From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=74">Echolocation</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

As far as I'm concerned, you can abuse your position any way you like.  Nice photomontage, good random comments, keep up the, er, totally subjective dictatorship :)
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=74">Echolocation</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Um, in case it wasn't obvious, that last comment was for Kirk :)
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=74">Echolocation</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

briana kassia, about <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.28.22.00.12110">Indian Summer</a>: I love the way you evoke all the senses, see-hear-smell-touch-taste, you bring it all alive :)<BR>

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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=220">wolfscreamer</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

briana kassia, about <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.28.22.00.12110">Indian Summer</a>:<BR>
I love this, I feel I was there.Superb Briana
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=8">Ali</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Echo! And Wolfscreamer!<BR>
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Where have you two been?  Hmmmm...?<BR>
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Might you both post something?
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">rennielorca</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

aparajita~thanks for the praise. However, I feel that it was heartfelt praise your direction (from me) on something that sparked real emotion from me thanks to your "yearning" piece. Surprises me, what hits a real nerve at times when I read here. Hopefully, we'll have more time soon to visit and share some stories.<BR>
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ecolocation and wolfscreamer~glad to see your names on the board again. I also enjoyed Briana's sub sice I am fond of gardens and their enticing smells and visuals. bri~ took my husband years to appreciate our garden, but I had a time getting him out of it after he learned to enjoy all that was there. Painting here recently, so I went to the garden to pick colors to use. Knew that I enjoyed them in the garden and could easily enjoy them elsewhere.<BR>
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abogada~(abo) I'd left a comment, probably too deeply embedded in another post a few days back here, to you on the MBA etc. Thanks for the thumbs-up on UNCORKED. I don't share those "uncorked" works with someone(s) I probably should, but it sure helps to unleash it here at times. BTW, the "first worst boyfriend" is a lawyer, so I can emphathize both directions with your subs :). Like Ali (I believe it was you, Ali) mentioned recently, we don't always post subs and even comments about the same lover or significant other at blender.<BR>
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b.k., glad to see you posting subs again! I constantly send my best wishes for you and yours. You've been a kind online and offline friend. I am fortunate to have met you at blender (see, Kirk, how significant this place is!?!). Great to be able to connect and become real friends. Small world that we live in! So it is not impossible for blender folks to get together as we've talked about here so often :) ...... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">rennielorca</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

blakey, about <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.29.10.42.8390">simply said</a>:<BR>
how TRUE on this piece and your subs comment...and I have often wondered if a former love or lover would find something I wrote about them and recognize themselves and us...whether they might pass this way ever or again. Real loves have stayed my friends in one way or another, so there is no yearning for more with them still. It is The ONE that breaks the heart and leaves us unable to have any close contact for far too long when a real connection doesn't work both directions. I've learned to miss the person and not the feelings when that's happened. I've given my heart too deeply a few times to have it worked like a rubics cube into utter confusion. I've tried to figure whether it was a game or two lovers in misunderstanding. Time usually answers that question. There's a life to live in the meantime so that we don't become unworthy of that lover or the next great love that might come along. It is, in each of us, to be that person that someone, The ONE, is looking for sometime in our lifetime. Now see what your few words in that sub have generated in thoughts from me :) --thanks! ...... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=8">Ali</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Rennie~<BR>
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You are right--it was me who said that, about the posts/comments. :-)  <BR>
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Oh, and did I read that correctly--you are painting?  If so, that is lovely.  And I am a big fan of gardens...I love all of the colors.  There are really pretty purple flowers in my yard (I don't know what they are...but they're the color of African Violets, but they look almost like morning glories.  Every day, all the flowers fall off at night, and it the morning, the plant is full of new ones.). :-)
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">rennielorca</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

