The Thing
I want to want to be open to the idea that I don’t know.
I’ll admit that I just went along with it every time someone mentioned the ego.
It seemed like we all knew what that meant. So I didn’t ask.
The not asking seems to have worked out for me.
Until I read something that said that it is the ego that is intentional.
It is the ego that is willful. That sets forth with an idea.
And all along I was desperate for intention and for interpretation.
I wanted so badly to know and to be known. To be consumed by my ego and yours.
There is no mystery, no surprise in consumption. In the will.
But I was so annoyed by open ends.
By the look of someone who trusts me and is “happy either way.” (Which I never believed.)
I wanted someone to tell me that they needed something specific from me.
So that I could consider that thing. And then offer my own thing.
So that we could argue over it. And at the end of the argument erupt in kisses.
Like a rehearsal.
For the eventual thing towards which we set our intentions. So we could live it out until we got bored.
And then another eruption, but this time of frustration. And then again, with somebody else.
Somehow, instead, something surprising happened. I disposed of the whole story. Not wanting the same action anymore left me in a chronically eruptive space. I was scared by my own displacement, but did not want to be saved. I do not want to know everything. The thing I want is not a thing. There is an uncertainty about which I have no expectations. An encounter that is genuine and a risk I cannot fathom. That is
or isn’t
or could be
I won’t know
I won’t know because I am in a body. Which is enough for the ego, with which I am now acquainted. The body sets certain limits. And the body has uncertain desires. Then the ego can create a story. And this is the problem with being a writer. This is the terror of writing. You can dispose of the whole story and for a moment be free. You can ascend in the heightened risk of not knowing. But then you get this urge to put it to paper. To say something. Oh god, to be interpreted. I work so hard to not say too much of exactly anything and so, perhaps, to be a better writer. To be more honest. I’m probably wrong. Maybe that is not writing, either. There is aesthetic experience that sublimates any intention (the ego). That is what I want to create (the ego). Oh no (the ego). Here we go