2002-11-25 - 5:05 p.m.: rumple minze

"what do you do?" they ask.

"what do you do?"

"what are you thinking and what do you do that it can take you so long to come to a decision about what it is that you want?"

"it seems like it should be a very simple thing." they say.

but really... REALLY... it's not. nothing is, if you look at it that way.

even if we were talking about appetites. how do you talk about appetites? i think too often people look at "wants" (and by wants i mean desires, yearnings) as holes to be filled. as deficiencies to be remedied.

but are they? really?

how many people have *wanted* something and been completely satisfied once they've achieved it? how many "holes" have been filled?

then... how many people have found more, bigger things to want once the small ones have been had?

it seems, to me at least, that what we call "satisfying" an appetite isn't at all like filling a hole. rather, it's like widening it... deepening it... scraping away those pieces of you that cried out "there's a hole!" so as to not hear them complain anymore. tossing them aside... keeping them busy or distracted while you do even more damage.

what do i want?

i want to not want.

what else do i want?

i want to unlearn what i think i know but don't. i want to stop calling things by their proper names. instead of "the University" i want to say "the sprawling building complex that was originally built to be a place of communal, intellectual beauty but which has turned into a nest for 'market share research' and the corporate exploitation of young learners." like this, i want to keep the realities of things (and people) constantly in mind. they get pushed aside by names. by what we think we know.

the moon = the nightly reminder that we can create beauty from dead or dark or dying things with a little help from light and imagination.

water = a peculiar suspension of particles in space that would, if ingested, be joyfully welcomed into the most minute nooks and crannies of my physical being. future me that would otherwise cycle through the dirt and air and oceans until they found something else to glom onto. future other. nature's molecular mercenaries.

I = the person (composition/possibility/variable will) whose essence and purpose i'm trying to understand every time i speak to you.

will i ever achieve these wants? no.

so i have to think of something else. i try to think of them in these terms.

that is what i do.

that is what i'm thinking and that is what i do, and that's what takes so long for me to tell you what i want.

all i can say is i don't know.

i don't know.

inward...outward