A boy once again

This weekend I am in Woodland Hills, Utah, a town built on a mountainside in the southern part of Utah County. An area quite different from my "center-of-the-universe" neighborhood in Seattle. I am here to visit my parents, still insistent on their independence in spite of failing health.

As my mother takes the wheel of their four-wheel drive and heads down the mountain at a snail's pace, I grip the edge of my seat. I appreciate her determination to show me that she is still very much in control. Her hands shaking on the wheel, she asks if "The Colonel" would do for dinner. KFC has a small all-you-can-eat buffet with a special senior discount. My parents love buffets!

Hours later, knowing that I must work out daily to maintain my sanity, I ask for the keys to the car. A long silence ensues. "Well," says my father plaintively. And suddenly I am placed in the position of boy again.

My parents seem to like the fact that at fifty-four, I am still their boy, the youngest of three sons. And I do not mind being placed in this position once again. Sir becomes boy.

Years ago as a young Leatherman, I learned how to be an obedient and respectful boy. In fact, I am certain that I am a better boy as an adult than I ever was as an adolescent. Respect, honesty, integrity. All lessons learned well.

Two decades ago at my first run, Mr. Guy Baldwin told me that Leather was built on these principles. At that time, I was still very angry at what I considered a harsh adolescence. My father and mother were strict disciplinarians, often to the point of abuse. They never spared the rod. Thus, I felt justified in my anger, still holding on to vestigial emotions in spite of years of therapy.

However, after training and hard play, I found that I no longer held on to this anger. I was able to let it go. And now I move freely back to my boy space to please my parents without any negative feelings.

I am a Leatherman. I am a Sir. And I have learned to be a respectful son.

If you meet the Buddha in the road, flog him!

As the Buddha lay down for the last time, he prepared for the end of his last cycle of life. Years before, his eyes had been opened upon seeing the morning star. He saw the true nature of all things. The sky is blue, the grass is green. The sun hides behind the clouds. The wind blows.

This heightened state, which actually is not a heightened state at all, is similar to what we discover often during play. Almost as if eyes were opened wider than they have ever been before we experience an arousal of all senses from their slumbering state. As if the blinders have been dropped from our eyes.

Yesterday, I surrendered myself to the clay once more. The question I held was suggested by my boy jay. "How does Leather meet Zen?"

In the late eighties and early nineties we often spoke about the state brought about by Leatherplay. Geoffrey Mains was perhaps one of the first to examine the topic in his seminal work, "Urban Aboriginals." Later, other authors embellished the topic, drawing on Leather to expound on their own spiritualities. New terms and the adoption of forms of Leatherplay into new communities.

While I find this all very interesting, I return to the spiritual tradition that I have practiced as long as I have been a Leatherman. In Zen, we know that one cannot try to reach enlightenment. The harder one tries, the more elusive it becomes. I would suggest that the desired state during play is very much the same. And, like Zen, I find this state to be a heightened awareness of my surroundings, as if I am experiencing my body for the very first time. It is not a feeling of being drugged or removed from one's surroundings. Rather, it is an arousal that one is very much part of things. As if one has felt his body for the very first time.

As I prepare myself to begin another Winter Kyol Che, I approach my Leather with new eyes and new questions. I look back on my Leather journey and ask myself how I arrived here. And, as I did last Winter, I turn back to the earth to help me answer my riddle. A true Virgo dirties his hands in clay.