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hanna williams, who i’ve talked about before, recently posted on her instagram about desire, asking: do i have the thing i desire, or does the thing i desire have me?
one of the best experiences of life is wanting something, and then not being able to have it in the way we think we must have it. feel free to fight me on this, but i think to desire something is deeply vulnerable and deeply powerful. even if that desire is never met.
i think i like it because my desire is deeply mine. my desire can go unmet, but the experience of desire is something no one else can ever take away from me. i relish this experience. and it makes me crazy and i hate it. as a double scorpio, i know this well, of one of my arms pulling me towards something or someone and my other arm stuck completely extended holding me away. like rowing a kayak on only one side, i spin in circles and go nowhere except around in the same spot. i tantrum about it. i cry and feel like something is keeping this thing i want from me and i’m blind to my own arm, numb to the feeling of it being locked at the elbow. after all, some part of me knows that once i have the thing i want, i must find something else to want. to want is to be alive and human. if all my needs were met, i would be deeply bored.
here is a short list of some [of the many] things i want, and the feeling that i want underneath those external circumstances:
ease and excitment in my writing practice [confidence and vitality]
for my hair to grow out [confidence and vitality]
more sex, more often [confidence and vitality]
to know where i am going to live come november [security, which allows for confidence and vitality]
a glass of water [to care for myself well]
a walkable community and neighborhood and to live within drivable distance of friends i love [relationship, vitality]
this is a helpful exercise for me because it helps me see what it is that i really want underneath the external circumstances or tools for me to access those feelings.
sometimes i go there and start to hone in on what it is that i’m trying to feel, and then i ask myself, how would my body feel if i was confident and full of life and energy? how would my body feel if i knew that i had a wonderful place to live come november? how would my body feel if i was quenched and satisfied? when i can try to feel what that would theoretically feel like, even for a moment, i realize that it’s not as far away as my brain would have me believe.
i’m standing on one side of a deep canyon and looking across at the other side, where the shining feeling i want to feel lies glowing. it feels as if the only way i can close the canyon is to figure out where i’m going to move. or to have a peak experience. or to have different hair. if i can imagine what it would feel like to feel that way, as if i had that external experience, then, for a moment, the feeling is there with me even if the external circumstance has not changed. the chasm transforms.
i am standing on one side of a deep canyon and across the chasm is the feeling i want, and then the chasm is the feeling i want, and the air in the chasm is the feeling i want, and the ground i’m standing on as i’m looking across the chasm is the feeling i want, and i am the feeling i want.
and, the external circumstance is still over there, far away. both are true at the same time. i can, for moments, access a feeling of safety, but if i still literally don’t know where i’m going to live, that external experience of mystery and insecurity is very real. i can’t make my hair grow faster than it’s growing. but i can remember and forget and remember and forget that the feeling is always there for me to touch. sometimes it’s so hot i cannot stand to hold it for more than a moment. but it’s there, emenating heat.
what do you want? and what do you really want? has your desire ever had you by the throat so fully that you could not bear yourself to part with it? and then have you felt the orgasmic relief of putting your desire into the air? have you felt the ecstatic, terrifying groundlessness that comes from not having any external desire to fixate on?
have you ever realized after defining a desire that there’s actually something deeper, something more true underneath the intial circumstancial request? can that feeling be met even if the person across from you never changes? can this be true freedom? what do you want? and what do you really want?
here’s a meme i made about this concept with stock images. thanks for reading!