when longing dies...
*** Special thanks to
and her book Bittersweet for the inspiration. And, thank you to for the conversation that prodded thinking about this.Discussion about this post
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© 2025 Duane Toops
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Duane, I like to think about this idea braided together with your previous thoughts on imperfection. Since we are living inside human bodies, whose cells are continuously dividing, growing, and dying, while riding on a rotating planet, in a vast cosmos which is also in continuous motion... I think it's beautifully imperfect and human to yearn for, desire, thirst, and long for more--of everything! The bittersweetness is gorgeous. We never arrive--except for fleeting moments that some folks call meditation or prayer or stillness, which does feel amazing, however brief! I love this imperfect ride we're all on together. RIP John O'Donohue --a wise and enlightened soul--he's still riding around here somewhere that we can't go yet.
Love this Duane! Words and images both. Do you know Deleuze and Guattari's writings on desire? They have a very similar analysis - critiquing the Freudian/psychoanalytical understanding of desire as "lack" (i.e. desire as capitalist binary: empty/full), and offering another way of understanding our relationship to desire as a non-binary force (much like what you've called 'yearning'). Anyway - great stuff!