- ad- + ōrāre  to speak, beg ( see oral); r. ME aour ( i ) e  < OF aourer  < L

—Synonyms
1.  idolize; reverence, revere, venerate.

—Antonyms
1.  abhor.

First off, while perhaps in the 13th century to ‘adore’ your spouse wasn’t too far different from ‘worshiping’ them as a Divine Lord, but times have changed – and thankfully. Neither my wife nor I want her to be my ‘Divinity’ with a capital ‘D’. I have mentioned in the past that for me there’s a numinous quality to the experience of uxoriously living my wife as I do, but even I am wary and careful of my words because -again- in no way do I want to collapse the divine/mortal relationship in our marriage. My wife doesn’t even want to “be on a pedestal” or even idolized — she certainly doesn’t want to be someone’s religion.

Actually and interestingly that ‘idolize’, ‘reverence’, ‘revere’ and ‘venerate’ all have semi-religious symbolism at their sociological/etymological hearts points to the difficulty in separating the ‘sacred’ from the ‘divine’. Many religions have an acknowledged evil, non-sacred, (semi-)divinity, and while there are many who tout “life is sacred” only Christianity claims full divinity for a human and only that one particular human as a singular exception – one hotly argued in the millenia since. Even when Shakespeare only said “What a piece of work is man! [...] in apprehension how like a god!” it was clear — in one way man is like, and only ‘like’, a (indefinite) god. Even Achilles’ rage (again, single character aspect) was only “god-like”.

The fact is, on the very event horizon of our consciousness, on the ‘rim’ where we occasionally perceive, intuit and experience the cosmos/universe above, beyond and past our five normative senses, things take on the sheen of the sacred, of the highly meaningful and significant – even though as a matter of principle not all those things should be mixed. Thus one may find something sacred about their children, about their wife, about sex, about nature, about political representation and/or a host of other things, but yet desperately want to keep most or all of those completely separate from each other in their life.  That we perceive things as having numinous and sacred aspects or dimensions does not mean they themselves are completely divine or that they should even be mixed with any other thing we perceive as having numinous and sacred aspects or dimensions. In Hebrew, the word for ‘sacred’ has the connotation “separateness” or “kept set apart” (and so therefore) “dedicated”, “holy” — mixing and matching, even of various kinds of sacred, is strictly a no-no.

In fact such mixing and matching of the differently sacred only highlights their mundane aspects by juxtaposition, and we can more easily see something is out of place, out of knit, “rotten in the state”, and more easily see that the sense of something-is-where-it-does-not-belong is the very essence behind dissonance, profanity, sacrilege and blasphemy.

So yes, I regard my wife with the utmost esteem, love, respect and honor, and I do love her intensely and deeply – and in, around and amongst these (my experiences) there is something powerful and profound, something so significant and meaningful that it is in some ways and in some aspects numinous, sacred, worthy of recognition, reverence and deference. Nothing more, certainly nothing less, and I definitely keep these experiences ‘set apart’. And my wife likes it that way. And now, I’m going back to that sense of completion.

Relationships: Word Definitions

I avoid politics like the plague in part because of the sheer ideology behind things like bumper stickers. There is a popular such decal where I live, one I have grown increasingly weary of, that says “Marriage = (block male figure) + (block female figure)”.

Sigh.

Outside of descriptive (never prescriptive) reference works agreed upon and designated for the purpose (say, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc.), I suppose I somewhat resent anyone defining me and the relationship I have with my partner to me, for me and ostensibly better than I. Next someone will be telling me which recipe for lasagna I can use in my kitchen in order for me to use the word ‘dinner’. In this spirit I offer the following bit of silliness:

In all seriousness, I truly believe such word definitions should be left up to the individuals using them, every individual using them. Let everyone discover the pros and cons of using words, willy nilly or accurately, all by themselves. Let everyone be adults.

Words, Wants & Wonder

In making this Wordlet for the blog (fascinating isn’t it?) and then in reflecting upon this “Non-Kinky Take on Kink“, I’ve come to think that at some point in our relationship I must have stopped saying “I want (you to)” so loudly that I had time to wonder about what she wanted – and then to get excited about her want and desire.

Ever since then I think variations on the words “what do you want?” have increased in significance and  meaning to me – so much so that I find myself seeking out the wants and desires she hasn’t expressed yet, wondering what and where they are, when they’ll arrive, what fun I’ll have fulfilling them - anticipating the joy and fun of fulfilling her.