Allegories on Winds of Desire...

...it blazes over seas through the skies burning holes in God's air incinerating all realities and still...


I can't touch you...

...but I remember how you feel.

-------

You.

    Where.

          It.

              What.
                    Who. 

                         The object.

What sends you blindly ploughing forward in a most focused action toward the object of your desire?

Some have defined desire as Will, but does it will your actions towards fertile ends?  Does it consume you or fill you with life? What makes it increase? Does it cease if gratified? What could kill it; how might it die, and should you let it? 

According to Aristotle, there is no movement without desire, though he did concede that not all movement is toward a creative or useful end. I'm constantly, selectively, and frustratingly in the tug of choosing what makes an object worth my drive - especially as an artist.

If desire is the will to drive forward, then as Plato and Socrates offer, it is reason that puts a driver in the seat, and without one there will be fruitless befuddlement.  But what about people who push against the limits of caution, control and good sense,... and succeed?  Are their experiences happy accidents or examples to the rest of us?

Sometimes desire is necessary to move, indeed, but other times it is often distracting and crippling.  When is the distraction constructive or destructive?  A diversion can sometimes lead us to better experiences that we may have otherwise and unwittingly  circumvented - especially when it is supported by passion and belief! [see Treatise on Human Nature, David Hume] 

As Eastern philosophers (particularly Buddhists) posit - impulses of desire or cravings are the cause of destructive suffering and spiritual paralysis, and thus should be quelled. Nirvana is after all, the happiness of nothingness...the extinction of suffering, caused by covetous living. [see Siddhārtha Gautama].  Some Western ideals and morals propel this too - hence the negative connotation of desire as some sort of rude and impractical temptation that will destroy your soul; and those who believe this suffer from guilt when in wanting, immobilized in contrition yet promised eternal salvation.

But without desire, there would be no astounding discoveries; no risky experiments that lead to practice and ritual; no triumphs in the face of adversity; no love against all odds; and certainly no impossible dreams fulfilled.  As such, shouldn't we advise each other the way we do a child?  

I believe that desire is the elixir of life; it lends possibility to the unimaginable, and sets standards for excellence in everything. This driving force is necessary, and the other - cognitive reasoning, can either help to organise and channel it, or hinder it in fear - and thus whose counsel should be managed with care.

photo by Nina Buisson

"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter Pan answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg...So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!"

Fly little children, fly!

Except for the um...obvious exception by Nina Buisson (taken in Central Park, NYC) - I took these photos in Colorado within a 5 minute period - an unbelievable sunset blazing fire across the skies, scorching the clouds and changing the heavens so fast it seemed impossible.