The mathematics of Desire:

I search still, I have been searching my entire life for that thing to allow me to take deep calm breaths, to feel ease within my birdcaged heart.  I  look far and near for a carrot to chase, a bullseye to aim for, a goal line to cross that may provide recognition that I have at last made it Home.  In equal earnestness I search for a hook upon which I can hang this 'gift' of adoration, heavy and smothering, a large rough yoke I carry with me everywhere I go,  in mind's eye composed of leather and brass with many buckles and straps, old and sweatstained.  I know I will drop where I stand one day,  made a jument of my want.   Gifted or cursed, I do not know which I am set upon by my feelings as if by a buzzing cloud of gnatflies on a hot summer day or a flock of beautiful birds, are they not sometimes needed?  Welcomed?   Beautiful in their own way then,  like the birds that land upon the backs of elephants or other great beasts unable to tend to themselves such is their bulk, and keep them clean or free of some parasitical elements?   My wants winged and feathered, beaked and beady-eyed? Of simple mind, and in simple minds grow stronger desire, if for no other reason than constriction of purpose and resource makes these same longings more focused, as if poured through a funnel and collected in a deep bowl.   A reptilian brain thus trumps mammalian ponderings when it comes to elements of want and hunger, rapacious needs far easier to satisfy than self-aware logic and emotion.

Like the beacon in the top of a lighthouse, my attention is broadcast in a bright unbiased beam in every direction, full 360 degrees, again and again.   A warning or an appeal?  Depending on which receives this signal,  freighter or vessel adrift, beetle or bat, one desiring solitude and one solace,  both suffering some degree of need, for both depend on the will of another even if strangers they yet be.

Rocky cliffs send stones tumbling into cold gray water day and night, but only in the light of day can you see the frothy splash, the rising of tiny bubbles escaping their aquatic bondage tracing the path of the sinking rock, falling slower now submerged than before airborne, landing on the sea floor to roll back and forth with the waves and tides, unseen, as generations of your family are born and die, born and die again and again, forever towards some impossible end.   Your bloodlines surely lost, names forgotten as that stone remains unaware of you or your existence and you of it's.

Just as easily you may pick up a rock spat upon the sand and guess it's name, or lacking the manners to ask it what it calls itself you may give it one of your own creation.   You may throw it back into the sea or bash out the brains of your lover with the thing, swinging low and threatening tethered to the end of a stick, or join it with like kind chosen for their appearance, or knowledge of their strength, or both in some construction of your design.   It is patient and loyal and it can wait.   It's only vice is it's inability to deny gravity or momentum, a sucker for inertia, otherwise it is an unreasonable thing although it does not make untoward demands.   Unlike me and you.

I've seen a bird carry a rock away from beside a still lake, wings flapping, carrying the unsuspecting object somewhere beyond my line of vision but not beyond the reach of my imagination, and on that subject I reckoned and wondered and still sometimes do.   Can a piece of the Earth feel fear?  Does it have a pulse that defies discovery so slow it beats, and as a result so long it persists?  What of that bird, what was it's plan?   What need was satisfied?  Did they ever learn each others' names?  Suspended in the air the cold weight of the rock finally matched by the desperate lift of beating wings, and for a few moments they exist on opposite sides of an equal sign.  Whose will was stronger?    Whose need?  How long were they able to harmonize?  Separately just single notes each, lingering in the air for such a brief time and begging to be joined by the other like the ends of a magnet, and even when fortunate enough to find another with which to resonate creatively for a moment, entire symphonies will lay undiscovered in each half, unable to be complete ever again as are pieces of a broken window pane, as there is never enough dirt beside the grave to fill it whole again.