Notes on Desire

Let us go into desire.

As desire arises from thought, in theory, one must only alter thought to shift desire into its consented and acceptable manifestation. Awareness of this pattern is the first step. This is what it means to walk the trail given. This is where peace lies for those wishing to meander safely in the forest.

Yet for me, what if entering desire is where peace lives? What if exchanging my sure footing of the well-groomed path for the unexplored, shadow-deeps of the living woods is where the beast who eats my desire lives?

Like the part of the song where the cello breaks your heart, desire holds something that hurts in a way that is necessary for the whole song.

Maybe real poetry is written in the cool ashes after the fire.

Maybe in another life I burn it all down to finally see what remains.

But in this life, I am arranged by sex, given shelter and food in the appropriate barn, and visited by ghosts of other lifetimes as reminder of what was or what could have been.

All of that is thought.

And that isn't real.

It isn't Love.

I guess I always thought that it was the relationship itself which created a third existence, and this existence was the bridge to reaching what one could not reach alone.

And I thought desire enters as the gushing river which roars, “you must cross me to reach the other side.” But then again, that's what thinking gets me . . . the imaginal, the unreal.

And I suppose these sentences belong as an entry in the “Love” file, but babe, I have clearly not even begun to breathe that crisp, pine-soak, northern air of Love.

For in this moment, desire remains untapped, untouched, and bound to a purgatorial better luck next time.

As for the container and manifestation of my desire, well, it was the third thing thrown in the river that day; it belongs to her now.

I have no choice but to surrender, and that’s the truest thing I have said all day.