Monday, February 2, 2009

desire - by b

"been thinkin and thinkin till there's nothin i ain't thunk"

it's time to express pure desire... because the think-a-thon* is getting me nowhere

i desire barcelona

i desired it when i first ever saw it many years ago

the buildings

the way people (especially women it seems) kind of lean towards each other and engage in intense conversations on buses, benches... wherever

the cafe i was in earlier

and the one i am in now

the sweat on the shiny beer taps

the patterns --- in the sidewalks, the windows, the floors, the walls and the clothes from local companies like custco and desigual (these patterns seem to hark far far far back to ancient moorish times)

perhaps because of all of the above and because of other unseen things, i feel at peace when i walk around here. content. at peace. if you know me then you know that those are rare feelings for me to have in large doses. i have them here. i desire that!

i am not going to put photos of these things (the things that can be seen) in this blog because what they look like to anybody else is not the point. the point is that i desire them. me. for reasons i can't explain. i simply desire them.

and my first job is to express my desire

my next job is to ask myself what it would feel like to make a decision based on my desire? the decision of whether to stay in barcelona or return to san francisco for next year.

once i make this decision for myself then i can have a real conversation with kristin about it.. and we can figure out what we want to do as a family.

so... what would it be like to make a decision based on desire?

here are some words that come to mind: dilettante, guilty, spoiled, short-sighted, irresponsible, selfish, weak, dreamer, luftmensch.

in other words, desire is somehow an illegitimate factor in decision making.

when we first started contemplating coming here for this year i had a lot of thinky reasons, mostly to do with work. i was walking by the beach in los angeles with my dad on a saturday (he was doing his chemo at the time ... and though things looked positive we didn't know for sure that he would, in fact, be ok as has turned out to be the case) and he basically suggested that i admit that i just wanted to go --- and go

and we did go. and somehow staying (here now) seems scarier to desire.

so i find myself getting all-thinky again

but enough

i am going to state my desire for barcelona

i am even going to state my desire to stay in barcelona

and i am putting myself on notice that none of those undermining words i whisper to myself are in fact relevant. they are not useful. they are not true.

i am not sure if in the end my decision... my stand... will be based on desire alone. it might even go against my desire and i might even be fine with that.

but it is time for me to state my desire clearly and unequivocally.



*thanks to YLS in LA for the word think-a-thon