Desire

Katariina Fagering asked “What do you truly deeply desire… like big ass desire?NOT A TO DO LIST, but deep down under the list desire?”

How when I read this my mind felt like a draw bridge that has gotten stuck. It wouldn’t lift for anything. I stared at those words trying to collect an answer. Trying not to analyze that empty space where I felt an answer should be. Then I felt guilty that nothing came. No thought. God! I thought, what do I deep down desire? What do I truly want, that isn’t on a to do list? Do BEFORE you die list? Those are nice, but I don’t want nice… nice feels surface… nice feels shallow… nice feels untrue…

What do I deep down want I asked myself again?!? With more panic, searching for an answer that must be there. There has to be something!
But still weeks later, the question has nagged at me. Because once I was so full of deep desires! Some of which were painful to hold.

Perhaps this is why I have thrown them aside? Gotten rid of? shoved desire deep down?

I read words by woman like Isabel Faith Abbott or Katariina Fagering or Anais Nin and I crave this sensuous connection to the world around me. Everything for them, seems so utterly rich, raw and unbelievably good. Even the pain seems more real and beautiful. Perspective I think… but yet perspective can’t be the only answer? I am pretty damn good at cherishing what is.

*The to do list* pops in my head again. It’s a clue, a bread crumb leading me deeper inside. I have soooo many to do lists! It has been and still is how I control life. How I manage the anxiety that used to overcome me. How I kept the depression at bay. How I eliminate possible chaos. It is how I keep myself from the depths but also it has kept me from the heights.
What do I truly deeply desire? I pause and let the most simple answer arise.
Connection to IT ALL…
I suppose I don’t have a specific way I want that word to play out. I want connection with him, with my own body, with place, with movement, with minds, with woman, with time… I want the moment… any moment to connect straight into my gut and stir it with excitement. I want the passion back. The spark. The desire for today.
Once it was too painful to feel, then I controlled it with lists and after… I numbed it. Too many “unknowns” to be connected to it all. So I didn’t. So I haven’t…

Today I sit here in this coffee shop, surrounded by 31 people and think that I want more out of this life. Less separation. A more intentional way.
So now I begin to re-kindle my connection to my desire. I will say things I think I want and then check. Truly check in with my gut to see if it says YES, HELL YES, or if it just says it’s a “nice” idea.

1: I want to buy more original art from artists I love. Support artistic expression and pour into their dreams. I want my home to be a kaleidoscope of handmade.

2: Write more articles for magazines. It is an unearthly feeling to see my words/work published. It lights me up.

3: Create art with my heroes. When I photographed Isabel Faith Abbott it felt like arriving. To work with someone whom you look up to leaves a mark and a gratitude toward life that few things do. I want to Art Journal with Orly. Photograph Katariina.

4: I want to explore California with my camera. I have been looking forward to sinking into her Landscape for a year now. It feels like falling in love already. I want to wrap my arms around a sequoia tree in silence, my love and I meditating together there. I want to photograph Cactus and rocky beaches. I want to hike much, much more. I want to take more polaroids, more film. I want to work perhaps in a coffee shop again somewhere I can find community. I want to drive Highway 1 and decorate a new home with my love. I want to visit Yosemite and breath… breath… breath…

5: I want to do something with all those India collages no one has seen. I want to write words, stories, memories. I want to connect the dots of how fucking meaningful that time was. How truly there is where this all began for me. The place where I shed my snake skin and began to build who I really wanted to be in this life. Everything after that time was a brick at a time onto that foundation.

6: I want to travel to Portland to visit two of my favorite humans on this earth. I want to play and let loose and remember that I am alive over and over again. That I am blessed beyond measure not just for this life but that I know Katariina and Vinnie, angels on earth. Sages really… I want to have a mini road trip, old school style with music that marks those memories. I want to go there and be there. Truly, utterly be with those I love.

7: I want to dance to middle eastern music, gypsy music, india music, music that is alive with tribal beats and colorful soul. I want to feel like I am in a turkish bazar with smoke and silk and sex. Because somehow these things make me want to move.

8: I want to travel almost as much as I want to Love. Sometimes I don’t know which one I want more… because traveling makes me love well, deeper.. I want to see the world. This is one of two things I have known since a child. I would sit in library rows surrounded by stacks of national geographic books secretly dreaming of being a photographer for them. Culture, place, travel has made my heart skip beats since I could read, maybe even before. It is the sort of thing that could be my life force, the calling I give my life too if I only knew how! The other thing I have known since I was a child of course is that I was made to love. Most honestly to a man. This man. Because loving him is just as much for me than him. It has opened me up in ways other men have not. Oh how much I can be myself and so selfless and so whole and learning new avenues within my own soul has been life giving. He teaches me as I teach myself through our union.

9: I want a Kantha quilt or a Moroccan rug, or both.

10: I want to go to Morocco, Greece, Iceland, Cuba, Chile, Thailand, china.

“It doesn’t matter if any of the desires come true or if you change your mind on the desire.

The real reward is being in your power.”

Katariina Fagering