juicing desire

I don't write fiction (yet) but if (when) I ever start, my first main character will be someone who always thinks about how great it would be to have things or pursue people but never fulfills her desires. She would follow her action impulses- climbing a mountain, admitting a love, dancing like a fool-things that have to do with expression. But action that aimed towards acquiring, she would leave outside her realm.

Because there's this thing about desire. It's naturally filled with an energy that has a powerful control over people. Eastern religion does a lot with that. Buddhism says "get rid of it!" The absence of desire is the presence of peace. Hinduism, specifically Vishnavites and Krsna worshippers say "harness it!" The love story of Radha and Krsna, especially in the Gitagovinda, brings this out beautifully. Krsna, player of all players, lures the cow herdesses out their homes at night with his flute playing. When they all assemble in the forest clearing, he splits himself into hundreds of Krsnas- one for each girl and proceeds to dance an erotic dance with them. And right before the culmination, right before the organsm, he dissappears. This, of course, drives the girls nuts and one, his favorite Radha, has a special affair with him and experiences a special kind of separation:

"The down on her body stands on end and she draws in her breath, a hissing sigh;
She laments, she shivers, she swoons, she sinks into reverie, laughs and cries;
She closes her eyes, she starts up, she droops; and if you, a heavenly physician
Should calm down her high state of fever, O would she not live? or her wordless gestures too she will end!

Her body is wholly tormented by the heat of the flame of desire;
Her mind, when ever at times in thoughts of the moon and sandal and lotus,
Even then it is still exhausted, uncooled- most strange to relate!"

And he experiences the same apart from her. The whole poem contains some of the sexiest imagery ever "To whose act of desire accomplished the ankets upon my feet bejewelled; Vibrated sounding, who gave his kisses seizing the hair of the head, And to whom in his sweet passionate love my girdle sounded in eloquence sweet." I'm blushing), but it's supposed to represent the desire for the divine and the pain of being separated from it, never truly able to unite with it in this life. This desire is seen as good, as satistfying in its own way. Yes, she is in pain, but she's also very much alive, feeling every breeze, hearing every bee, laughing and crying. I see this over and over again in myself and my friends- the desire to possess another, thinking about being united with them makes us so alive. (Whereas the actual uniting seldom carries the same kind of energy).

It's even easier to see with material objects. We want, say, a juicer. Spend a long time looking at them online and anticipate how great it will be to make fresh juices at home every day. Buy special carrots at the market just for that juicer and look forward to coming home every day to see if it's arrived. And then it does. And the excitment's all over. The tension melts away and there's some small hole where the desire used to be. Not to say that just happened,



It wasn't like flames of desire licked my body every time I thought about this thing, but somehow getting it is more disappointing than wanting it. Of course, now the trick is to desire that fresh cup of juice in the same way so that the cycle can be repeated.