The Project of Self

Memory—nothingness—desire—memory—nothingness—desire—memory--nothingness—desire—memory—nothingness—desire—memory—nothingness—desire—memory—nothingness—desire—memory—walking alone main street store front fur coat memory of mom twenty years ago—block of meat searing—passing blonde in wool beanie at intersection of desire disregard—memory of tastes and smells of Tibet and of Ashley who spoke at length of conflicting future plans then said solemnly, “I don’t like to be alone.”—crosswalk crunch of shitty snow underfoot walking into a subconscious abyss that tears all value from objects of desire on display, turns the lust of a passing face back to a block of clay, explodes twinkling streetlight like stars blotted from the sky—leaning into this world without meaning, temporary, blotted passage between memory and desire, I discovered the mysterious formula of life: memory—nothingness—desire—with a black nothingness, gray void of meaning, underlying all and a universal desire to fill it with meaning—mosque meaning, left-wing meaning, marriage meaning, shopping mall meaning—in constant struggle with itself and this struggle remembered forever, etched into our dna since the bone-throwing days—desire of meat… desire of survival… desire to survive somehow warped and molded into storefront mannequins in thousand-dollar down jackets, “…we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law ‘Each is furthest from himself’ applies to all eternity.” For in nothing, there is nothing to understand, only the misguided effort to assume it has proportion, surface, shape and the conceit to convince others of this falsehood—Force of desire ripping through a black future in a spew of color charged by the memory of its substance in grocery store checkout lanes, maternity wards and bus stops where my breath escapes me in clouds I can see have no meaning whatsoever, but are satisfying to look at nonetheless. Back home there are Italian sausage in the refrigerator to fry up, some Nietzsche to read, and texts to respond to: return to desire.