Subject-Object-Desire

“Your business in this world is not to assure the salvation of a soul thirsty for peace; nor is it to provide your body with the advantages of money. Your business is the quest for an unknowable destiny. It is for this that you must struggle with a hatred of the limits that the codes of propriety oppose to freedom. It is for this that you will arm yourself with a secret pride and an indomitable will. The advantages that chance has given you – your beauty, your glamour and the impulsiveness of your life – are all necessary for your laceration. Of course, this testimony won’t be fully revealed: the light emanating from you could be compared to the moonlight falling on a sleeping countryside”

Georges Bataille(1897‐1962)

L’Alleluiah, catéchisme de Dianus(194)

THE SUBJECT OF DESIRE

The heart is filled and overflows

With love,

Brimming, brimming over

Like pouring liquid nitrogen into a beaker It just can’t contain it

So it bellows out in a white cloud

Over the brim

Like hot springs

Unable to contain the sulfur clouds

Billowing out, billowing out,

Hovering above the chasm

Of unknowing

So the heart cannot contain

As it too wells up

In the pain

Of loving and

Of unrequited-­‐ness

All one can do is observe

(Gently if possible)

How curious the usually deadness

Is brought to life

So unexpectedly

And how close this desire

Is to the old wounds-­‐

The absent validation,

The abuse and tyranny,

The powerlessness,

Of childhood-­‐

Subjected to arbitrary discipline

How close the tears from this resemble

Those ancient salty drops

Held back by pure will

Until unable to control, they

Slowly form on the corner of the eyes,

A sign of capitulation to the monster

And lack of further strength on my part.

How close this pain is to the very wounds of youth

The rejection and the torment

The impossibility of conquest

The setting of the bar too high

The inevitable disappointment

Only adding to the prosecuting attorney’s growing file

Proving the character defects of this B specimen.

And yet how blissful

To feel

In the heart

After so long

At 30000 feet

In the silence of the darkened cabin

Where others sleep -­‐or at least try-­‐

To feel this desire in that very place of wounding.

What triggered this?

What object within the object?

I sit amazed at how little I really know

About this unconscious soul

I know only that I was captured

Unwittingly

Poor innocent thing!

The eyes for sure…sad, tortured, wounded,

Eyes that saw too much,

Eyes that were betrayed,

And knew too much for her age

The mouth, that smiles a sweetness into the trusting wind

The way she stands with one leg resting on another

Her very posture betraying purity of spirit

And her modesty among others who would flaunt their femininity

She stands out in silent demure.

Yet all of this falls short

In describing why now

Why her?

Why her eyes?

What in me was so moved by her gentility.

Her teasing and her double entendres

Never letting on her feelings

Her impeccable style of unacknowledged seduction

The knowing without saying

The seeing without letting on

The smiling eyes that caress the deepest wounds

All the while

Never giving away her self

Trusting no one

Me? for sure not!

She is wise!

Parsing her body like a textbook of anatomy

The perfect symmetry of parts

The beauty unparalleled

I am the Vesalius of form

And she is the very model that reflects perfection.

Simple and almost unconscious of her power

A woman struggling against demons within and without

Challenges of work home and family

Embedded in her own life and friends

The last thing she needs is this complication.

THE DESIRE

The bonding between subject and object

The heart’s desire

The locus of this obsession

The fear of moving from this point further

The refusal to hurt so many people

The art of observing the self in burning desire

Without acting on it

Without moving on it’s demand for relief

Either way, conquest or rejection

Anything for relief from this agony,

Rather, a gentle reflection

As if looking into a mirror

Albeit naked

The aching,

aging body

Framed in the Dorian Grey sunset

So this desire as mirror of the hungry soul

Dissatisfied and wanting more and more

Of life

Of love

Of burning

Your business is the quest for an unknowable destiny.

It is for this that you must struggle with a hatred

of the limits that the codes of propriety oppose to freedom.

Bataille calls this a catechism!

A sacred ritual requiring painful acts of sacrifice

As in the Christian reliving of His death and crucifixion

For surely it requires such courage

To even accept your feelings as real, appropriate

And true to yourself,

Even when defying conventions piety and the social order.

The desire points at you with an accusing finger

Holding the subject and object in an unholy matrimony

Probing your courage to defy

To validate that inner child that was squelched

And determine whether now

Maybe now

After all these years

You might find that which your soul had been searching for

All along.