willtobe1, about <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.29.06.37.8168">"the little monster"</a>:<BR>
we are human, and "sex" is not a bad thing unless we use it as such, or let ourselves be used in ways our hearts and minds try to tell us is wrong. Enough unhappy fools try to tell us how to misuse it, abuse it, or try to take it away from us one way or another. But we are human, and shouldn't forget that fact. We are blessed with abilities to relate to others in so many ways. Sex and making love is just one of our gifts. We aren't single-cells with an "ouch!" and "what was THAT?" and "oh, look! now there are two of me" sexual encounters. We let the "monster" or nightmare in because we give it life in our minds. We stiffle real feelings, play games with them, use them as weapons in our minds. Our perception is critical in how we love. Sex is not a dust bunny or monster under the bed unless you desire it to be. :) interesting sub from ya ...... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">rennielorca</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Ali~ Can't be sure what you have in your fall garden that color, but in my landlocked/landlubber garden I have wild violets as ground cover, Asiatic Day Flowers, blue, almost purple morning glories and purple rose of sharon all blooming now that behave as you've mentioned. I love our time on the ocean, so also planted a tiny garden in a container in one cockpit with tiny succulents that could take the heat and weathe...and they bloom vibrant colors! Weather at the ranch is a bit harsh at the much higher elevation, so I planted trees :). Had to have someone in my life that understood my passion for seeing things bloom. Glad to see your appreciation of nature and your subs in that direction ...... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=66">willtobe1</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Rennie~  <BR>
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I've stumbled I guess into the <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.17.23.06.17580">Rocks Off (the secret Man song)</a> zone again, as I so often, rather to my embarrassment, do. (Though I see you are not denying a certain value to that zone)<BR>
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I too believe in the higher elements of love, and I strongly feel that <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2003.11.02.13.12.2055">Waking Up Fucking You, Revised</a> (despite the corporeality of its surface sound) wells from a deep need of the heart rather than of the loins.  My complicity in its pain (of which I have no doubt) is more an excess of Patience than of Appetite (as in <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.09.02.22.00.10109">Love's Battle Royal (tweaked)</a>)<BR>
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I believe in the higher elements of Love, desire of it all the Greatness and Wonder that it can hold, and know that I will never will myself 1-ness while being used, abused or misused by the monster under the bed.  <BR>
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But to think that Love is subject to all the Desirings of our Will is to presume unnatural Control over Nature.  I still say: "suppress it (or give it full reign) at your peril..."
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=66">willtobe1</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

Damn!  I do so hate a typo!  Why is it that the Invisibility Shield over these nasties is only lifted the moment I hit "Send"?!?!?!?<BR>
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I have this very day, despite careful reperusal, entered "Portait" instead of "Portrait," and "by force" instead of "by a force" (a totally different meaning, there).  <BR>
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O Great Blender Keeper~  You have developed a site renowned among me as one of the greatest in Webistry.  The design is unique and near-flawless and your changes over the years have all been dead-on and most helpful.  But I have a boon to crave of thee (though I yield it's huge trouble to yourself and a not-a-little chance of its being impossible):  Why not grant unto your loyal followers Three Wishes, say twice a year, to be used on anything from peckergnat typos to the wholesale removal of an onerous/odious work from the permanent database.  I have dreamed of this these many years...
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=66">willtobe1</a><BR>
Date: 30 September 2006<P>

aparajita, about <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2006.08.01.12.08.5229">rambling thoughts during the rain on a perfectly cloudless sunshiney day</a>:<BR>
<BR>
Rambling theorization precipitated by a perfectly cloudless sunshiney submission:<BR>
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Ah, Aparajita, that was a lovely soothing balm for a day "not working" for you, filled most elegantly with nearly all (as far as I can tell) of a little girls' dreams on the subject.<BR>
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I am rather farther along on the path you hope to go down, and your prominiscing has set me to reminiscing.  Much of what you said called to me to mind a theory I developed some years ago about the three stages of a life-long relationship.  I wrote about it in a letter to my wife on the occasion of our tenth anniversary of getting together.  We were, I thought, at the cusp of a transition into what I posited as the second phase, and I hoped that identifying it would help to brace us for it.<BR>
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In the first phase, a couple is symbolically face to face.  They seek a place where they can round their collective backs against the pressures of growing up and establishing themselves, escaping into a little paradise all their own, a place where they can safely unleash all the passion of their dreams and thus find release and comfort.  Vonnegut in "Cat's Cradle" called this kind of relationship a "duprass," which was a "karass" of only two persons, uninvadable by the outside world, so complete of itself that everyone else fades to a kind of grayish background. <BR>
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Having established this relationship, the couple can then move on to the second phase, wherein they are back to back.  As the pressures of career, childrearing and caring for aging parents mounts, what is most needed from the mate is someone to take part of the pressure of the onslaught, so that something effective can be done with whats on THIS side.  It's a very necessary phase with comforts all its own, but of a less closely palpable sort.  It can be very lonely when one partner turns to the other for some good ol' fashion face time and finds that partner too occupied with needing a backer instead.  <BR>
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This phase, I tend to think, is where most divorces occur.  It is this phase, despite my predictive bracing, that I struggle with so desparately now.<BR>
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In the third phase, if the second is survived, the couple symbolically can stand side by side.  Freed from internal pressures of romantic aspirations and from most of the external pressures of Life, the couple can be happy simply at having the other half of their own history by their side.  A pair of rocking chair suits this image well, but it doesn't preclude some return to action and face time.<BR>
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Doesn't this sound rather like what you've envisioned during the rain on a perfectly cloudless sunshiney day?<BR>
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When you find Someone, you might ask them if they want to know more about the "positions" unique to marriage. Then show him your piece and this this, and see if he's up to the long wrestle.  Tell him I said you'd make a lovely (*mwah*), lovely (*mwah*), co-pilot, regardless of the weather...<BR>
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