A Life of Desire

by Kevin Carrel Footer

I am desire. Not reckless, not rambunctious, just slow, seeping desire that does not relent. My desire is like the water that springs inexplicably from a crack in the dry stone: no one knows where it comes from but they all come here to drink.

I am suspended in this web. It connects me to the world around me and to myself. Without it, I fear I would lose my tether and float off into the void.

For me, it is all about something I see in your eyes, your outstretched arm, your laugh, your beckoning hand; the promise that twists in my imagination until I quiver. When I cease to desire, I will be forgotten because it is my desire for those things around me that stokes the fire in my core.

While others may climb mountains, build business empires, create a legacy of action, I chose the inner pursuit. I do not defend it as the only way or even as the best way. Like so many things, it just is.

Calling myself a “writer” is code for my saying I don’t care much for the greater world of grand movements; the real action for me is in close. For many people, saying you’re a writer, seems respectable; it sounds like a profession. At least it’s better than being a pimp.

Writing is slow, arduous and, worst of all, lonely for me. Publication and deadlines help me focus my energies so that I will actually sit down and do what is hard but necessary, rather like getting a tetanus shot. When someone writes to say that they were touched, it only makes me want to write harder.

Writing works on me as a sort of truth serum. I cannot write things that I know to be false. As life has taught me more things, there are, paradoxically, fewer and fewer things I can write about. I cannot adopt the convenient poses as if I were something other than what I am. I cannot write on matters of national or international import because, truth is, they are not important to me. I cannot rave about things that are not transcendent.

This has created some problems. I used to make a sort of living writing for magazines and newspapers about things that happened in the world or about nice vacations to New Zealand or Tahiti. Today, I can’t; I have had to find other work because when I sit down to write, it must be about things that move me in my gut.

That is why, if you look closely, you will find behind each word the flickering shadows of my desires.