Sunset was the only color emerging from the sky, today. Gray and white, otherwise, and now all gone to deep blue and black, just glimmers of light tracing their way through space, across distances one can barely begin to comprehend. So far, the light might be all that is left. Dead, at the origin, and we, thinking ourselves complex, only witnessing its last shout out into the abyss. Something so illuminating, yet possibly no longer even in existence.

But if there is a time of day for it, dusk ain’t a bad one. That last glimmer of light, of hope, before the night settles down upon us. Seemingly unable to fully fight the ancient paranoia that she may not return again. The sun, meaning. The next day.

Was speaking to a friend about these ramblings. A peer in the writing type of ventures. Well, truth be told, he is far more skilled than I, the only difference just I being more boisterous, all full of hot air and relentless idiocy.

But, I wondered at him, briefly, about the state and fate of these weekly experiments. About where there is to go, and what there is to say, and why the compulsion continues to arrive and arise, despite any large or tangible metric of success being essentially void. He said this, more or less:

Really desire writing about the topic you choose.

Not bad, kid. I think I can work with that.

A tricky, fickle and unavoidable thing, that desire. So much of it ingrained within our beings, and the contrasting mechanisms of our perception always exchanging blows to achieve prominence of such thoughts. An idea appearing so certain that our supplication can seem absolute, yet a few moves can unravel the possibilities, leaving us with little more than the impossible urge for that which is gone. Grasping at star dust, as it were, willfully ignorant or just plain unaware that the objective is far removed from the parameters of this reality. And maybe even the next few over, on either side.  

I know this, because I have lived this. More than once, in a great many venues and plot constructs. Wants so cataclysmic and grandiose, that the thought of living without seemed damned and inconceivable. Yet for certain, here I still am, and without a great many of the former flung desires once navigating my days.

Yet back to it, that wanting, I always seem to weave my way around towards. Why, just this very spout of words occurring each Monday is at least partially due to the desire for both introspection and attention. Plenty of folks write down their thinkings on the regular. But ol’ Bruce keeps deciding, week after week, year after and so on, that these must be broadcast outward via the modern set of media designed to be apathetic to such specific avenues of content. Less room for poets and philosophers in the world of instant and now, now, now, and hey, hey, hey, can’t get no gratification quick enough.

I wonder, is it purpose that is wound up in wanting, or the wanting that makes the purpose? And how much can one even trust their desires? Or, are they the only aspects within heart and mind that can be trusted?

Despite the regularity of the wants not coming to the hoped for fruition, it is not the desires I would wish away. The larger fear is not to succumb to these wants and aches, but rather losing the ability to have them at all. To lose the sparks to some abomination of passive acceptance. Supplication to some despot in my skin that the world would rather wish me to be. So even if doomed and damned and all that, I would rather fight for the impossible than have no fight left at all, with still so much life yet to get about living.

Or so I continue to assume. That there is much more life left for living. Your narrator knows and has seen enough to know that no such guarantee is ever made, and if made, it is certainly not certain to pass. Could be any moment, that one of us, or all of us, just ceases to be. Abyss, darkness, etc. Begs the question regarding the usages of our time. Especially in those moments where destitution seems in overwhelming abundance, so easily we can forget the fragility, the impermanence of our feeble, wee existences.

I do not shy away from the dichotomy of life and death. And being that I am currently engaged in the former, the wonder all resides in the latter. Not sure of your stances, but when thinking of how to place my existential bets, I don’t count on anything aside from what the sentience I reside in might conspire and be inspired to get at. You may be certain of some idyllic afterwards, or some retry in another set of flesh and mind, somewhere down the timeline of the greater species. But if either of those, or some other non-mentioned alternative option, be the case, I fail to see sufficient evidence to allow me to count upon their occurrence.

And here is me, three and a third decades in and in so many ways barely evolved beyond the stances held as a child and adolescent. And part of that I hope to never lose, even if there is twice as much living ahead as what I’ve already left behind. Worse fate would be, me thinks, to have that much time and no itch or drive to do much of anything with it.

And even at my most pessimistic, which is something I am extraordinarily capable of conjuring, I know I still ache for more. For more experiences, good and otherwise. For relationships of all varieties and genres. For more songs, and poems, and longing glances, if I can manage. For vicious and veracious tears. For laughter so inescapable that it begins to pain the body. For moments of frantic movements and posture. And, for more simple, silent moments of contemplation, or lack thereof, be they in solitude or shared.

So, desire the topic, huh? Well, I guess desire is always part of the topic. It is what pulls us to take chances, despite the knowledge of perhaps inevitable failure. Or maybe just towards a yet unimagined success. It is the key to our boldness in moments, and the lack of such stances in others. It is what pushes us around each day, aside from the needs that need fulfilling. And to a certain extent, desire is a need within itself. You must want to carry on to do anything at all. Without that at least vague yearning, we may never make an action out in the world again.

I suppose, within all this, I would want these words to be worthwhile, might they be the last thing I ever manage to scratch out. I don’t think that that will be the case. Tragically, for all of you, I would estimate that I have a great many words left within me. At my most arrogant, I can’t imagine the prose and verse yet to come could not number as many as the stars littered about the dome above us. Even if those celestial beings are deceased, and all I can mutter is a mantra of what they used to be.

And see what the rest of the evening might bring. Or what I can wring out of it. Something beyond these words. Maybe a song. Maybe some progress on one of the mountain of objectives that surround me. Or just some words, heard and said between someone dear to me and my own pitiable existence.

We shall see. But for now, I’ll bid you good eve. Do yourself a favor, and go chase something grand. Even if impossible. Be ready to take the hits, but certainly don’t live in fear of failure. For I stand certain that there is no greater failure than never trying anything at all. To be desireless, a fate worse than death. Or so thinks me, at this moment of time where fingers clash with keys in the attempt to make sense out of all this nonsense we call existence.