Desire is A Doorway

I love thinking and talking about desire, and exploring ways to cultivate authentic, burning desire in my life, because as far as I have come to understand, desire is the first doorway to everything else. Without stepping through that doorway, we cannot become our fullest selves, or even ourselves. We are told it is better, holier, to be without desire. But I don’t believe that. We will always want. We are born wanting. The aim is to be honest with ourselves about our desires—then cultivate the healthy ones and act upon them with integrity and determination. With drive and grit. Because, you see, as much as I gravitate toward Buddhism, I believe the idea of non-attachment gets terribly misinterpreted. What we’re going for is deep investment in our desires without attachment to the outcome. That’s very different than having no desire at all, or aspiring to. The latter leads, in my view, toward repression and stagnation, a kind of calcification of the self.

It was a few years ago, maybe 2015 or so, when I first came across Jane Hirshfield’s gorgeous poem “Heat” (pasted into this letter at the end) and began thinking seriously about desire—how it acts as the fuel we need to work, to engage, to create, and also as the fuel within our work, the fuel that brings it alive, makes it move. As Vonnegut said, every character on the page must want something, even if it’s just a drink of water.

Women, especially, must embrace desire in order to get our creative work done. We have to want our creative work, and want it a lot. We have to allow ourselves to want it without shame or fear, or in spite of the shame and fear our culture lays upon us for wanting. We have to accept the rejection and turmoil that comes with not getting what we want, too. That can hurt. But without the wanting, there is no fuel to bring us to the page (or the canvas, or the keyboard). Without wanting, there is no drive. So, without wanting, we are safe, but empty. We avoid vulnerability, but we also avoid the chaotic creative joy of artistic expression and participation.

Because I am so fascinated by desire in ourselves and in our work, I am THRILLED to be participating tonight, Thursday March 11, on LitHub’s Red Ink Panel on the topic of desire, along with several other esteemed writers including Jo Ann Beard, Michele Filgate, Dantiel Moniz, and Katherine Angel. You can register here. The event is free, virtual, and starts at 6 Central. Please come!

Then on Monday, March 15, I’ll be joining Lilly Dancyger (Negative Space) for the Memoir Monday Series, and teaming up with Lilly again, in company with Gina Frangello (Blow Your House Down) for another hometown launch event for The Part That Burns at the fabulous Magers & Quinn bookstore (scroll a bit to see it, also virtual and free!) Finally, on March 25 at 7 Central, I’ll be at Literati Books with the wonderful Jen Pastiloff (author of Being Human). These are some of my favorite events of the book launch so far, so I definitely hope to see some of you there.

In April & May, I have events coming up with Sue William Silverman (How to Avoid Death And Other Inconveniences), Ethel Rohan (In the Event of Contact), Keisha Bush (No Heaven for Good Boys), and Athena Dixon (The Incredible Shrinking Woman). In the next week or so, I’ll send out dates and times for April & May events. For now, you can watch my events page.

That’s it for today, except my usual plea for Amazon reviews. It’s like pulling my own teeth to keep asking (as you can imagine), and if they didn’t matter at all, I’d just forget about it. But they do matter, and it took a billion years to write this book, so I care about what happens to it—I want it to stand on its strong little feet in the shadow of the Amazon giant. So, if you have a few minutes to drop a short review, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL. All you have to do is click this link and scroll down watching the left hand side until you see the box that says, “Write a customer review.”

Love,

Jeannine

HEAT

By Jane Hirshfield

My mare, when she was in heat, would travel the fenceline for hours,

wearing the impatience in her feet into the ground.
Not a stallion for miles, I’d assure her, give it up.
She’d widen her nostrils, sieve the wind for news, be moving again,
her underbelly darkening with sweat,
then stop at the gate a moment, wait to see what I might do.
Oh, I knew how it was for her, easily recognized myself in that wide lust:
came to stand in the pasture just to see it played.
Offered a hand, a bucket of grain—a minute’s distraction from passion
the most I gave. Then she’d return to what burned her: the fence, the fence,

so hoping I might see, might let her free.

I’d envy her then, to be so restlessly sure of heat, and need, and what it takes
to feed the wanting that we are— only a gap to open the width of a mare,
the rest would take care of itself.

Surely, surely I knew that, who had the power of bucket
and bridle—she would beseech me, sidle up,
be gone, as life is short.
But desire, desire is long.