I experience want. Various things for and from themselves and others — always with the fucking wanting. A challenge:
Stop actively wanting. Stop. Right. Now.
But, what about the good stuff we want? (one might ask) You know, not the oversexed worshiper-of-me that I'm hoping will paw my instruments on cue, but, you know, altruistic stuff.
That too.
I don't give a shit if you and your homies throw on those tie-dyes you bought from Goodwill, lay the peace-loving mood with some Pete Seeger, spin a doob the size of a zuchinni, and lounge around lusting for the most wonderful utopia our liberal art'd do-goodery could conjure.
Stop. That.
Desire is all wrong because it presumes to know the result of achieving whatever is being desired. Fuck desire. Just go experience. Don't actively want anything. Not peace, not fairness, not love, not happiness, not solidarity, not hope, not money, not sex. Which is not to say, don't love, be peaceful, or experience happiness or solidarity; please, by all means, experience these things with gusto when it happens. But don't want it to happen. Don't make it happen. Just be awake enough to see it when it does — just so happen — to happen.
Experience, be generous and don't act like a godforesaken vampire — taking the lifeblood of others so I can supposedly thrive. I am not special. There is no covenant. Don't think about our individuality — what nonsense. We're not humans nor are we humanoids. What are those meaningless categories?
We'll be beasts of burden here and beasts of prey there and if we're wasting time thinking about the future and the past, thinking about how to get what we want. Let's implore her to consider... the fucking future?
What future? The future is impossible. You can't see it. You can't hear it. You can't know it. To desire the future is to reject life. We may allege that this future is practical or necessary — whose terms are they? There are no promises, no guarantees, good folks. Promises are tools for assuaging the exact same fears the promises create: letdown and failure.
Do not hope. Do not promise. Do not want.
This is great. Speaking personally probably unachievable, but great. Something I've often thought about before, but never this clearly.
ReplyDelete"Don't think: just look."
ReplyDeleteUnachievable, perhaps, Mr. Ethan. I posed it as a "challenge," an awareness exercise — as obnoxiously cliche as that "sounds".
ReplyDeleteGood eye and ear, Mr. Boyd. My thoughts, I think, were something of a riff on "be careful what you wish for." I've tried to re-imagine the idea as:
Don't wish, just perform.