What good is desire, Willard? It feels impossible, yet it's in the air, clear and clean and white and slowly growing. Does it define the self or efface it? You know it well, I'm sure, its heat, its rhythm, the way it grows into the cracks between moments. We both keep it close and covered, like a lifelong soup pot, like a locket. We are both closed in our own ways. Not impenetrable, I know, these interiorities, but it's a long effort against a shell.
I wonder if it is like a blizzard wipe, a pull strong enough to shake apart the screws of self. It is pure, I’m sure; it’s strong, I mean. Surely knowing it’s wrong does not demolish it. It grows regardless. It banishes thought. It is not like thought at all, though it occurs within. This last year, the au pair. The La Brea tar pits, slick and thick and black and eerie, the way they swallow up the past.
As a yearn, can it be consumed? Used up? Or does it necessarily empty us? Is desire for another the end of us? Or can it be used and held in hand, a lightning bolt, a healthy body shock?
I saw a mountain of white a week ago and thought of you. Sometimes I fear the desert is a dream and I'm still in that tower, years ago, unknowing.
If it's strong enough like blinding wind thrown against a rock wall, it might obliterate it eventually, remove even the letters of the words I scrawled there a thousand years ago, destroy the memory of the name I wrote upon it.
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