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Letting go of desire
Jan. 5th, 2005 05:24 pm
Driving in the rain, Sunday afternoon between Lindsay and Newmarket. 
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Sometimes you just have to sit still and let it all go. The grief, disappointment, frustration, desire, happiness, greed, the cherished hopes. Open the iron gates and let it all run out, spread through the ether and dissipate. Will they plague someone else? Where does all that feeling go?
I keep envisioning this place: a strand of soft sand by still water in darkness. Sometimes it feels like a cave, sometimes it's a lakeshore at dawn.
I don't understand storing up anger at the world. It doesn't do any good to turn around and fuck anybody over just because I didn't get what I wanted. I would only end up thinking less of myself in the end. I don't see any benefit in making anyone feel small just to prop up my own ego.
It does no good, wanting to be bigger than I am. The best times are those when I can empty the husk and let seeds fly across grey landscape, hoping some of them will land, tuck under and give rise to something new. Even hope—that word is too much. And the achievement doesn't make me any better when I take credit for it. Feeling connected is good, seeing how someone else's work reflects back on mine.
A buddy dropped by again this morning. I made coffee and he brought muffins. But I had nothing for him except the curve of my skin. I couldn't open my hands. The seeds were not ready for him to take. My chest and abdomen are a closed shell, my legs and arms folding and bracing against the press of cloth, the carress of fingers. We sat for a while on the edge of the futon, talking about our families. Later he asked me to lie down beside him. He thought, perhaps, if he touched me the right way I would start to respond. But even when my body did, my heart did not.
Later I sat alone at my desk and the words poured out, releasing every desire. I had to let go of this disappointment: that at this age (at least this season) my libido is turning cold. It used to be such a fire of entertainment: throw in paper, sticks, pine cones and see what they do. Now it seems to turn more and more focused, limited, sensitive (with one man I have never tasted such ecstasy!). I could lay the last warm cinders on my palm and, with a breath, disperse them with the other gifts.
But as the clay vessel drained (words pouring down the lines of my notebook), that empty, silent place opened again. I don't have to be anything. I don't need to want. Losing and letting go make me no less a person. They just bring me back again to the quiet sand. I will wear dark cloth, not for mourning, but to render myself indistinguishable from shadows. I would blend in, be as little and insignificant as I can. And I would end striving to be more.
Finishing the writing, I realized what I should do. I lifted the oil diffuser, unused for several years, and set it on my desk. I added drops of sandalwood, hawthorn, clove bud and lime, then struck a match. This didn't come from craving the sensation of sweetness. In the afternoon my heart instructed me, and I listened.
