Bondage

Bondage is a fashion, some like to be free and some like to be bound. It is not an absolute state which cannot be played with. Bondage is desired, demanded and solicited. Often you can be in chains and have the key in your hand and still you remain bound.

Bondage is enjoyable because of many threats that it saves you from. It becomes an excuse to restrain the body from wandering. Bondage becomes the localising act, the ritual that prevents spirits from getting dissipated.

But bondage is also a bad habit, it becomes a method to engineer a delay, it becomes a framework for excusing a further processing of logic. With bondage it becomes easy to quote a certain status quo as a reality. It becomes unnecessary to keep pace with rates of transformation and cycles of change.

But bondage of what? With whom? When? These questions are best answered by the agents who participate in episodes of bonding, either in being the bond or the body or the venue. What we can describe here is the net result of the effect of a bondage. We can describe it as an experience that is a mix of a desire for safety and adventure both at the same time. It is difficult for anyone to reasonably balance both these desires. It leads to a conflict. But the positive side of the situation leads to a certain stillness of the mind. When you are bound, you learn to think of things only once and not get locked into loops which recursively pile on and prevent the progression of either narrative or viable solutions in the logical space.

Certain bonds are weak and often need to be given extra reinforcement. These bonds are the ones that represent newer relationships. Relationships not given time enough to either mature or die. Relationships which are at best still prospecting for a toe-hold which can go on to become a platform for forming a long-term liaison.

Bondage was once understood as an arrangement which was a support-system for extended catharsis, an enabler of continuity and lucid experience. But now it is just a missed opportunity, just a villain in the narrative grid of characters that describe the unfortunate and undesirable events of our life.

The relationship of bondage and pleasure is peculiar. Bondage often acts as the inhibiting agent in the full and complete experience of a pleasurable experience but then it also doubles up in becoming the amplifier. Bondage amplifies pleasure by limiting the possibility of the noise and friction that movement can add to a situation. In a rather quixotic way, bondage becomes freedom by taking away the fidgety urge to break free.