lust for the divine, or, the first words from the august post bender navel gaze
i was going to call this lust for god, but that felt too blasphemous. in 2021 i watched fleabag. funny show. in fleabag, there's a scene where a therapist asks her if she wants to fuck a priest or if she wants to fuck god, and she asks, can you fuck god, and the therapist answers with a sly smile, oh yes.
from 2021 to 2023, for reasons, i was mostly and inert and isolated, but i was alive, and i could walk, and i could talk, and if i had to, i could process information (although i tried very hard not to), and as naturally, at some point, entropy bubbled in and around me, and i needed to do things to bleed that out. in that period i thought of running a lot, running until my lungs gave. i imagined what i would feel like after, crouched on the ground hearing my blood rushing in my head and my heart thrashing in my chest. i did not run. i couldn't walk up the stairs without gasping, and i was sedentary, so i did not run even though i thought of running everyday.
soon, just thinking was not enough, i had to do something. i started cooking. i sewed for a bit. i drew patterns. i got bored. i started taking edibles, i smoked briefly (i was scared i'd start smelling like it and be profiled as a loser), and for a while, the edibles helped, but i developed a dependency, and started needing more to keep the restlessness rested. i read a lot in those days. i listened to rock and noise. still. there was a yawning eternity that wanted more, more, and soon i began to recognise 'looking for more' might be a futile ordeal. because every acquisition came with a weariness. desire just felt like desire, wanting, what was it i wanted? anne carson said, 'who is the real subject of most love poems? not the beloved. it is that hole.'
more realisations: that 'hole', not necessarily the subject of love is in us all, and it can propel us to great heights as well as great depths, it has propelled me to some depths. i think a good way to feed it (by good, i mean moderately sustainable) is to do good hard work. this was a very boring realisation for me. that to be quiet within i have to move and work hard at something. it was almost disappointing. i had started to mythologize the hunger. zizek called it a 'horniness for the apocalypse'. i think of it as a desire for sublimation, a surrender. to lose oneself in something. to flow. a lust for something older than everything, a primordial hunger for something like to oblivion.
i still find myself wanting to run into the express. i walked into a busy road without my glasses, unseeing and excited, blood rushing in my ears, and was disappointed and relieved when i came out unscathed. i felt like a coward too. these days i read code, i read books, i'm still very lazy, but less lazier than i was last year, last month even. i stretch. i started exercising. i think of meditating, to 'surrender myself to the present'. i can't do one pushup yet, but i can do five wall pushups. i am pretending to think of it as exciting rather than exasperating. i try not to find too much in people, i try to be a good friend, i think i'm good at that. everybody likes my jollof rice.