It’s been a while.

Recently I’ve enjoyed a more laid back rhythm in tending to my garden (the rain’s been helping a good deal) after many months of hand-tilling the ground, removing rocks and concrete slabs buried in the soil, assembling garden beds, carrying dozens of bags of soil and compost, and trying to protect my plants from my landlord’s rogue weed-whacker (rest in peace to my feverfew plant). Additionally, I’ve been taking a whole lot of photos (too many!) of people and places, traveling here and there, and periodically writing longer-form work that may someday, if I’m so fortunate, prove useful. We’ll see.

~*~

I’ve also been thinking a lot about desire.

I have too much of it, I suspect. But I also worry that if I lose it, there will be nothing left of me. Once unzipped, my spirit might just abandon the body indefinitely. Or maybe it’s passion I’m thinking about. I think I’m contemplating the space where they converge. I’m imagining they share a seam.

I have an opinion (an inflexible belief, really) that a whole lot of people don’t know what they desire, not really, or they lack the momentous force almost entirely. Don’t get me wrong, I know it looks different for everyone, and I’m just as depressed as the next guy—probably much more so—yet this is precisely why I take full advantage of the times when life feels like such a fucking gift, and it seems to me that some people struggle with the active participation part.

There’s another type of person that belongs in the camp of the unimpassioned—those who do know what moves them but choose to contain it because lifting its lid may lead to questions unasked or unexplored, emotions uninhabited, myriad futures demanding decisions be made, or, more horrifyingly, and maybe the most common reason people stifle their desire: A release valve of contained energy can feel completely destabilizing. It can reveal a chasm between our needs and desires, and the shape of our daily lives. A beautiful little tornado tucked away in a dusty curio box. Am I making any sense?

Maybe we should start calling each other out when we fall into apathy for too long, or grab our loved ones by the arms and give them a little shake, then say something real dramatic like, “Just do that thing you always talk about doing,” or “You could die before morning comes!” Or perhaps: “Let’s escape this light pollution, lay against a hillside and study the night sky.”

Related vocabulary for what I’m thinking about: zeal, longing, striving, learning, touching, asking, awe. But more specifically, I’m talking about a need to inhabit these spaces, feelings, ways of moving through the world.

The point is that desire and passion can lead us to be what Meryl Streep’s miserable character in Big Little Lies describes as a “wanter.” Streep is just awful in the series, which I quite liked by the way, and she contends that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who are content with their lives, and chronic wanters, as if wanting is some terrible thing that precludes a person from simultaneously feeling grateful for the things they already have. I personally feel gratitude for my present conditions just about every day of my life (when I’m not in a deep depression, that is), but this love and appreciation for what I presently have doesn’t stifle my desire to reach for things that make my world, other people’s lives, and my very being expand and evolve into something greater. If anything, these gratitudes only grow my capacity for desire. We can make this beautiful. Sometimes we just have to ask.

So I guess I’m a wanter, and while it feels like I’m bubbling over some days, I’d rather possess a bit too much of a destabilizing force, and at times be a bit too much—or prioritize things in my very weird way that appears insane but has a relatively efficient methodology encoded in it, I swear—than squash what I am and suffer the consequences of an unrealized life. I am certain the latter would kill me. I’d dissolve into a sad puddle and spend the rest of my days praying for life to take me out a little quicker please! Speed run :-)

Fortunately, I am not a puddle at this time. In this very moment, listening to “Thawing Dawn” by A. Savage, I’m grateful that while I don’t always know what exactly this internal propeller was built for, or what it is I need to do, I know there are coordinates. I can sense the direction, and I’m going.

~*~

Here’s a great quote by Zizek that succinctly communicates how desire operates/feels/moves through us:

“A desire is never simply the desire for a certain thing. It’s always also a desire for desire itself; a desire to continue to desire. Perhaps the ultimate quarrel of a desire is to be fully filled in, met, so that I desire no longer. The ultimate melancholy experience is the experience of the loss of desire itself.”

—Slavoj Zizek

And also:

I think “Close” is really beautiful. Ellen Arkbro & Johan Gradenentire’s album, I Get Along Without You Very Well, is like a minimalist avant-garde slow burn. Kinda synthy, kinda orchestral. The intermingling brass and wind instruments accompanied by its murky wandering reminds me of Andy Shauf’s early albums. Like Shauf, Graden’s voice is breathy and dynamic, so if you’re a fan of Andy’s but can appreciate sparse lyrics and a slowly unwinding atmosphere, you might enjoy this one. “Out of Luck” is also great.

And something more recognizable, because Beach House’s “Pink Funeral” and “Once Twice Melody” have been stuck in my head for a week too long.

~*~