Tag: desire

Falling into Romance

Short Fiction & Prose

Now the longing begins. The feeling of being consumed – by desire, by rumination on the moments that stirred emotion deep within. How does he remain balanced and whole when everything is tilting toward the urge to plunge headlong into a world of romantic sensibilities?

The passions are hard for him to control. He’s not sure how to fall in love – or to entertain the possibility of doing so – without being totally swept up in it all. He needs an anchor to still him, to keep him connected to the ground.

There are so many things happening at once that he can’t express them all: the shifting emotions, the uncertain creeping-towards a person who intrigues him, but who gives him pause because he doesn’t know if she is the one he is meant to give his heart to. So many questions, apprehensions, uncertainties, fears. Yet, at the same time, a curiosity that impels him and leaves him hard-pressed to say no to further discovery, to further unveiling of a relationship whose fate remains beyond his grasp.

The mystery both intrigues and scares him. He watches as the borders of his life move and expand in response to these new feelings and ideas, and he marvels at the force within him that says: “I’m longing for more, let me break free.”

Can he take this energy and transform it into something that deepens his understanding of what it means to be human in this world? It’s all up for consideration: the tangle of crossed paths, destinies, and desires; the starting-small; the gradual entering-into-the-unknown; the entering-into a world where he’s free to express, free to sing, free to cry, free to love. This is the stuff of human experience. May it not be lost on him.

Eight Brief Asides

Journal & Essays

1.

So many straying thoughts and rogue ideas. Always trying, I think, to assemble everything into a cogent whole – a coherent junction of all the world’s miscellaneous parts. And yet – I’m just one woman, small, and my ability to hold everything – let alone weave it together – is limited.

But I feel somehow like I’m answering a call – fulfilling a responsibility – by trying, at any rate, to put these efforts into words.

Whether or not I succeed every time is beside the point. What matters is that I am choosing to cooperate – giving my “yes” – by showing up and letting the words take form.

2.

“Write about the hard things.”

What does that mean? Everything is hard.

3.

When the road is long (as most roads worth taking are), you must try to pace yourself for the traveling still to come. You must take each leg of the trip as it presents itself, fueling yourself appropriately for that particular stretch of land, remembering that being tired is not a sin, and neither is taking rest.

4.

My fate in life is to be a complicated person longing for simplicity.

5.

We’ll have to, weather permitting, take off our coat and walk in the rain, letting the water remind us that there are forces more powerful than us at work and we can abandon ourselves to them if we get tired of carrying our umbrella everywhere.

6.

A secret: When you let go of your grip on the thing you desire, you give your God permission to order and organize things as He would like.

7.

Listen! What sound is this? The ringing of bells in the dark of night. A call to prayer, a call to reckoning – reckoning with the fact that, among all the possibilities for your life, you have chosen to live out this one. Or haven’t you?

8.

Rose – lovely to behold –
have you managed to penetrate
the mysteries of the world?

Brief Thoughts (No. 33)

Brief Thoughts

I don’t want to be divorced from the simple and immediate realities of this life, always lost in a tangle of philosophical questions. To have normal desires, normal concerns – it’s hard to express why this is so important to me, except to say that I wish to really live and be connected to, and be a part of, the people and the world around me.

How much of life are you living in your distant tower, situated high on a hill and fading into the mist? Yes, of course, there is wisdom borne in the contemplation of things – but what about that special kind of wisdom that comes from actually experiencing those things for yourself?

If Only

Poems

If only I could
run myself ragged
run hands through your hair
run faster than wind
run freer than air
run wild with laughter
run reckless with care
run into your arms:
oh! such is my prayer.

Pictures
Heart's Desire.
Journal art: “Heart’s Desire.”
Ready to burst into flame at the merest enkindling.

Brief Thoughts (No. 23)

Brief Thoughts

I like to say that I’m going to be a writer, but the sad reality is that I barely write.

So my question is: Why do I avoid the things I feel drawn to – called to, in fact? Is it because I know that they will take a lot of work and demand a lot of me? Is it because they will challenge me? Is it because I’m afraid? How do I reconcile the two parts of myself: the part that says “yes, I know that this is the path of my purpose and joy – this is what I desire” and the part that promptly and stubbornly runs away from it all?

It’s tiring, isn’t it, to walk around as a bundle of contradictions. No wonder I’m prone to stomach problems – my insides are twisted from being pulled this way and that, and I’m getting dizzy from the constant change of direction. Can anyone else relate?

A Normal Life

Journal & Essays

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” – Albert Camus.

You know, I want to be a normal girl. I want to be involved in the ordinary, common things that the people around me enjoy. Watching sports, eating ice cream, going to the bar for a drink (even though, admittedly, I’d be drinking water rather than beer).

I want a normal life, grounded in everyday, relatable realities. I don’t want to live some obscure, tucked-away existence, like a mystic removed from the world, inhabiting another plane. I don’t want rarefied interests or a Bohemian lifestyle. I don’t want to be locked away in an ivory tower; nor do I want to wander the desert, pursuing the ascetical path of perfection. I want simple; I want normal; I want human.

I want to take my car to get an oil change and then string up Christmas lights – without all the while contemplating the metaphysical significance of what I’m doing. I want to invite people over for dinner and laugh with them about silly, unimportant things. I want to wash dishes afterward and stay up late learning how to play poker and swear in Italian. I want to get married and have kids and spend my afternoons going to little-league softball games and soccer matches and meetings of the PTA. I want to brew a cup of hot tea and make up a bed for someone who’s sick. I want to go to church without feeling panicked – and without worrying that I don’t know what’s True, or that I need to sort out the questions of existence before the hour is up, or that I have to join the convent (or do some other thing I really don’t want to do) in order to please God.

The things I desire are actually really simple. I just happen to be a complicated person, which makes the simplicity of my desires seem impossible sometimes.

But here I am, wanting to be simple – wanting to lead a simple life – and at the same time not wanting to renounce the things that make me, me.

It’s not impossible, right? But even if it is – well, I guess I will have to take refuge in the belief that, with God, “nothing shall be impossible.”

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